URGENT Support needed ! Have deleted some Projects and Places accidentally made in the Global portal,and now a whole lot of my projects are picking up millions of obs!

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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 18, 2018, 5:07:09 PM12/18/18
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This is no doubt creating problems for others...What should I recreate, where? Thanks.

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 18, 2018, 5:18:24 PM12/18/18
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It seems to be my projects named Kaipatiki Creek zone Aa....etc through to Zd....I have not today edited the Places they use (which I would have thought were all made in iNaturalist.NZ),. These Zone Projects seem to have lost their Places, so are picking up the world obs...I cannot reinstitute the Places as I cannot find the places in either portal, either in the Projects Place search or in Search Places.

I will try adding any place I can to these projects in the interim. Perhaps I have deleted a Parent place or something?

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 18, 2018, 5:20:24 PM12/18/18
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On Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 11:18:24 AM UTC+13, kaipatiki_naturewatch wrote:
It seems to be my projects named Kaipatiki Creek zone Aa....etc through to Zd....I have not today edited the Places they use (which I would have thought were all made in iNaturalist.NZ),. These Zone Projects seem to have lost their Places, so are picking up the world obs...I cannot reinstitute the Places as I cannot find the places in either portal, either in the Projects Place search or in Search Places.

I will try adding any place I can to these projects in the interim. Perhaps I have deleted a Parent place or something?

UPDATE I have been able to find a couple of Zones so will add these to the Zones Projects in the interim. 

Mark Tutty

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Dec 18, 2018, 5:20:27 PM12/18/18
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Hi Jenny

 

Can you supply some links to examples... and ofr each a brief description of what you think is wrong with it, or how it has changed to what you expected? I’ll take a look and see if I can help

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

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Mark Tutty

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Dec 18, 2018, 5:37:41 PM12/18/18
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Jenny,

 

Seeing as you have a bit of work to sort that out, can I make a suggestion before you do...

 

When you are dealing with zones or grids within an area, it could be easier to manage if you set a tag value as the zone. Then all the observations are under the one project, but are still filterable by zone.

 

I had a similar situation out at Hackfalls... they had old grid maps that were referenced throughout the catalogue, and I needed to use that to confirm I had matched up the correct entries to my photos of the trees from when I visited. I used a field rather than a tag, as I envisage others needing to take over the work at some point and so it needed to be an enduring process, but for what you are doing I would imagine tags being a little easier to work with.

 

Of course, if you are wanting to have observations automatically pick up their zone from the GPS location of the photo, then I think the way you have structured it might be better

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: kaipatiki_naturewatch
Sent: Wednesday, 19 December 2018 11:20 AM
To: iNaturalist

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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 18, 2018, 6:11:02 PM12/18/18
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The problem has resolved, I don't know if it was solved by the final dissolution of the Zone Places which may have been dependent on a Parent place which I had deleted?

Or maybe something was done at Support end to stop the flood of Observations limked to my dozens of Zone Projects?

I was adding one of the 3 remaining findable Zone Places to each of the 40 odd Projects as fast as I could, but I dont think I did them all before the problem resolved. 

My personal problem remains, that I no longer have the 40 odd Places for my Projects. I did not delete them individually, but maybe they were dependent on another place?

I noticed the problem also affected one of my obs not in the area of the Zones, but in the Kaipatiki area. 


On Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 11:07:09 AM UTC+13, kaipatiki_naturewatch wrote:

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 18, 2018, 6:28:18 PM12/18/18
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this is no longer urgent since it no longer seems to be affecting other users, but I think I have identified the cause.

I had a Place which I had created in the Global Portal, named "Kaipatiki Creek Restoration site, Auckland, NZ" - I think.

This morning I deleted that place iand created a similar place in the NZ portal - Kaipatiki Creek Restoration site, Glenfield, Auckland"

The 3 remaining Places I can find for Kaipatiki Creek Zones do not have a parent place.

I did not understand the purpose or function of Parents, but did add a Parent place to some Zones projects. 

I assume I added the Global Place to most of them, and that since I deleted the Parent, the Zone Places themselves have become non-functional.

I fit is possible to retrieve these Places and edit them so they don't have a parent, I would be very happy indeed:)

The next best thing would be if it were possible to created a Place while visualising the flags of observations, so the Place could be created around them. Making the Places over the last 6 months was a slow process as I had to edit the places successively by trial and error, waiting a day for the changes to appear. Perhaps that change was slow because they had a Global parent place?

Thanks.

jenny


On Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 11:07:09 AM UTC+13, kaipatiki_naturewatch wrote:

Mark Tutty

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Dec 18, 2018, 7:02:37 PM12/18/18
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It does look like your places were created as children of the global portal created parent place(s). I am confused though as to why it seems to be fixing itself. Perhaps the orphaned places are being re-indexed in the background and/or being adopted to new parent places? Strange. I hesitate to suggest that maybe waiting a while might give it a chance to catch up?

 

As to recreating the zones, and I assume you mean pins, not flags (different meaning in iNauralist!): You could try exporting an observation set as a kml file, loading it into another application that does mapping, create the boundary around the observation pins, and then export from there a kml of the new boundary. Then import that back to iNaturalist to set as the boundaries for the new location/zone. Quite a bit of fluffing around though, maybe someone else will have a better solution?

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: kaipatiki_naturewatch
Sent: Wednesday, 19 December 2018 12:28 PM
To: iNaturalist
Subject: [inaturalist] Re: URGENT Support needed ! Have deleted some Projectsand Places accidentally made in the Global portal,and now a whole lot of myprojects are picking up millions of obs!

 

this is no longer urgent since it no longer seems to be affecting other users, but I think I have identified the cause.

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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 18, 2018, 7:15:38 PM12/18/18
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I expect I mean pins...I mean the dots that mark obs:) 

Thanks for confirmation re the parent place... it may be reindexing as you say, or maybe I actually succeeded in adding an alternate Place to each Zone ....I was going like the clappers, using multiple tabs and picking up Zone Projects as fast as possible, so could not go through them systematically or note which ones I'd done. 

I became really concerned when I saw that one of my obs NOT in Kaipatiki Creek Zone was affected...actually I had bewtter check out all my other Projects. Fortunately, the Umbrella Projects give a quick answer as to whether any Proect under that umbrella is affected.

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 18, 2018, 11:01:52 PM12/18/18
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I did not find any of my other Projects affected.
Jenny

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 19, 2018, 4:25:20 AM12/19/18
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I started making new Places - in iNat.NZ, I checked - and adding them to my Zones Projects, replacing the "placeholder" Zone Places I was using to keep out the 15 million obs.

