Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other: Website.
URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant: n/a
Description of need: Describe the iNaturalist community need that your requested feature addresses. Include screenshots, URLs, and other details to help us all understand the issue.
The iNaturalist community needs to be able to type “:)” and have it render (gosh darnit!). This will make them happy (i.e. ). If I want to easily enter an emoji (without going to emojipedia and searching for and then copying to my clipboard and pasting an emoji), I have to pull up an observation on my phone and then comment on it. This makes me :( (i.e. ).
Feature request details: In detail, describe the feature you are requesting. This includes its functionality, where the feature is implemented, and what it might look like. Screenshots or mock-ups are helpful. The idea is to have a concrete and actionable request which the community can discuss and vote on. It might change through discussion, but it’s much easier to iterate and talk about something specific.
Mockup: :) →
OK But For Real: You don’t have to parse emojis necessarily. At least give me an emoji menu where I can search for (or at the very least, select) an appropriate emoji.
I will personally say that I dislike automatic emoji rendering - I want text to show what I type (if I want a :)), not what the website/computer/programmer think that I want.
I personally feel like emojis are a mixed bag on iNat. Sometime they are funny, but I have also seen them lead to disagreements/statements getting flagged because their interpretation can be unclear. I’ve also seen people use them to try to get around guidelines on discussing (eg, making veiled insults with emojis), though of course plenty of people do this with regular language as well.
Tangentially, I’m also not sure whether GBIF parses emojis or not for any text sent there. For any text that does go to GBIF (or other downstream users), it would be good to check if emojis would cause issues beforehand if this were to be implemented.
I find that emojis are more often a distracting visual clutter than anything else. They sometimes have their place, such as a means of ensuring that the tone of a message is clear (which I feel is just as easily accomplished with a ‘:-),’ or whatever fits the context). But more often than not, I see rendered emojis used needlessly and without adding anything to the conversation.
I too am annoyed by automatic emoji rendering, though I guess less annoyed by it than by having to copypasta emojis from somewhere else when the moment demands an emoji.
Perhaps instead of automatic parsing, there’s a little happy face button to the right of the “Add a numbered list” button that when clicked displays a menu allowing for selection of an emoji.
I haven’t personally seen emojis becoming contentious. Initially, the thought that they would surprises me, but then thinking on it more it doesn’t surprise me. Perhaps only a limited selection of emojis could be put in the menu. Though, people are already using whatever emojis they want without such a menu, so a limited number of options there wouldn’t really change that.
I hadn’t really given thought to GBIF or to observation notes (as opposed to comments), but those are good points. I just did a quick test to see what it looks like there. While there are no formatting controls like the comment input has, I can manually type in Markdown formatting characters and I can copy and paste an emoji into observation notes. Given that observation notes already lack a formatting menu, I would propose that a “smiley button” be added to the comments input at most.
At the end of the day, it’s not really going to move any of the meters that matter, but I do think it would be a fun and low-cost (I presume) little feature.
I personally would not want to see a proliferation of emojis in comments on my observations. There are other sites where this is common, and have lots of comments saying “nice photo” and “we have included your photo in our hall of fame” and suchlike, with abundant emojis and stickers. I find it unpleasant visual clutter. I appreciate the fact that on iNaturalist most of the comments tend to be about species identification, and I’d prefer it continued in that vein.
Lack of emojis does help INaturalist feel a bit more professional and not like other social media sites like Instagram or Twitter. Also bots can really abuse emojis.
But if one does want to use an emoji, it is inconvenient to use them on the website without a menu.
yup. this or win+; on PC, cmd+ctrl+space on MacOS, and ctrl+; on Ubuntu. if you right-click (or equivalent) on a text input box, i think all of these will open a menu that will include an emoji keyboard option, too.
it doesn’t render because your syntax is bad. if you’re going to use Markdown for emojis, you need a separation before the leading : for each emoji after the first character in a line.
i wouldn’t oppose iNat extending their Markdown implementations to handle emojis, but i think this would be a separate request than what’s described in this thread.
agree. :) should never be automatically parsed to any variant of a smiling face emoji.
