I was trying to list the ARThropod. project in my list of favorite projects under Content & Display and when I enter the exact name of the project it does not show up as an option. Also I cannot find it in the regular filters through Explore.
Platform: Windows 11
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Browser, Chrome
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seems to exist
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/arthropod
There are 897 iNat projects that contain “arthropod” in their name. Means this specific project is certainly tricky to find, due to its unfortunate choice of name.
In explore you can use the project id to find it: 66857
As for Content & Display the project id doesn’t seem to work… maybe iNat staff can change that in the future? As for now you could ask the project owner to change the name to something a little more unique?
For example: ARThrọpod
Did you click the “View All” link at the bottom of the search results? That will take you to a paginated search results page, where you can click “Projects” to browse through all the projects with “arthropod”
https://www.inaturalist.org/search?q=ARThropod&source[]=projects
I can find the project while in the Projects page. What I am having a problem is to list it as one of my seven favorite projects (I cannot get it to show up in the dropdown menu that comes up when I type ARThropod).
I know that there are many projects with the word arthropod but I would expect that when you type the exact name of the project it should come up without any difficulty because projects have to have different names. I tried using the project ID 66857 in the project filter while using Explore and it did not work.
The project search menu “Content & Display” > “Favorite Projects” is extremely basic. It returns the first ten matches, and that’s it. The search algorithm does not look for projects that are an exact match for the search term.
You can store the url for project pages you want to easily access in other places such a browser bookmarks, notes in your favorite note editor, a iNat journal post.
You can add a feature request to update the “Favorite Projects” search menu to handle cases when the desired project is not in the first ten results. However, there are tons of feature requests from users, so there is no telling if your feature request will ever be handled.
If you know how to code, you can use the iNat API to set you favorite project by passing in the ID. ( PUT request to /user/{id}, user[faved_project_ids]= 66857 )
Thank you! I had alternatives but I think that the search algorithm should by default propose the exact name entered rather than trying to guess something. Once again we get algorithms that think they are smart but cannot answer the most primitive request.
I’m a software developer. Search algorithms that return an exact match are rarely what users want. I’m guessing there would be huge list of user complaints if the autocomplete search returns only exact matches. Some sites tweak their search algorithms to allow exact matches if user uses quotes around the search term, but I don’t think iNat implemented that.
With the number of projects increasing and potentially becoming huge it will be necessary for iNaturalist to figure out a way to come up with a better option than the present one because right now the projects are becoming unsearchable. For anyone looking for a specific project I suggest asking ChatGPT or Claude. They provide a single answer with the proper link.
It’s a software design choice. I would rather be able to specify what I want than have the software guess what I want. More specifically why does typing arthropod match projects which don’t start with arthropod. Or why not list all the projects which match what ever algorithm the search is using? Or have multiple search options. I guess not everybody can use regular expressions but that would certainly work. Finally I guess AI provides a solution to funny software design choices. Long live Claude and other AI engines.
Using AI for a simple web search is to use a sledgehammer to crack nuts.
The well hidden iNat header seach field allows for project search and works just fine using the project id:
https://www.inaturalist.org/search?utf8=âś“&q=66857&commit=Los&source[]=projects
Using text search in this search field also gives you a list of all 897 projects that have “arthropod” in their name.
Typing “Arthropod iNaturalist” into the adress bar of the browser (DuckDuckGo) works for me.
Google doesn’t find it.
guessing instead of listening isn’t good relationship advice.
How can you get the project ID without being already in the project itself?
You can’t, unless somebody tells you the number.