All was gong very well - full-size map once again, quick response so that I could see the Places in the map on my umberella Project almost straight away....and after about 6 of them, when I went ot add a Place to a Porject the Place could not be found.
In iNat.NZ, I checked.

They could not be found in the Global portal either.
A couple of hours later, they still cannot be found.

Yet they appear to still be functioning in the Projects eg https://inaturalist.nz/projects/kaipatiki-creek-zone-yb has only 236 obs, not 15million.
But I cannot find
 Kaipatiki Creek Zone Yb 
(copied it from the Project, to be sure I had it right)
in Find a Place.

Is there somewhere else I could try? 

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 19, 2018, 4:31:19 AM12/19/18
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Now I can find all the new ones, and the ones that were earlier still working (ie had no parent place), in the global portal.

Now I am really confused. I kept checking that the page I was working in said "iNaturalistNZ".

Mark Tutty

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Dec 19, 2018, 6:14:02 AM12/19/18
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I can find the place (Yb) when I search places, I can add an observation inside that location and it auto adds to the project, and if I join the project it shows that it is part of that project on the observation view. All looks to be working as it should? I am searching from the nz portal. I’m not sure what is going wrong for you Jenny, except that maybe the background indexing has now had a chance to catch up?

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 19, 2018, 1:39:22 PM12/19/18
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some time after posting here I found all the new zones and the three remaining ones were discoverable on the global portal. I added a new NZ place to them as parent and then they were discoverable in NZ portal too, appearing with NZ after their name.
So I made a few more Places, adding the NZ parent, and all seems well with those.
My  Zone Projects using these Places, and my Zone Collection Project, were no longer discoverable in NZ.
Thanks Mark. I will be going out for a few hrs soon so may not reply for a bit.

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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 19, 2018, 1:57:10 PM12/19/18
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Now some of the Kaipatiki Creek Zone Projects are discoverable, but not "Kaipatiki Creek- Zone Collection Projects". I can find it through my browser history, though.

Maybe its that indexing thing.  I have to take a few hours away from the computer so I will see how things stand after that.
Thanks very much for your help Mark.
Jenny

Tony Iwane

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Dec 19, 2018, 2:20:13 PM12/19/18
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Hi Jenny,

It is very difficult to provide help without specifics such as URLs (ie web addresses) of the project pages, as well as screenshots of what you are seeing. For example, words like "pins" or "flags" can be interpreted in different ways. If you look at the "Please Read Before Posting" thread at the top of the Google Group list (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/inaturalist) you will see some links for instructions of how to take screenshots, and other tips. I'll also provide the screenshots link here: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/ Having us all be on the same page (no pun intended) would make it a lot easier to get to the cause of the issue.

Tony Iwane

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 19, 2018, 11:17:37 PM12/19/18
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Thank you very much Tony, I have just got back to my computer, will check where things are at now re finding Projects and Places, then take the screenshots.
Jenny

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 19, 2018, 11:28:56 PM12/19/18
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On first Search, the Kaipatiki Creek Zone Projects were found but not the "Kaipatiki Creek Zone Collection Projects" Project.
It had a hyphen after Creek. I tried with and wiothout, the first three words only, etc, no luck.
I edited the Project, removing the hyphen just to make it easier to search with full exact spelling.
The Project was then discovered immediately.
All the new Places I've made in the last day or so are now discoverable too.
So nothing to see here! Thanks.

I assume it is not possible to retrieve all the Places I made using (accidentally) the global parent place that I deleted on Dec 19, causing the disappearance of the child places? (I do not know what Parent Place means, but it seems these Places I've just made, at least,  need to have a Parent Place to limit a Project Collection, and to be discoverable...is that true of all Places?

Jenny



On Thursday, December 20, 2018 at 8:20:13 AM UTC+13, Tony Iwane wrote:

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 12:11:12 AM12/20/18
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It seems that somehow I made some Places in the global portal yesterday, then couldn't find them, so thought they had not saved, made them again, and now have two. As I don't know which,if either, was made in the NZ portal, I have made a new one, and deleted both the others from the Global portal.

Now I can't find at least one of my projects - maybe I couldn't find them all before, the list found just looked long enough so I thought I had found them all.

Anyway, the one currently unfindable, maybe I accidentally made that in the Global portal? On my most recent search I copied and pasted the Project name from the Project as a check agaoins extra spaces etc.
Here are the screenshots of searching for it:
Screen Shot 2018-12-20 at 6-2.02.43 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-20 at 6.02.52 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-20 at 6.00.38 PM.png

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 12:13:30 AM12/20/18
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On Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 11:07:09 AM UTC+13, kaipatiki_naturewatch wrote:
Screen Shot 2018-12-20 at 6.00.54 PM.png
Message has been deleted
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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 1:27:06 AM12/20/18
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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 1:50:00 AM12/20/18
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Now,  Obs in Project 
are linked to a lot of Zones Proejcts

Two screenshots attached, of a single obs
Jenny
Screen Shot 2018-12-20 at 7.48.30 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-20 at 7.48.39 PM.png

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 1:55:37 AM12/20/18
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Sorry Tony, I have tried again to read your "before Posting" Post - as I did before posting initially - but it says "Post deleted". I read the text above though.

To tell you the truth I am also challenged with this Google group platform. I have difficulty reading it due to low contrast and small text, and don't know where I should reply, ie how the messages are stacked in a thread. So please let me know if I am doing it wrong.

Jenny

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 2:02:08 AM12/20/18
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To try to fix the obs in that Project appearing in all my Zones Projects, I deleted that Project from my "Kaipatiki Creek Zone Collection Projects"  Umbrella Peroject. It did not fix the problem after several refreshes, so I have put it back there in case you need it to test.
Jenny

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 4:10:12 AM12/20/18
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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 4:26:02 AM12/20/18
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The Place Zb is appearing correctly in the Umbrella Project "Kaipatiki Creek Zone Collection Projects" map. I thought I would check the Place Kaipatiki Creek Zb to see if something was wrong eg with the Parent, but it is not discoverable at present. I have tried searching for it in both Gloabl and NZ portals.
https://inaturalist.nz/places/search?utf8=✓&q=Kaipatiki+Creek+Zone+Hb&commit=Search see screenshot

NB while I was creating either this Place or theprevious one I got the error message I have had many times before. 
 "Cannot save Place Latitude must be less than 184 " or similar. (The Latitude is always 174 something). As usual I just started making the Place from scratch again. 

I wil try making another Zone Hb Place with a different name, and replacing it in the Project.
Jenny
Screen Shot 2018-12-20 at 10.15.39 PM.png

Mark Tutty

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Dec 20, 2018, 6:21:13 AM12/20/18
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Kaipatiki creek zone Zb shows up for me on the NZ portal...

