How to add multiple observations to a project (or set up an automatic addition rule)?

[char...@gmail.com]

I have a taxonomic project (Strigiformes) and want to be able to add observations submitted by others (often in other projects) to it. I have found how to do this one observation at a time (very tedious) but cannot find a way to add multiple observations at once. I notice some of the global bioblitz projects seems to add observations automatically so I assume there is a way to do this or to automate this process but I have been unable to find any information in the various help files despite repeated searches.

Thank you for any suggestions

Christian Artuso

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Christian,

You're referring to the Aggregator which we built for Biobltiz projects (projects that have a start and end time). The Aggregator is very resource intensive for ongoing projects since it has to run continually. We tested it with a few ongoing projects (the ones you mentioned) but from the results of those tests we've determined that its too resource intensive to open up to ongoing projects.

In my opinion, we should continue to restrict the Aggregator to Bioblitz projects only and build a tool that makes it easier for project admins to Batch add observations to their project.

But for the moment there are good tools for people to add their own observations to a project, so your best bet is to ask them to go to 'Observations-By You' and click Batch Edit -> Select -> add to project

-Scott

 

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[christian artuso]

Thanks Scott,

When I use the search tool or find observations is there any way to batch share with my project? Currently, once you click on an observation and add it to project you have to go back and repeat the search all over again in order to load the second observation. When there are dozens of observations of a species this is exceptionally tedious. Is there any alternative?

 

Christian

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[Scott Loarie]

 Hi Christian, not at the moment. As I mentioned, I'd like for us to build a tool that makes it easier for project admins to Batch add observations to their project.

But for the moment there are good tools for people to add their own observations to a project, so your best bet is to ask them to go to 'Observations-By You' and click Batch Edit -> Select -> add to project

[christian artuso]

Thank you Scott for the super speedy responses!

Christian

[Jay K]

Scott,

Wouldnt it be reasonable to allow the aggregator to function periodically, such as once per week, during a time of day when iNat user activity slows down? Admins could still add obs manually in the interim, but at least there would be some aggregation.

Jay

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[David K]

I agree with Jay that the 'always-on' status may not be required for the non-bilblitz projects, but I would prefer a daily rather than weekly run.  It keeps the new entries fresher for more active projects. For example, I'd rather see 20 things a day than 140 new entries once a week.

David

[tic...@gmail.com]

Hi,

Just to raise my hand in fav of the batch add observations for admins even if it is in a periodical way. We just created a project with thousands of observations to be added manually. This is terrible :(

Thanks,

Alicia

Dra. Alicia Mastretta-Yanes
Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO)
www.mastrettayanes-lab.org/
www.conabio.gob.mx
www.biodiversidad.gob.mx
México

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Jay,

I suppose its possible to make 2 aggregators one that runs every 15 minutes for Bioblitzes and another one that runs once a week or so for normal projects. But I expect people won't be that patient. If we had a tool like photo uploader where its easy to select a bunch of observations and then 'apply' them all to a project at once, that would give people more individual control than waiting for an aggregator and if done right could be pretty efficient. What do folks think about aggregator vs tools for selecting/adding other peoples observations to projects?

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[christian artuso]

A tool that allows you to run a taxonomic search or geographic area search, perhaps with a date range option, and then bulk upload the results to a project seems to be a reasonable option

c

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[Charlie Hohn]

I'm not the typical project curator but for me an aggregator that ran once a week would definitely be sufficient and really welcome. Especially if it also ran once upon project creation. The batch add with photos would be good too but for huge projects like Vermont atlas of life it would be nearly useless. 

What I really don't want, from the side of a user, is to have to go back to the days of getting nagged to join and add to projects.  Sometimes I'd get hundreds of such notifications and requests. Major annoyance for high volume users.  Also id suggest re creating the user side feature that lets you add all eligible observations to a project. 

Just my take anyway. 

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[MicheleM]

Hello!

I would like to revive this post, to know if there has been any development in the possibility of adding multiple observations to a project.

