A couple strange bugs in iNat Next (and Website)

Platform: IOS

App version number, if a mobile app issue: 1.0.4 (164)

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/people/ojcc

Description of problem 1

There is no direct consistent way for you to access a profile page on iNat next. The only way to access a profile page in iNat Next is to search for their observations, click on any observation and then click on their name. If the user doesnt have any observations, then you’ll have to get very creative if you want to access their profile page on inat next

A way to fix this would be to add an “i” symbols to each user in the observation search’s user-filtering list.

Description of problem 2

Similar to problem 1, the “i” symbols sometimes don’t appear next to taxa in the observation search taxa filtering list. (see GIF)
Untitled
It often seems to happen if i’m searching through observations while being in the activity tab instead of the dedicated explore tab of the inat next app. But this isn’t always the case, as it also often works without any issues even in the activity tab.

Description of problem 3

A strange case of the iNat Next app doing a better job than the website: Some user’s profile page descriptions don’t show on the website but clearly do exist when viewing it through the inat app. An example is user “ojcc”. On the website (device and browser independent) it appears he doesnt have a profile description, but if you look through the inat next app, he does.
(unfortunately as described in problem 1, user “ojcc” doesnt have any observations so trying to access his profile in the iNat Next app requires a nifty workaround: search for the taxon " Metrodora rana" on the iNat Next app and filter by the observer: stephenluk. Then click on the only observation result and find the identification of user ojcc. Click on his profile and there you’ll see he DOES have a profile description which strangely is not visible from the website)
This may be the case with many more profile pages and could be a symptom of a larger website issue.

1 Like

I’d say this is less a bug and more of a feature request.

Correct, that’s not an informational list, it’s a filter list, so the assumption is that you’re not looking to learn about the taxon, you just want to filter for it in Explore. I don’t think it’s a bug.

That sounds like a bug. Unless someone meets the threshold for being a non-spammer their profile text is not visible on the website. On the website we say

In an effort to keep spam off of iNaturalist, user profiles are only publicly visible after a user has contributed several Research Grade observations.

We should be doing the same in the app, I’ll make an issue.

Sorry, had some discussion with a team member and have some more things to add:

On the Explore page, you can’t search specifically for someone’s profile, but you can do things like choose to see either a list of top observers or identifiers of the current observation results by tapping on the icon in the lower right-hand corner. On that list, tapping on any account will take you to their profile.

OK, this inconsistency is a bug. If you tap on the Filters icon then tap on Search Taxa, no “i” buttons appear. If you tap on the “All Organisms” label at the top, you do see the “i” buttons. I’ll make a bug report for it.