 

https://inaturalist.nz/places/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=kaipatiki+creek+zone&commit=Search

 

I use the search terms “Kaipatiki Creek zone” above and it showed up as the top entry in the list of a couple dozen similar named projects.

 

It is strange that the observation you give as an example does not show as being in the zone Zb project, despite being within the bounds for it. You own the observation, as well as the project, and you are therefore a member of it too, so it should show that project in the list. It shows 26 other projects that it has matched up with, and so I can only assume one of two possible problems... a) the indexing is lagging, but surely it would have caught up by the time I viewed it (you sent link 1.5 hours ago), or b) there is a limit to how many projects can show in the observation view.

 

@tiwane : Is there a limit to how many projects an observation will link into?

 

@Jenny : Is there a reason why you need this observation to link into 26+ projects? Or are you still adjusting the boundaries of all those projects/places?

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: kaipatiki_naturewatch
Sent: Thursday, 20 December 2018 10:26 PM
To: iNaturalist
Subject: [inaturalist] Re: URGENT Support needed ! Have deleted some Projectsand Places accidentally made in the Global portal,and now a whole lot of myprojects are picking up millions of obs!

 

The Place Zb is appearing correctly in the Umbrella Project "Kaipatiki Creek Zone Collection Projects" map. I thought I would check the Place Kaipatiki Creek Zb to see if something was wrong eg with the Parent, but it is not discoverable at present. I have tried searching for it in both Gloabl and NZ portals.

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Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 9:40:41 AM12/20/18
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Mark, Each observation shows in and links to just one Zone, which is determined by the coordinates of the obs. That obs was made in Zone Zb and until Dec 19 when I deleted the global-created Place that was the parent of the Zone place, it was linked only to Zone Zb, ie behaved as intended.

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Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 9:45:24 AM12/20/18
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and Mark, I don't have the other 40-odd Places (there are about 60 zones) to adjust, since I deleted what I assume was the Parent place of those Places. I don't know for sure, I am guessing.
I remember at some point during making those places I could no longer find the Place for the whole site, so I had to make a new one.

On 21/12/2018 12:21 AM, "Mark Tutty" <kiwif...@gmail.com> wrote:

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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 10:12:03 AM12/20/18
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I have realized why all those Projects are linked to all the Obs inthe Project Kaipatiki Creek Zone Zb...it is probably because all those Projects are temporarily directed to collect from the Place Zone Zb, as it was one of the three Places (among my Zone places) remaining discoverable to me on Dec 19 after I had deleted the place "Kaipatiki Creek restoration, Auckland" (or something similar) that was their Parent.

Tony Iwane

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Dec 20, 2018, 3:45:47 PM12/20/18
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Hi Jenny,

I suppose I'm still not understanding what your overall goal is with these projects is, as well as what the current exact problem is.

Also, note that deleting a parent place will not delete any places below it. A parent place is used to give each place context (eg the city of Oakland, California is in the county of Alameda, which is in the state of California, which is in the United States). So if I say a taxon is endangered in California, iNaturalist knows it is also endangered in Oakland.

Tony

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 20, 2018, 10:01:42 PM12/20/18
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Thank you Tony. My overall goal is the reinstatement of the approx 60 places I had made, which disappeared from their associated Collection Projects the day I posted here, Dec 19. I became aware the Places were no longer operating when I checked a Project and saw it had over 15 million observations. On "Edit  Project" I found there was no Place assigned. The taxon collected was, correctly, Life. Hence over 15 million observations.
Then I found all, or at least most, of the Projects named "Kaipatiki Creek Zone (eg Aa, Ab etc....to Zd)" were in the same condition, ie. they had no Place.
The Places, each of the same name as its matching Project, could not be found either in the Project editing Window or in the Places search field.

If I had been aware of the Exclusion fields I could have limited them that way, but I wasn't, so the quickest way I could limit them was to add one of the 3 " Kaipatiki Creek Zone (...)" places that remained
discoverable.
If I could discover those 60 odd Places I would add them back into the Projects, and all would be well.
Before this occurred, I was going through inaturalist global portal finding some of the Places I had made which had at some point disappeared, because I had just learned in this forum that if a Place was made in the Global port it can't be found in the NZ portal. Having learned that I realized that was where some of the Places I that had become unfindable were, and solved a mystery. Over the last 6 months or so had had  to make duplicates of a number of Places because they were not able to be found for editing.

When this occurred, ie numerous of my Zone projects having 15 million Obs, since I knew I had not deleted about 57 Places without noticing, the only explanation for them vanishing suddenly was that one of the Places I had deleted was the cause of all the others disappearing. Place discoverability being dependent on Parent existing seemed a likely explanation, as one of the Places I deleted contained, geographically, all the Zone Places that were missing.
Before deleting this Place I had made a new one in the NZ portal, and replaced the Globally created place in a number of other Projects, which were and are fine.

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Tony Iwane

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Dec 21, 2018, 4:51:02 PM12/21/18
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Hi Jenny,

I did just test out the deleting a parent place thing and you're correct it did delete child places, so that's likely what happened.

I'm able to find a bunch of Kaipatiki creek places if I search for "kaipatiki" at inaturalist.nz, both by searching in the header search (click on the magnifying glass in the header) and places search.

As for searching for places when you are logged in to inaturalist.nz, you are correct that place search defaults to places within New Zealand. It shouldn't matter which iNaturalist site one was logged in to when the place was made.

Tony

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 21, 2018, 8:21:59 PM12/21/18
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Thanks Tony. Is there any way my Places could be retrieved from backup or Something? The ones you saw are the ones I started making again, but as you can see from the map in the trial process numerous edits are required to make each Place, and there are other errors and delays such as waiting for edits to appear so one can makever the next place adjacent to it, and every now and again a Place won't save due to the Latitude error bug...so it would take a couple of months to make them again. I had intended to use these Zones for a funded Project so if that could be avoided it would be great!

Mark Tutty

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Dec 21, 2018, 8:22:20 PM12/21/18
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Hiya Tony,

 

It might be worth looking at the projects side of things, as it is what caused all this in the first place.

 

Back when we were NatureWatch.org.nz as our portal, I was involved in a bioblitz, and the organiser had created the project while he was logged in through iNaturalist.org. On that occasion we could not find the project when we searched for it (we were logged in through the nz portal), and we discovered that if you selected “View projects from everywhere” then it would show up. This had nothing to do with the places that were associated with the project, it seemed to be related to where you were signed into when you created the project. The default for us on the nz portal seems to be to show only projects created in the nz portal.

 

When Jenny was having issues with some projects not appearing in the search, I suggested that this might still be an issue. I think she tested it, and it proved to be the case. I also think Jenny has deleted places, and in particular “parent places”, when she should have been deleting and replacing just the projects themselves... although she may have determined that she was having the same issue with places that were created in the different portals... that part I am not sure about.