I don't need an automatic aggregator, but maybe a simple "check" field next to each observation (in an observation list) and a tool button saying "Add selected entris to a project..." would speed up the process of manually adding several observations without opening each of them. 

Would that be possible?

Thank you for any thoughts,

Michele

[christian artuso]

I have not found any practical solution Michele but hoping for the development of such tools as suggested above.

Christian

[MicheleM]

Thank you!

How about this?

I search the database using the parameters I need.

I export the obtained list as a .csv file.

I open my project page and use the "import from .CSV" option.

I don't see why this could not work... although I gave it a try and I receive an error.

Any thoughts?

Michele

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[christian artuso]

I don't ever use the .csv import because it does not allow for sounds recordings or photos to be included (as far as I know)

Hope others can answer your error problem

c

[Tony Iwane]

Regardless of technical difficulties, downloading a of eligible observations as a CSV and then uploading them means that you are uploading observations to your account that aren't yours.

Tony

[MicheleM]

Hi Tony, 

in fact, I am not sure that would be an issue, for the following reasons:

First, the exported CSV contains all the data regarding an observation, including the ID of the observer, just as they appear in the observation list.

Second, I cannot use the import option to upload observations on my account. I can only use them to import them in a project, which would not necessarily mean they are observed by me, given the first point.

But I am quite new here, so I am maybe overlooking something. Am I wrong?

The technical problem that I can think of, is that I cannot import observations which are already present in the Inaturalist database (since the csv was created from there). That's probably the bottom line?

Thanks everyone, 

Michele

[Tony Iwane]

Hi Michele,

Since you would be uploading the CSV while logged in to your account, each observation would likely be added as one of yours. The CSV upload is, I believe, meant for a user to upload their data files from surveys and such.

---------

As far as projects in general go, and this is me speaking personally, I believe the two advantages of a (non-BioBlitz) project are: admins & curators can see the true coordinates of obscured/private observations, and the project's page provides a landing page/public face for users. For those interested in just tracking a certain taxon and/or place, and don't need true coordinates, etc., it's much easier to just use the Observations search page to find all the observations you want. For instance, if I wanted to know all the snake observations in California, I could just bookmark this URL (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=14&subview=grid&taxon_id=85553) and not have to worry about observations being added to a project. 

I'm not at all trying to demean anyone's project, and I know there are many great use cases for them, I'm just wondering if perhaps we sometimes get too caught up in making a project before asking ourselves if it's really necessary. My two cents.

Tony

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Michele,

On iNaturalist a single observation can belong to multiple projects.
If you want an observation to be represented in more than one project,
the proper thing to do would be to add it to multiple projects.

Duplicating the observations would not be a good achieve the desired
effect and would definitely not be recommended.

Best,

Scott

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[christian artuso]

It would be great to have a tool available for this (adding multiple observations into a project). It does make one rather weary to be adding observations one by one.

Christian

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[CW Gan]

I agree with Scoot. What we need is a batch function too add observatiosn from Search to project.  Aggregator is nice and for on ghoing projects once a week is a good start, once a day would be nice.

On Thursday, 1 September 2016 12:48:30 UTC+8, christian artuso wrote:

A tool that allows you to run a taxonomic search or geographic area search, perhaps with a date range option, and then bulk upload the results to a project seems to be a reasonable option

c

On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 11:25 PM, Scott Loarie <loa...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Jay,

I suppose its possible to make 2 aggregators one that runs every 15 minutes for Bioblitzes and another one that runs once a week or so for normal projects. But I expect people won't be that patient. If we had a tool like photo uploader where its easy to select a bunch of observations and then 'apply' them all to a project at once, that would give people more individual control than waiting for an aggregator and if done right could be pretty efficient. What do folks think about aggregator vs tools for selecting/adding other peoples observations to projects?