 

I think what she is looking for now, is if there is a way to “undelete” what she has deleted in the places.

 

Jenny: If you read this, can you indicate whether I have got all this right?

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: Tony Iwane
Sent: Saturday, 22 December 2018 10:51 AM
To: iNaturalist

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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 21, 2018, 10:30:07 PM12/21/18
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Thanks Mark,

Yes, the reason I deleted all globally made Places was twofold:
1. I would sometimes come across them in eg Project edit, but as they were not editable because could not be found in Find Places, they were problematic, to say the least. Once you explained they could be found in the global portal, I located and deleted them. (After first making duplicate places in NZ portal, and adding the new ones to the Projects dependent on them).

2. I felt bad about having unused places cluttering up the Search for other people.
 
The Places that have apparently (?) been deleted were not deleted by me, but by the system when I deleted their Parent place.

These Places don't need a Parent place, I just assumed it was helpful to the data collection overall to fill in the "Parent" field when creating Places - ie just because the field was there I suppose:) 

So if that one place could be undeleted, perhaps all my Zone places would reappear, and function as before in their collection Projects? Or I could re-link the Projects to the Places easily enough.

Jenny

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 21, 2018, 10:31:31 PM12/21/18
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I just had a thought - I wonder if Imade a new Place with the exact same name, if I can remember it, if the Child places would reappear? And if so, would I need to make that Place in the Global portal?

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 21, 2018, 10:41:42 PM12/21/18
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I just tried to create a Place with what I think was the exact spelling of the deleted Parent Place, but I got the dreaded error message
There were problems importing that place: Longitude must be greater than or equal to -180

I will try again, but any ways to avoid that error message would be helpful too. I've had it since I started making Places. In fact for a month or so I gave up. It doesn't happen as often lately.
Jenny

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 21, 2018, 10:43:36 PM12/21/18
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I found the answer to that one! I noticed the Lat was 184 so, having realized lately that my Places usually start with 174, I just changed the 184 to 174, and it saved. 
Jenny

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 21, 2018, 10:48:25 PM12/21/18
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I went to check Find Places to see if any Kaipatiki Creek Zone Places had returned, but now I can't find ANY of my Zone Places. I had the Z in Upper case the first time, correctly, but that found no results too.
Screenshot attached
Screen Shot 2018-12-22 at 4.44.28 PM.png

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 21, 2018, 10:51:27 PM12/21/18
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Screen Shot 2018-12-22 at 4.49.18 PM.png

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 22, 2018, 1:52:50 PM12/22/18
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Sorry that is not very clear...The "Places that have apparently been deleted " refers to the approx 60  places that vanished suddenly from their Projects.
The Places I had deleted were a few not in use , having been replaced in their associated Projects by a NZ made Place.

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Sheree Cyra

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Dec 22, 2018, 2:20:28 PM12/22/18
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I noticed several locations I used have disappeared also.

On Sat, Dec 22, 2018 at 1:52 PM Kaipatiki Naturewatch <jennychri...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry that is not very clear...The "Places that have apparently been deleted " refers to the approx 60  places that vanished suddenly from their Projects.
The Places I had deleted were a few not in use , having been replaced in their associated Projects by a NZ made Place.

On 22/12/2018 4:30 PM, "kaipatiki_naturewatch" <jennychri...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Mark,

Yes, the reason I deleted all globally made Places was twofold:
1. I would sometimes come across them in eg Project edit, but as they were not editable because could not be found in Find Places, they were problematic, to say the least. Once you explained they could be found in the global portal, I located and deleted them. (After first making duplicate places in NZ portal, and adding the new ones to the Projects dependent on them).

2. I felt bad about having unused places cluttering up the Search for other people.
 
The Places that have apparently (?) been deleted were not deleted by me, but by the system when I deleted their Parent place.

These Places don't need a Parent place, I just assumed it was helpful to the data collection overall to fill in the "Parent" field when creating Places - ie just because the field was there I suppose:) 

So if that one place could be undeleted, perhaps all my Zone places would reappear, and function as before in their collection Projects? Or I could re-link the Projects to the Places easily enough.

Jenny

On Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 11:07:09 AM UTC+13, kaipatiki_naturewatch wrote:
This is no doubt creating problems for others...What should I recreate, where? Thanks.

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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 22, 2018, 2:33:34 PM12/22/18
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@tiwane I tried a couple more times to Find Kaipatiki Places and they are still not discoverable to me in Find a Place.
I have just made a new Place ( no parent - and  yesterday I removed Parents from all my Places so this never happens again).

I could not find the Project "Kaipatiki Creek Zone Collection Projects" in search but eventually I found it through an observation linked to it.
I opened the Project "Kaipatiki Creek Zone Ub", "Edit Project".
I added the new Place, but I noticed it appeared without the "NZ" after it.
It seems to work.
But it can't be found under "Find Places".

I just checked some of my other freshly made Places in Kaipatiki Creek zone Projects and they have "NZ" after the Place name.
Can you tell me what is happening please? I am wondering if I am somehow working sometimes in the wrong portal even though the page says "iNaturalistNZ".
Jenny

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 22, 2018, 3:02:08 PM12/22/18
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@tiwane Checking the map in my Zone Collection Project, I don't see Zone Ab mapped. The Project  https://inaturalist.nz/projects/kaipatiki-creek-zone-ab lists the Project, and Project edit shows the Place Ab, NZ.

Of course I cannot find the Place to check it - did I accidentally save it as a dot or something?
Why do Places sometimes come up in Edit Project Place Search with NZ at the end, and not other times?
In the past I may have edited the NZ in or out in either the Display or the Name, not knowing its function and thinking I could name it as I chose.

I have had these diffiulties with Places and Projects being unfindable throughout the 6 months I've been working in iNat, and thought it was due to time lag as I was told there is a wait for Projects and Places to be updated. Now I am wondering if there is something fundamentally wrong with my membership; I think I signed up through th eglobal portal originally.
Or have I overloaded my membership, perhaps, with so many Projects and Places? It has been a long time since I was able to find Projects through my Profile page.
Or am I searching in the wrong places....eg I remember once or twice there was a Field in which to search my own Projects, and maybe my own Places...When those Fields no longer appeared,  I assumed they had been an experimental update to the programme which was removed.


I will have to abandon attempts to recreate these Places since I can't edit them and don't even know if they are being made correctly, or whether  I am doing something fundamentally wrong. 

It is holiday season so I don't expect help immediately, but could you please advise the likely time frame for a solution, and if necessary I will remove the zone Projects from their Umbrella in the interim so as not to confuse people I have referred to these Projects for site information. These people probably have a couple of weeks off work too, but I need to be "presentable", with or without these Projects, by 21 January.

thanks,
Jenny

Mark Tutty

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Dec 22, 2018, 3:07:09 PM12/22/18
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I have just repeated your steps that you took:

 

“Kaipatiki Creek Zone Collection Projects” is there... you just have to click “View projects from everywhere”... ie it is a global portal created project.

 

“Kaipatiki Creek Zone Ub” is also a project that was created in the global portal. Ie you need to “View projects from everywhere”

 

You don’t tell us what the “new place” is, so I can’t check that one for you

 

I have no idea what this “NZ after the place name” is all about... can you give screenshots of that? Is it something you have added to the name yourself, or is it something that iNaturalist is tacking on?

 

There should be no reason why you would be jumping from portal to portal, unless you are following url links provided in comments etc, or using bookmarks that you might have made to pages accessed from the other portal. I know I had to go and update all my Naturwatch.org.nz bookmarks to the new domain, and I was surprised at how much I rely on bookmarks in my day to day use of the site.

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: kaipatiki_naturewatch
Sent: Sunday, 23 December 2018 8:33 AM
To: iNaturalist

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Mark Tutty

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Dec 22, 2018, 4:01:56 PM12/22/18
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I have looked at the umbrella project map, showing the zones as you described. I hope you don’t take offence at this, but it looks a bit of a mess. There are gaps between zones, overlaps all over the place, and no apparent logic to their definition apart from following roads at certain points. Is it meant to be that way? I mean, is there some requirement that those boundaries on the areas be like that, or is it a product of how you framed them?

 

I have had the feeling from the outset that you might be making this more complicated than it needs to be. Are there different organisations that you need to apply to for funding, and hence the different zones? Are the zones reflective of geographical boundaries? Do they represent stages of a restoration? I guess I am asking why the need for so many zones, and why are they so haphazard in their definition.

 

I would recommend scrapping them all. Delete all places and all projects related to Kaipatiki Creek Restoration. Go back to the drawing board, and work out what zones you need. Keep it simple, an age old principle that works! If you need to, approach council about having someone with GIS skills help you to define the areas and save them as kml files for you to upload into your iNaturalist place definitions. They can use whatever software they are most comfortable with, as the goal here is to create place boundaries that are robust.

 

Then once you have the boundaries for just the zones you need, create the “places” in iNaturalist. Make sure you are logged into the same portal for all of them. It doesn’t matter if it is global or NZ, but for consistency later on, choose one and stick to it. Be consistant in the naming. I think the naming you were using looks fine. Either DON’T assign parents for them... or make the parent for all of them the SAME, and don’t EVER delete the parent! (That one was a worrying surprise to me too!)

 

When you have all the places created, you can create the projects associated with them. Again, make sure you create them all from the same portal, just so that things are consistant throughout!

 

It seems to me that making so many projects is just making the task way more complicated than it needs to be. When I catalogued the Gisborne Botanical Gardens, I was in part working from zones or areas that had been defined in the management plan. For consistency I choose to utilise the same areas, but I still only had one project and one place. I had a field in each observation that contained the zone. In fact, I think it was either just in the description, or placed in a tag. Regardless, I could find all plants within a zone quite easily with a search, and I extracted the whole project out to a kml file that I loaded into Google Earth and structured as a flyover tour of the gardens. It was somewhat crude and I would not call it finished, but no one was paying me to finish it, so I never bothered. I had satisfied in my mind that I COULD do it if the need arose.

 

Now, I think I can see why you created the multitude of projects, in that you wanted to make the observations in an area, and then have those help you to draw the boundaries for that zone. Is this correct? If so... I’ll revisit here my concerns I expressed to you a while ago about GPS locations and camera distance. If not, then ignore this paragraph. GPS has a +/-20m accuracy, although that is at the extreme end and you are likely to experience +/-2m in a location such as Kaipatiki Creek. On top of that, there is a +/-2m margin of error in the alignment of the map to the actual lat/lon coordinates, largely due to topographical features. These are all minor compared to the largest source of location error, which is YOUR CAMERA! When you take a photo of something, the GPS tag receives the location of the camera, not the subject. If you are standing 20m away from what you are taking a photo of, then your pin is going to be 20m +/-4m in error. If you walk through the bush taking photographs of things anywhere from 1m away to 40m away (as was the case in the example that I showed you back when I first raised this with you), then your margin of error is 0m-44m, and that is assuming you don’t have a bad GPS signal from the overhead tree canopy etc. In the example I gave you at the time, I could work out where you were standing when you took the photo based on the angles of the buildings in the shot, and I can tell you that you were approx 40m from the subject, and the GPS pin location was approx 20m to the left of where you were standing when you took the photo. Now, this is an inherent problem with camera based GPS... but if I am right about how you have created the boundaries of your zones, then that is an inaccuracy you are building in right from the outset. On top of this, observations you make subsequent to this exercise are going to compound the problem, in that they will also potentially be out of accuracy by the same factors. You are in effect working with an accuracy of close to +/-100m! If your zones were hectares in size, then it would be less of a problem, but from the zones collection map, I can see that some of them are barely over 20m wide. The impression I have is that you are trying to paint the Mona Lisa with a 100mm house brush!

 

Especially given the recent problems, I would seriously consider re-scoping the project to make it simpler!

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: kaipatiki_naturewatch
Sent: Sunday, 23 December 2018 9:02 AM
To: iNaturalist
Subject: Re: [inaturalist] Re: URGENT Support needed ! Have deleted someProjects and Places accidentally made in the Global portal,and now a wholelot of my projects are picking up millions of obs!

 

@tiwane Checking the map in my Zone Collection Project, I don't see Zone Ab mapped. The Project  https://inaturalist.nz/projects/kaipatiki-creek-zone-ab lists the Project, and Project edit shows the Place Ab, NZ.

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kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 22, 2018, 5:41:27 PM12/22/18
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@kiwifergus I only have time to reply to the first sxsentence - exactly! A mess because 
a) I can't see the other Zones well when I am making a new one. Since it may take days for an edit to be visible, and then it can't be viewed at the same scale while editing, even in a different browser tab.
b) The zones roughly replicate the Zones I used to catalogue the 1000s of photos taken 1997-00 during the start of restoration, so that they would be meaningful thorugh compartiuson of locations from one season/year to the next.

c) I had, over 6 months of site visits, making 60 Zones through using Fields and Traditional Projects to overcome GPS cvariabilities, then, having built the Zpones around these, obs with Fileds identifying their position, moved some of the ob locations so that they fitted correctly into their Zones.

d) The aim was to then be able to upload a few of the historic obs with the current in groups small enpough to get an overview of the change in an area 

e) It was working brilliantly, and I was about to start removing unnecessary/poor quality obs, then to recreate Traditional Projects with just a few past and present obs for each zone.
eg seeing a kikuyu/pampas/wattle bank alongside the present forest view ispretty inspiring, to me at least.!  and tadds meaning also to the current new vine invasions.