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 4:44 PM, <tic...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

Just to raise my hand in fav of the batch add observations for admins even if it is in a periodical way. We just created a project with thousands of observations to be added manually. This is terrible :(

Thanks,

Alicia

Dra. Alicia Mastretta-Yanes
Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO)
www.mastrettayanes-lab.org/
www.conabio.gob.mx
www.biodiversidad.gob.mx
México

On Thursday, August 25, 2016 at 7:29:14 AM UTC-5, David K wrote:

I agree with Jay that the 'always-on' status may not be required for the non-bilblitz projects, but I would prefer a daily rather than weekly run.  It keeps the new entries fresher for more active projects. For example, I'd rather see 20 things a day than 140 new entries once a week.

David

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San Francisco, CA 94118
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[Brian Schrock]

Any update on this? Our conservancy has built a project for our geographically defined area, but to add all the previous observations made by a variety of users would be very time consuming.  I'd love to be able to run a search for all the observations in the defined area, click a "select all" button, and then a "add selections to project" button. This would be an amazing cure for the headache of project curating.

-user bschrock2

[Scott Loarie]

HI Brian,

Whats the project you're referring to? I'm curious to know how its characterizing suitable observation (e.g. based on a place boundary etc.)

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[Brian Schrock]

Hey Scott,

Our project is called "Exploration Green Conservancy". We're located in the SE Houston area. We started off with a project that was just called "Exploration Green" but it wasn't linked to a 'Place' so it didn't have any set boundaries. We realized we could add the conservancy's boundaries as a "Place", and then make a project based on those boundaries which is why I now have a project called "Exploration Green Conservancy". I was hoping with a defined border, that I could set the project so that any observation added in the boundaries would be added to the project automatically. When I couldn't do that I tried instead to do the "Find Suitable Observations" search and then add those results to the project but I didn't see a way to do that either without adding one by one.

Our goal is to chronicle all the species we find as we create the wetlands on site. Maybe you have some tips?

Thanks!

-Brian

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[christian artuso]

and, if possible, I would be interested in being able to search for all the observations for a taxonomic group (e.g. Strigiformes), and then being able to "select all" and "add all" to a project

c

[Scott Loarie]

The problem:

When we envisioned projects, they were more like twitter-followers where people would find a project they like and actively join it and add their observations to it. e.g. in twitter I can set up an account but I can't make people follow me, I have to passively wait for others to follow me. This is also how 'Missions' on Project Noah were designed and still work: e.g. http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/14784200. Lets call this 'project-member-driven-load'.

Over the years, there have been a lot of requests from project admins for tools to make it easier for them to proactively (rather than passively) get observations into their project. We recognize this as a totally legit need, and it led us to make a number of changes to projects, specifically:

1) let project admins invite observations (we later removed project invites because people found them spammy)

2) let project admins add observations

3) created the aggregator for bioblitz projects which automatically aggregates observations for bioblitz projects (some non-bioblitz projects got grandfathered in)

Lets call the demand for observations from project admins 'project-admin-driven-load'. As this thread shows, there's still lots of interest in EVEN BETTER tools for project admins to get observations into their project.

While we recognize these needs, the project infrastructure was never really designed to accommodate project-admin-driven-load which has gotten pretty intense with even limited use of the aggregator. The aggregator revealed how unsuitable our existing project infrastructure is for these 'project-admin-driven-load' use-cases. The aggregator is now constantly churning away creating tens of thousands of project observations a day and all the associated notifications etc. We created about 1/4 billion notifications in the last three months, most of them automatically generated by the project aggregator. Tools to open up the aggregator more widely, create other bulk ways for automating adding observations to projects, and tools for de-aggregating/bulk removing observations from projects (also oft-requested as things get out of sync.) will only exacerbate this. This is why we're dragging our feet on making the aggregator more widely available, or creating new tools that increase 'project-admin-driven-load'.

Possible Solutions:

There's a lot of possible solutions for how to proceed. But let me describe one that is personally appealing to me and then ask some questions. 