The observations are all there perfectly ready to be picked up again once the Places are reinstated in the Projects.

I am prepared to make them again, but not until the Search is working. I can't even edit thopse ridiculous Zones you see currently./

Prior to this event it was a perfect succession of Place boundaries from Aa to Zd, and viewing a Project or an Ob you could see its place in the whole, with many meaningful correlations between eg weeding of aruhe done in 1997 aon one side of the stream, and its present abundance on the other side of the stream which was kikuyu etc in 1997.

I'll read the rest later - have to move on at present:)

Jenny

kaipatiki_naturewatch

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Dec 22, 2018, 8:07:42 PM12/22/18
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Since there is the chance of someone else seeing that map of my recent attempts to recreate some of the Zones, without the consistently available  option to edit or delete the created Places, and sometimes the same name showing twice in the search and no indication which if either is the NZ-created one, I have deleted all the Zones Collection Projects from the Zone Collection Umbrella Project.

And Mark, they are geographic zones. The ones I created over the last six months,  which have been either been automatically deleted by the system or become undiscoverable for some reason, were contigous, named alphabeticall from East (upstream) to West (the Estuary), with a few extras for the gullies and cliffs extending further from the stream and in between areas of housing.
Jenny

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 11:53:11 AM12/23/18
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I read the rest of your post Mark. I thought I was going to have to stick with Trad projects and Fields, because of those GPS irregs, but having made sufficient obs and using the process described above, I found that new obs were falling into the right place, or near enough. A few had to be moved.

So I was delighted to dispense with all the Filed-based collection Projects, which were very time--consuming to upload.

Since many of the Fileds turned out to be incorrecgt, in that once I saw all the obs all together in a Project I knew that that tree was not, as I had thought, at that point, but further downstream...etc etc. Can't tell when you're in dense lush forest where landmarks are. 

and from that point I was really enjoying being able to just upload new obs, then check them and see them immediately together with the plants around them.

I had just started to edit the Projects, ie to remove unnecessary or poor obs.

I had about a dozen more Zones still to survey, and of course a lot of areas not accessed yet, due to very steep contours, waterways i the way, etc. But it was doing what I intended - providing an impression of the combined effect of these plants in a specific area.

I intended to use it to communicate the values and needs of the area to people who would not be interested enough to go through the process of choosing fields, searching, changing the view etc. so i relied on each Project to tell its story visually in the Grid view. Not perfect, but better than anything else I know of.

If after absorbing this you know a better way or programme, I'd be happy to hear of it. I have a Domain name and a home server sitting empty...but I don't wantt to learn html. 20 years ago I had software, Claris works Homepage, I think it was called, that allowed me to layout text and images in a website without needing to write code ....unfortunately it became obsolete years ago. You would need a Mackintosh Classic 2 or something to run it:) And then there's the GPS...plus all the info that iNaturalist provides, and the discussion, and the opportunity for peopple to contribute their own obs...

I was aware I was using iNat beyond currently envisaged purposes - and, as you say, trying to paint the Mona Lisa with a 4inch brush:) - and if the extent of my use is the cause of my problem I will delete Projects as necessary.

but first it seems worthwhile to find out what the actual cause is of Places and Projects not being findable...it may be to do with my not having uniintentionally logged in to the Global portal sometimes, then creating or editing Places or Projects? If remaking all the Zones Projects is the solution, I will do it. But at present I still can't find Places, so there is no point.
Jenny

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 11:53:11 AM12/23/18
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Well, that was enlightening. About half of the Zone Projects appear to be globally made. I removed all bookmarks for th eglobal portal after we became iNat.NZ, but I may be flicking back there through history since I had to long into th eGlobal portal to find the Globally made Places I needed to delete to "tidy up".

I attach Screenshots showing the Places available for a Zone Project currently, half of them say NZ on the end. I can't swear that I didn't add NZ to some of the Place names when tryng to make things consistent, not realising that the NZ adds automatically, which it does at least in some situations, as I have ended up with Places named "------, Auckland, ,NZ, NZ"

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 11:53:11 AM12/23/18
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Hi Sheree, Did yours return? Do you know anything about the cause?
Jenny

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 11:53:11 AM12/23/18
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I can now find many of my Projects in th e"frm everywhere" search, so it seems they were made in the Global Portal.

Whether this is anything to do with them losing their Places I don't know.

Refinding Places, I was sure I made the new Places in the Global portal, but this Search done just now finds non e in NZ portal and two pages of them in Global portal.

so I made a new Place, in NZ portal - see Screenshot - and the folllow-up search finds nothing in NZ Portal - see screenshot.

It might take longer to be found, I will check again later.
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 8.20.37 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 8.20.56 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 8.21.36 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 8.24.38 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 8.31.10 PM.png

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 11:53:11 AM12/23/18
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I can't find anywhere to select "Places from everywhere"...is there one?
Here is my latest search for any Place starting with "Kaipatiki" (this mornign I was getting about half a dozen, none of them mine. Yesterday at some point I was gettng about a dozen of my Zone places).
Screenshot attached
Jenny
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 7.44.28 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 7.44.40 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 7.59.21 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 7.59.02 PM.png

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 11:53:11 AM12/23/18
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Hi Mark,

I just found the  "View Projecrts from everywhere" selection!  Thanks.

I'll see if there is something like that I have missed in Places.
Jenny

However, 


On Sunday, December 23, 2018 at 9:07:09 AM UTC+13, Mark Tutty wrote:

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 11:53:11 AM12/23/18
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Thanks Mark.
I have now found "Projects from everywhere", thanks! That worked. So now i can check to see if any of the other places I can't find are there ie globally made, and also check whether any of those that suddenly disappeared froom their Projects are there.

By the way I replied to this twice already, I thought, but apperently not. 
Jenny

On Sunday, December 23, 2018 at 9:07:09 AM UTC+13, Mark Tutty wrote:

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 11:53:12 AM12/23/18
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Hi Tony,
I  just figured out that to reply to you I need to reply on this post? Sorry if I was rude in not doing so earlier. The thread of posts is still unclear to me.

I have learned a couple of things from Mark here, and my Project search problems may be due to some of my Projects being perhaps created in global portal. However they sometimes appear in the NZ search too - I think.
Whatever the cause, my Places are erratic in their appearance and disappearance. Most of the time they do not disappear from Projects, fortunately.

I have just created a new Place as a Test, and made screenshots, which i will attach here.

Steps: Google search for iNaturalist.nz.org (to be sure its not a faulty Bookmark or History)
Logged in.
Made a new Place: "Kaipatiki Creek Zone TEST" in the Kaipatiki Local Board area of Auckland (like all my Places). Screenshot shows the iNaturalistNZ logo. SCREENSHOT ATTACHED
Left Field "Parent" empty.
Saved it.
Searched for it - no show.
Searched Projects "in NZ". Opened a Project, "Kaipatiki Creek Zone Jc" https://inaturalist.nz/projects/kaipatiki-creek-zone-jc  SCREENSHOT ATTACHED
Selected "Edit Project" - In "Place" Field I typed "Kaipatiki Creek Zone"
The SCREENSHOT ATTACHED shows the places that were available. Attempted Scrolling did not reveal any more.
Previously there has not been a delay in newly made places beng available to add to Projects.
After writing this post I checked again and Find a Place still gave no results at all for the Search "Kaipatiki Creek Zone". The Project Edit Place Field gave only the results shown in Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 11.01.13 PM.png, for some reasn different from the ones found earlier.
The Place Field in Project Edit gave a limited number of results from the end of the alphabet. However when I typed th ecopmplete name Kaipatiki Creek zone TEST it did find the new Place.
Returning to Find a Place, it still could not be found with any combination of search words, partial or complete. Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 11.04.46 PM.png, this time returning only one result, not one of my Places.

Thanks,
Jenny



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Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 10.37.51 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 10.38.48 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 10.59.27 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 10.59.27 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 11.01.13 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 10.59.27 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 11.03.59 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-23 at 11.04.35 PM.png

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 2:16:07 PM12/23/18
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FYI I just learned from this Forum that there are Account Settings re Portal. Below th eCopyright options there is a Setting "Network Affiliation". I don't know if this makes a difference, but  I have just set mine to the NZ Portal.

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 5:21:12 PM12/23/18
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Hi Mark, I should have explained that the reason I grouped the photos in zones of about 20m was that even in 1997 the forest had a markedly different character about every 20m, and that was what was so attractive about it as a restoration project and a place to be ande to explore. So having wider zones, or dividing them differently, fails to reveal those individual characters.

No planting was done except at the roadside, so the present character of each area has developed  from the wild regen observed in 1997. So now with the diversity spreading outwards, and intermingling, in a truly fascinating way!
Jenny

Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 23, 2018, 5:34:57 PM12/23/18
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I just went to edit the Project I made yesterday,   "Kaipatiki Creek Zone by Zone"  https://inaturalist.nz/projects/kaipatiki-creek-zone-by-zone-956427f8-3c04-4456-995e-14d5ef170306

I made this Project in order to replace the Kaipatiki Creek Zone Collection Projects" Project, https://inaturalist.nz/projects/kaipatiki-creek-zone-collection-projects which had been discovered to be  in the Global portal.

Today this new Project, "Kaipatiki Creek Zone by Zone"  https://inaturalist.nz/projects/kaipatiki-creek-zone-by-zone-956427f8-3c04-4456-995e-14d5ef170306, is not discoverable in the NZ Porject Search, but is discoverable in the Global Portal.

I don't have time to test by making another Project right now, but I wonder if somehow I am getting into th eglobal portal without being aware of it, and without my iNat window indicating it with a changed logo, perhaps due to my iNat Account Setting for Network Affiliation which today I discovered was set to iNaturalist?

Mark Tutty

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Dec 23, 2018, 6:20:20 PM12/23/18
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Every location is like that though, Jenny! Find me a track anywhere in New Zealand that doesn’t change in character many times along it’s length. It doesn’t mean we need a separate project for every 20m section of the track! Every bioblitz we have done here in Gisborne has been like that... one was a lagoon, where on one side we had the open sea and the other the lagoon/estuary proper... and then the shell covered tip of the bar where the godwits were... there was a small area where the locals would come and hold strange rites at night (a goat skull atop totems etc), another area was an obvious dumping ground for garden waste, and so on. Each little part isn’t going to be a separate project in and of itself! That just makes the information so much more complicated than it needs to be! If you take it to it’s extreme, every single tree is a micro habitat completely different to the one right next to it! If I make a project of my street, I am not going to break it up into a hundred different sub projects because every house has different plants to the others! I think if you have broken your project down into 60 different projects, then you are taking it too far. Now, to be fair, this is just my opinion, and your view of what you are trying to accomplish will necessitate something a little different to what I would envisage.

 

Take the Gisborne Botanical Gardens project as an example. We managed that with two separate projects... one for the cultivated plants, and the other for all the stuff that turns up of it’s own accord (weeds bugs birds etc). There were “zones” for the different areas, such as the Australian Garden and the Playground Garden, the Tree Lawn and the Japanese Lake Garden etc... some 20 defined areas that could be handled independently... but they were still all in the same project. That Gisborne Botanical Gardens project was my introduction and training in iNaturalist, so I endeavoured to keep it as simple as I could. I don’t view that project as completed, or overly successful, but it did help me learn how to use iNaturalist as a recording tool, and we have subsequently gone on to use iNaturalist for some great projects that have had some terrific outcomes.

 

More recently, I was involved in the Hackfalls project, for which we created 3 seperate projects... the cultivated plants, the wild stuff and then an umbrella project called “Biodiversity at Hackfalls” (or something like that) to combine both projects so a picture of all biodiversity there could be seen. It was suggested that I was “going over the top” with that third project! I ended up creating a 4th project, as the management of the arboretum were so impressed with what we could do with iNaturalist, that they wanted to explore using it to manage the catalogue of the collection.

 

Kaipatiki Creek is your first iNaturalist project experience. I just think you should be keeping it simple, and learning how to use the tool well before looking to achieve significant outcomes with it.

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

Tony Iwane

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Dec 24, 2018, 7:09:44 PM12/24/18
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Hi Jenny,

I was off for the weekend, just catching up with all of these messages now.

- Rather than use the search at https://inaturalist.nz/projects I *highly* recommend you use our universal search in the header (click on the magnifying glass to open up that search). I have no problem finding the zone by zone project there:

image.png

(In fact, I think we should just get rid of the search boxes on the Places and Projects pages, but that's a different discussion)

- Our team is off until next week so I can't see if we can restore the old places. That being said, I agree with Mark that breaking up the creek into so many zones is something that iNat was not really made for and that keeping things simple is the best to do for outreach. And there are the GPS issues Mark mentioned as well. My advice is also to scrap what's been done so far and simplify it for now. You can always add the the places later and at a slower pace.