Imagine that there were a set of projects still worked more or less like they were designed (the good ol' days). The onus was on project members to join and add their observations to projects and projects continue to support all these heavy weight complexities that they currently do like notifications and journals and project lists and geo-privacy observation-fields and curator IDs etc etc. Lets call these Project-Member-Driven-Projects for lack of a better term. This is a good example, it has about 8k observations all added individually: http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/as-rec-roadkill-observations

But suppose we also had a second, more  lightweight type of project for project admins who mainly want to create a page with a banner that visualizes a subset of iNat observations that can be automatically searched for, lets call these Project-Admin-Driven-Projects

For example, for Brian's Exploration Green Conservancy project http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/exploration-green-conservancy, it would essentially just show observations from within that place (ie these ones

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=120329 ) 

It would still display on its own 'project' page with its own URL and banner, but would be driven by more lightweight infrastructure. These lightweight 'Project-Admin-Driven-Projects' would have:

Pros:

Super scalable, and avoids having to deal with aggregator and batch add/remove tools/pains

Cons:

1. Would loose notifications, e.g.:

2. Would loose links from observations back to the project, e.g.:

Questions:

If something like these lightweight 'Project-Admin-Driven-Projects' existed, would they satisfy people's use-cases for projects? Is there something else that projects offer that are currently being used that would be missing? Any pros / cons I forgot? Other ideas?

Thanks,

Scott

[christian artuso]

Interesting stuff Scott! The way i see it, none of the projects that I have joined or checked out fit either of the types you define... they are ALL hybrids, with both sorts of input, admittedly in varying percentages. As far as I can see it, project curators need this type of tool to attract attention to a project and derive new members by adding observations to a project (when the users sees their obs have value to a project, they start to upload new relevant obs). Without this, the project would have greatly reduced membership and would basically be unheard of. As a user, I myself have been encouraged to add observations to iNat precisely because of project curators' activity and this includes adding many uploads that i would not have considered adding to iNat (e.g. one curator asked me about bats, which led to me sorting and adding a series of bat photographs, likewise another curator expressed an interest in amphibians from a region, which starting by adding one of my obs for which i received a notification). The way i see it, 'project-admin-driven-load' is a superb way of promoting and expanding the use of iNat and permitting promotion of a specific "project" enhances interest and increases usage. In short, i feel iNat is really selling itself short without some some of tool to assist curators in developing and expanding their projects.

Christian

[Scott Loarie]

Thanks Christian,

Appreciate your feedback. Just to have a concrete example, can you use http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/owls-of-the-world as an example to explain specifically why something like the lightweight 'Project-Admin-Driven-Projects' I described wouldn't work for you there? Would it be the lack of notifications or links from the observations to the project, or some other project feature I'm forgetting?

Thanks,

Scott

[Brian Schrock]

I think what Christian said is exactly what we want for our project. We have a lot of volunteers who are casually into iNaturalist, but when they hear that our conservancy has a project to collect and monitor our species, and that they can contribute to it, they do get more involved.

And the other iNat users in the area who don't know what our conservatory is all about have found us by having their observations added to the project by myself and other admins. Sometimes a passerby sees a bird or plant we've never seen and we'd love to see that pop up in our project.

I also like that our project includes a description so that new volunteers can remember who we were and what they saw in our conservatory!

Best,

Brian

Sent from my iPhone

On May 8, 2017, at 9:04 PM, christian artuso <char...@gmail.com> wrote:

Interesting stuff Scott! The way i see it, none of the projects that I have joined or checked out fit either of the types you define... they are ALL hybrids, with both sorts of input, admittedly in varying percentages. As far as I can see it, project curators need this type of tool to attract attention to a project and derive new members by adding observations to a project (when the users sees their obs have value to a project, they start to upload new relevant obs). Without this, the project would have greatly reduced membership and would basically be unheard of. As a user, I myself have been encouraged to add observations to iNat precisely because of project curators' activity and this includes adding many uploads that i would not have considered adding to iNat (e.g. one curator asked me about bats, which led to me sorting and adding a series of bat photographs, likewise another curator expressed an interest in amphibians from a region, which starting by adding one of my obs for which i received a notification). The way i see it, 'project-admin-driven-load' is a superb way of promoting and expanding the use of iNat and permitting promotion of a specific "project" enhances interest and increases usage. In short, i feel iNat is really selling itself short without some some of tool to assist curators in developing and expanding their projects.

Christian

On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 8:45 PM, Scott Loarie <loa...@gmail.com> wrote:

The problem:

When we envisioned projects, they were more like twitter-followers where people would find a project they like and actively join it and add their observations to it. e.g. in twitter I can set up an account but I can't make people follow me, I have to passively wait for others to follow me. This is also how 'Missions' on Project Noah were designed and still work: e.g. http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/14784200. Lets call this 'project-member-driven-load'.

Over the years, there have been a lot of requests from project admins for tools to make it easier for them to proactively (rather than passively) get observations into their project. We recognize this as a totally legit need, and it led us to make a number of changes to projects, specifically:

1) let project admins invite observations (we later removed project invites because people found them spammy)

2) let project admins add observations

3) created the aggregator for bioblitz projects which automatically aggregates observations for bioblitz projects (some non-bioblitz projects got grandfathered in)

Lets call the demand for observations from project admins 'project-admin-driven-load'. As this thread shows, there's still lots of interest in EVEN BETTER tools for project admins to get observations into their project.

While we recognize these needs, the project infrastructure was never really designed to accommodate project-admin-driven-load which has gotten pretty intense with even limited use of the aggregator. The aggregator revealed how unsuitable our existing project infrastructure is for these 'project-admin-driven-load' use-cases. The aggregator is now constantly churning away creating tens of thousands of project observations a day and all the associated notifications etc. We created about 1/4 billion notifications in the last three months, most of them automatically generated by the project aggregator. Tools to open up the aggregator more widely, create other bulk ways for automating adding observations to projects, and tools for de-aggregating/bulk removing observations from projects (also oft-requested as things get out of sync.) will only exacerbate this. This is why we're dragging our feet on making the aggregator more widely available, or creating new tools that increase 'project-admin-driven-load'.

Possible Solutions:

There's a lot of possible solutions for how to proceed. But let me describe one that is personally appealing to me and then ask some questions. 

Imagine that there were a set of projects still worked more or less like they were designed (the good ol' days). The onus was on project members to join and add their observations to projects and projects continue to support all these heavy weight complexities that they currently do like notifications and journals and project lists and geo-privacy observation-fields and curator IDs etc etc. Lets call these Project-Member-Driven-Projects for lack of a better term. This is a good example, it has about 8k observations all added individually: http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/as-rec-roadkill-observations

But suppose we also had a second, more  lightweight type of project for project admins who mainly want to create a page with a banner that visualizes a subset of iNat observations that can be automatically searched for, lets call these Project-Admin-Driven-Projects

For example, for Brian's Exploration Green Conservancy project http://www.inaturalist.org/projects/exploration-green-conservancy, it would essentially just show observations from within that place (ie these ones

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=120329 ) 

<Screen Shot 2017-05-08 at 5.50.04 PM.png>

It would still display on its own 'project' page with its own URL and banner, but would be driven by more lightweight infrastructure. These lightweight 'Project-Admin-Driven-Projects' would have:

Pros:

Super scalable, and avoids having to deal with aggregator and batch add/remove tools/pains

Cons:

1. Would loose notifications, e.g.:

<Screen Shot 2017-05-08 at 6.12.30 PM.png>

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to inaturalist...@googlegroups.com.

[christian artuso]

Sorry Scott, I don't quite understand what you mean by "lightweight Project-Admin-Driven-Projects". Why it is lightweight? Do you mean removing database infrastructure that currently exists? Why does giving the admin a tool to ad observations and  attract new members prevent people from proactively joining/adding obs? I don't see why these have to be mutually exclusive (in fact, I view the former as a tool to increase the latter). As for notifications, I do think that some sort of notification is important or at least an observer should know that their obs have been added so they see the value and feel the sense of contribution. Without knowing that, the encouragement to add new obs to iNat isn't there. In my own case, there are many dozens of observations that I would never have bothered to put on iNat if it weren't for the notification or invitation that sparked a sense of their value.