Tony



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Tony Iwane

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Dec 24, 2018, 7:19:13 PM12/24/18
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Sheree, that would be the topic for another thread or an email to he...@inaturalist.org. Please send URLs, exact place names, and screenshots there and we can look into it.

Tony

On Saturday, December 22, 2018 at 11:20:28 AM UTC-8, Sheree Cyra wrote:
I noticed several locations I used have disappeared also.

On Sat, Dec 22, 2018 at 1:52 PM Kaipatiki Naturewatch <jennychri...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry that is not very clear...The "Places that have apparently been deleted " refers to the approx 60  places that vanished suddenly from their Projects.
The Places I had deleted were a few not in use , having been replaced in their associated Projects by a NZ made Place.

On 22/12/2018 4:30 PM, "kaipatiki_naturewatch" <jennychri...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Mark,

Yes, the reason I deleted all globally made Places was twofold:
1. I would sometimes come across them in eg Project edit, but as they were not editable because could not be found in Find Places, they were problematic, to say the least. Once you explained they could be found in the global portal, I located and deleted them. (After first making duplicate places in NZ portal, and adding the new ones to the Projects dependent on them).

2. I felt bad about having unused places cluttering up the Search for other people.
 
The Places that have apparently (?) been deleted were not deleted by me, but by the system when I deleted their Parent place.

These Places don't need a Parent place, I just assumed it was helpful to the data collection overall to fill in the "Parent" field when creating Places - ie just because the field was there I suppose:) 

So if that one place could be undeleted, perhaps all my Zone places would reappear, and function as before in their collection Projects? Or I could re-link the Projects to the Places easily enough.

Jenny

On Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 11:07:09 AM UTC+13, kaipatiki_naturewatch wrote:
This is no doubt creating problems for others...What should I recreate, where? Thanks.

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Kaipatiki Naturewatch

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Dec 24, 2018, 10:21:27 PM12/24/18
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Thanks Tony.

I just tried that Universal Search. There is a trick to using it, but when I master it it will be very useful, thanks. I had learned to avoid it because the results were not successful for me, and I had read the comment (to someone else) "I know, Search does not work" so i thought this was the Search field that did not work, or maybe not in NZ.

Persevering with the Universal Search now, I see that if you do NOT type the complete name you get a set of options for Place, Project etc...and can choose Place or Project etc, and then can find your place or project. However, when I select a Project (clicking on the Folder icon, to be sure I select the Project) it sometimes opens a set of observations for a Place, not one of my Places. Screenshots attached.

Re your advice to keep it simple  - I have in fact worked from the overall to the specific. Initially I presented the entire Kaipatiki Creek site encompassed by the Zones  in other Projects, eg Assessment 2018, Restoration 1997-99 https://inaturalist.nz/projects/kaipatiki-creek-restoration-project-1997-2001, Waterway 1997-99, Waterway 2018 https://inaturalist.nz/projects/kaipatiki-creek-the-waterway-in-2018, Birds of https://inaturalist.nz/projects/birds-of-kaipatiki-creek-restoration-site-glenfield,  Wildlife of https://inaturalist.nz/projects/wildlife-of-kaipatiki-creek, Native Plants of, etc.

These are good to have, but are too broad for my immediate purposes. 

I had to create some Zones immediately this year as there was a plan to fell 45m lengths of forest at the roadside for busstops,  as its ecological significance had apparently not been noted. The Project for each Bus stop area, the area that would be accessed by commuter pedestrians, the bank below the proposed bus stop, and the corresponding section of waterway etc,  was very valuable. Bus stop placement in the forest margin is currently under review.

Another urgency has been the immediate threat to the streamside forest of a 50m invasion of pink jasmine  due to a section of the forest not being on the Council service maps. In combination with the history of the site, the images of the current threat, and its immediate environs, are compelling evidence of the need for weed control. 

Also the wetland is currently not on the service map as wetland, possibly due to DOC maps not being up to date; so contractors are unable to control the wetland weeds which are authorised only for control in wetland. An iNat Project may not help, but its worth a shot, and I enjoyed having a good reason to go down and explore the wetland:)

Also re small zones, my Gahnia Grove Project has Zones smaller than these,  and their individual Projects are very helpful in keeping an overview - over time - of a current volunteer restoration Project. It is so easy to lose sight of what a place was like before restoration, forget what has been achieved, and also what the threats are. I also find it of interest to see where the weed invasions and native seedlings emerge, in relation to the history of the site. I do have to adjust some GPS Pin placements in that one, but I find that simpler than adding fields to obs during upload, and I like the Project collecting obs from any observer.

With what I have learned about the Kaipatiki Creek site and about using iNat over the last 6 months, I can recreate the Zone Places and avoid having to remake all the Zone Projects), if I can consistly find the Places I make, add them to my Projects (ie find them in that search field) and my edits are consistently saved.  

Fo that to happen it seems  I need to be able to recognise whether a Place was created globally or in NZ, preferably without going to the Global portal , as that seems to have been the cause of at least some of my earlier problems. 

If there is a limit to the number of Projects, Places or Edits iNat can handle per user, and I am exceeding this, just let me know.

I accept that iNat was not designed with this in mind, but by building up and correcting the Zones bit by bit I succeeded in getting an overview of each area that I can present to others with a set of observations conveying the type of habitat,comparative diversity and density, and imminent threats to each, once the Places are restored. I am very happy with the results I had prior to Dec 19. 

Thanks,
Jenny
Screen Shot 2018-12-25 at 3.15.15 PM.png
Screen Shot 2018-12-25 at 3.15.29 PM.png

studebakersamuel

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Dec 25, 2018, 6:36:51 PM12/25/18
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Re the Universal Search difficulty, I just tried the same search on my tablet, ( in order to correct the link I tried to paste before but seem to have mucked up ...btw it should be 

...and, as before on my computer, the Universal search result was this Project, but selecting it took me to the Observations of the Place "Kaipatiki Local Board Area" or similar...a local jurisdiction. 
Can you tell me what I am doing w



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studebakersamuel

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Dec 27, 2018, 6:10:39 PM12/27/18
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@tiwane I am rebuilding my Zones one by one, using the Universal search, which is finding Places ok. The other searcges still find none. Nb Universal search doesn't link to all  my Projects, showing their Place obs instead, but, having rebuilt my Zone Collections Projects umbrella I can once again navigate to the individual Zones projects through their Umbrella project as I did before Dec 19.

So I may not need a restoration from backup, even if it is possible. Can we keep in touch before any such changes next week?
Thanks, Jenny



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-------- Original message --------
From: Tony Iwane <tiw...@gmail.com>
Date: 25/12/18 1:09 pm (GMT+12:00)
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