Christian

[Scott Loarie]

I think I did a poor job of describing my proposed solution, let me take another crack at it when I'm back in the office

Sent from my iPhone

<Screen Shot 2017-05-08 at 5.50.04 PM.png>

It would still display on its own 'project' page with its own URL and banner, but would be driven by more lightweight infrastructure. These lightweight 'Project-Admin-Driven-Projects' would have:

Pros:

Super scalable, and avoids having to deal with aggregator and batch add/remove tools/pains

Cons:

1. Would loose notifications, e.g.:

<Screen Shot 2017-05-08 at 6.12.30 PM.png>

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to inaturalist...@googlegroups.com.

[Suzanne Simpson]

Have any developments been made on this front? I too would love to not have to individually add each observation to my project. Some of our users add it for us, but the majority do not (they probably assume it's done automatically).

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--

--------------------------------------------------
Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
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Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
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Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
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[Tony Iwane]

Suzanne,

You can add multiple observations (of your observations) to a project either from the web uploader page or by batch editing from your observations page.

As Scott mentioned, we're creating a project type that will just be a saved observation search that will have its own URL and branding opportunities, which means observations that match the project's criteria will automatically appear when you load the project page. No adding necessary.

Tony

[Suzanne Simpson]

Right, I did know about batch editing my own observations, but I'm looking to bulk add the observations of others to the project (including suitable observations made before the project was created). Looking forward to the creation of the new project type!

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[Tony Iwane]

Yes, currently the only way to do that is to outreach to users who have multiple observations you'd like them to add and to give them directions to do so.

Tony

[anisop...@gmail.com]

Scott,

I do like the solution.  It makes a lot more sense to handle the large projects in that way, but I also agree with Christian and have some additional concerns.  Would there be a way to simply list the lightweight projects in the sidebar of observations that the parameters fall under?  If so, could there still be a gear off to the right that allowed to fill out project fields?  I think that would maintain much of the interactivity and functionality.  If that could be done, I don't think I would have any problem with it as long as the features (i.e., journal posts, lists, etc.) remained the same.  As for observation fields, I could see it being somewhat problematic for projects that require observation fields.  These may not be quite as big a problem since aggregation isn't as practical, but many of them have large numbers of observations.

Also, would there be a simple way to convert heavyweight projects into lightweight projects?  My Euphorbia Species of the United States project (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/euphorbia-species-of-the-united-states) has many journal posts and I would hate to lose any of that in the conversion (the list would be a pain to lose too, but not as much as the journal posts).  Also, I have linked to the journal posts in many places.  Would the links change?  This is a smaller issue, but it would be good to know if this does go through.

Nathan

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Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
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[Neahga Leonard]

"we're creating a project type that will just be a saved observation search that will have its own URL and branding opportunities, which means observations that match the project's criteria will automatically appear when you load the project page. No adding necessary."

Will it be possible to add that functionality to existing projects?  I have one that's collecting data for where I'm working in SE Asia and I'd love to simple have observation within the region I've delineated automatically added to the project.  The proposed new project type sounds like it would do that, but if it's not integrated into previous project types it's a serious problem as then you wind up having to run two projects for the same area rather than one.

Be great if it can be integrated into existing projects, or if existing projects can be converted into the new type.

Neahga

[Charlie Hohn]

i agree, and i'd potentially e interested in switching over one of my old projects that does have the aggregator, if it saves iNat server time (though it's of a very small area)

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Charlie Hohn
Montpelier, Vermont

[Alex Krohn]

Hey Scott,

Did this functionality ever get implemented? As an employee of UCSC's Campus Natural Reserve and Ken Norris Center for Natural History, I created a project to help undergrads that I advise and other researchers track species' distribution changes on campus over time. While I will definitely try to keep up with adding new observations that occur on campus from now on, it would be great to add the 7,000 or so observations that have already occurred to my project.

Is there a way to turn my existing project into one of these "project-admin-driven-projects"?

Thanks!

-Alex Krohn

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Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
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[Tony Iwane]

Hi Alex,

We actually just announced the release of this type of project today: https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/15450-announcing-changes-to-projects-on-inaturalist Would this suit your purposes?

Tony Iwane

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[Alex Krohn]

What a coincidence! Yes, this resolves nearly all the issues. Although it would still be great to be able to access obscured or private data points for bonafide benficial projects, it's easier to request that subset of obscured data individually rather than having to request or add every observation manually.

Thanks for the fix!

-Alex

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[christian artuso]

Hi, I was trying to figure out how many species I have entered into iNaturalist recently. It turned into a nightmare of complexity. When queried using different approaches I got an least six different answers that differed by over 100 species:

1284 ("your observations - species")
1259 (from a "species only" list)
1248 (according to my profile, at least sometimes)
1163 (according to my profile, at least sometimes)
1145 (sum of an all-taxa query)
1140 (according to my profile, this number jumps around crazily)

What do these numbers mean and why do they differ so drastically? Especially, why does the number under "my profile" jump up and down and why does it differ from others? 

Christian Artuso

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[Scott Loarie]

Hi Christian, give https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/19369-how-does-inaturalist-count-taxa a read

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[christian artuso]

This explains one difference but it doesn't explain why the numbers on the same list jump around so much. Also why is this stuff so hidden?

Christian

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[Scott Loarie]

Hi Christian - if you can clarify your question(s) with screenshots/urls and clear descriptions of what you're expecting to see and what you're seeing instead, I'd be happy to investigate

[christian artuso]

The number is the red oval keeps jumping around - sometimes up, sometimes down. It does this whether I add observations or not. Sometimes adding observations causes it to go down. it changes when there has been no activity (other than other people adding identifications perhaps).

c

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Christian,

If I'm understanding you correctly, thats exactly what  https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/19369-how-does-inaturalist-count-taxa  is meant to explain

the number on your profile (1248) is driven by  https://www.inaturalist.org/life_lists/231949-chartusos-Life-List

which, if you follow the steps described in the tutorial linked to from the blog post, you can 're-sync' and it will read 1281 which will match

the number (1284) shown on 'your observations'  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=grid&user_id=chartuso&verifiable=any&view=species 

but as the tutorial explains, links are 'clunky' and will quickly get out of sync due to a number of reasons

Scott

[christian artuso]

No, the blog does not explain this. The blog explains how this number can differ from the observations list but it doesn't explain how it can jump around by itself (nor how it can change when the "life list that supposedly is based upon does not). Even after reading the tutorial twice, this still does not explain what is going on.

c

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Christian,

If by 'jump around' you mean why does the Number of Taxa under Stats here https://www.inaturalist.org/life_lists/231949-chartusos-Life-List change when observations / identifications are created/edited/destroyed its because as explained in the tutorial "As observations move from one taxa to another (via changing identifications etc.) listed taxa aren’t always properly created and destroyed."

If you mean something else by jump around, if you can share steps to reproduce I'll investigate

[christian artuso]

number refers to the number in the screen shot sent earlier. The question is why does that number change when NOTHING has changed

i.e. when

* no observation have been edited or changed

* zero activity by myself or any identifier

* no change to any taxon identification (no new supporting IDs, no contradicting IDs, NOTHING)

* no new observations added

but the number of species still jumps around - it can go up or down by as much as 100 three or four times within as many hours when there has been ZERO activity!! I have stopped adding observations until this can be resolved.

c

P.S. As for re-synching the list, I have not done that because I cannot find an explanation for the difference between "any" versus "species only"... please, please, please add a glossary and some help pages so we can find definitions for things! 

[Scott Loarie]

Well if its as you describe that nothing else changes (e.g. no changes to you list/listed_taxa or to your obs/IDs on your obs) and the Number of Taxa under Stats here https://www.inaturalist.org/life_lists/231949-chartusos-Life-List changes that sounds like a bug. Has anyone else seen this? Christian can you send steps to reproduce the issue?

Re: the difference between rank=species and rank=any, I clarified the tutorial by adding the paragraph:

"If the setting were changed to ‘rank = any’ the count would change to 5 by adding in the ancestor taxon Family Salamandridae and the infraspecies Taricha granulosa granulosa. All 5 would be: Family Salamandridae, Genus Notophthalmus, Taricha torosa, Taricha granulosa and Taricha granulosa granulosa"

[christian artuso]

The steps are to go back and forth between the dashboard and profile, checking that there are no new notifications, and watch the number change.... it changes intermittently but rather frequently at times!

So, if "any" means that higher taxa "score a point" then why would recommend changing the setting to "any" in order to re-synch your species list... that would surely contradict the purpose of re-synching a list. The tutorial is creating more confusion. If you want to find out how many species you have observed, how do you do this? I have now learned that is NOT the number under "species" in the observations tab (that name desperately needs to be changed, maybe to "species & subspecies" if i understand that part of the tutorial correctly), nor is it the number under a person's profile (which blows with the wind), and it now seems that it isn't even the number in a person's life list either unless there is some magical combination of settings that does this (I had assumed that is what "species only" was meant to do but apparently not since the tutorial advises against it). So what option is there other than downloading a .csv and creating a pivot?

c

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Christian,

>The steps are to go back and forth between the dashboard and profile, checking that there are no new notifications, and watch the number change.... it changes intermittently but rather frequently at times!

I can't reproduce this - if anyone else can please let me know

>So, if "any" means that higher taxa "score a point" then why would recommend changing the setting to "any" in order to re-synch your species list... that would surely contradict the purpose of re-synching a list.

I didn't recommend this. You asked what the difference between rank=any and rank=species was on your lifelist and I answered, thats all.

>If you want to find out how many species you have observed, how do you do this?

If I understand you correctly that you want to count only species that you have observed and not other 'leaves' that you have observed that are coarser than species, I would recommend going to 'Your observations' and setting the 'High' 'Rank' filter to 'Species'. I get 5,185 species doing this: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?hrank=species&place_id=any&subview=grid&user_id=loarie&verifiable=any (Keep in mind that this is including Casual observations in the count. If you want to only count verifiable observations, check 'verifiable') 

Assuming your lifelist is properly synced (follow the tutorial for steps to do this) this will exactly match if you change the default filters by checking rank=species. I get 5,185: https://www.inaturalist.org/lists/9413-loaries-Life-List?q=&taxon=&observed=t&rank=species&taxonomic_status=all

 

Best,

[christian artuso]

The exact quote is " To re-sync your whole Life List, first make sure that your ‘Rank restrictions’ are at the default ‘allow any’ setting."  There is nothing said as to why and it makes no sense. As to the difference in these definitions, neither your email nor the tutorial have satisfactorily answered that question, so I give up completely.

You need a proper glossary or definitions page.

Christian

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Christian,

I'm sorry your having such a frustrating time with this. I'm trying to explain it as simply as I can, but Lists are old, clunky and complicated. We don't have the resources to rebuild them from scratch so we're stuck trying to explain them which is tricky.

So by a proper glossary, you mean to put more little text descriptions next to things like in these examples:

or do you mean to put glossaries tutorials like the one I wrote. If the latter, can you describe the structure of what you mean a bit more and how it would fit into a narrative tutorial?

Also, for the record - your not talking about the 'Rank' filter on your list page and the 'any' option

Your talking about the 'Rank restriction' setting on the list edit page and the 'allow any' option

These are totally different things. The Rank filters show which listed taxa your list will display. The Rank restriction setting controls which kind of observations the list will bother to create listed taxa from. 

If your list doesn't 'allow any' listed taxa to be created, than listed taxa won't be created for observations ID to coarser ranks like Family and the the leaves count displayed by the leaves Rank filter won't produce the same count as Your Observations by default. 

The point of the tutorial was to describe how you can get the default Your Observations count and default Lifelist counts to match. If you only want to count species (with subspecies rolled up) than you can have the Rank restriction setting set to 'species and subspecies/varieties' and I believe once synced and the Rank filter setting set to species it will match Your Observations with the High Rank filter set to species, but I haven't tested it. The tests I did in the tutorial all required setting the Rank restriction setting to 'allow any'.