Personally I am happy that there is no emoji support on iNat and I would be very much against adding it.
I don’t find that emojis contribute anything of use in a sentence or discussion, and often trivialize the contents and meaning of whatever discussion they’re added to.
Everyone has their own take on them, but for me let’s keep them off iNat as much as possible.
I don’t personally feel a need to for emojis on iNat and like others I would probably be somewhat annoyed if comments start to become dominated by ambiguous little symbols instead of words.
But I just want to point out that anyone who is accessing iNat using one of the apps surely already has the option to enter emojis using their phone’s keyboard settings.
So a lack of emoji support for the website will not (and does not) keep iNat emoji-free, since many users frequently or exclusively use cell phones to interact with iNat.
If you want to use emojis instead of emoticons, you could always use automatic text replacement features of your computer. It doesn’t take long to set up.
I feel like „ :) “ is all iNat needs for comments like „Thank you for […] :) “ or „Welcome to iNat, […] :) “
With perhaps „ :( “ and „ :D “ for special occasions like having found a cool lifer, or only being able to take poor photos.
I personally never use emojis if I can help it. I find them aesthetically unappealing and the standard emoticons ( :) , :( , :D, :P, etc. ) are more than enough to set the tone if there are uncertainties. Usually under iNat observations, I don’t think any setting of tone is required.
I like this a lot. Perhaps no selection menu for now, just silently render emoji shortcodes. This minimizes the chance of rendering an emoji when you don’t want to; maintains a high “barrier” to entry to use them, perhaps minimizing the increase in risk that they get out of hand; yet still makes it easier to use them when one feels the need.
In terms of spirit, I don’t think it’s a different request. The core request is to do something about the lack of an inline way to enter emojis in comments when using the website (as opposed to the app).
That being said, I get kind of confused with these feature requests sometimes though. I’ve seen some where staff have come back and said “We liked that idea and we’ve implemented something to address the underlying need that is not exactly as originally proposed”. Then I’ve seen others where a slightly different take on a solution has been deemed as needing a separate feature request. (As if a feature request is the final draft of a proposed law that we can vote only to take or to leave as a whole.)
Others have expressed a concern about increasing the ease of entering emojis on the website changing the nature or tone of discussions on the platform. I can certainly understand that concern and I don’t disagree with it.
I’ll see if staff comment on the idea. If there’s an openness to the idea of increased (though conservative) support for entering emojis on the website, but not the particular ideas I thought to include in the original post, I’ll create a separate feature request for the specific idea of extending the Markdown implementation to support rendering emoji shortcodes on the website.
Thank you, and you @bouteloua, for mentioning this. I had no idea this was a thing, but this will certainly come in handy in the future!
As a Gen Z, emojis are a major part of internet culture. They can have dual meanings that basically replace their original use and are used as part of ironic jokes you might only understand if you are dwell on certain parts of the internet. I think they are fun, but agree that they may distract or confuse on iNat. I’m happy with → :), though I doubt they’d cause harm.
Why not just type emojis directly from your emoji keyboard? Almost every mobile device has one as a built-in mode of its keyboard app, Windows 11 has one too (Windows Key + . ), and I’m guessing Mac OS does too.
I’m in it too deep now! (But yeah, this is what I’ll likely start doing. I expect this feature request will be closed on account of the ease of doing that, and I’d be okay with that.)
As another Gen Z, I feel that this aspect of emoji would confuse older users. Something I like about iNat, and something I think isn’t really present on other platforms, is the ease in which people of all ages communicate and convey ideas with each-other. I do think that using something like: “” (sometimes used in place of laughing emoji, sometimes to convey irony) would be confusing to older generations/ people who don’t use much in terms of social media.
(gosh darnit!). This will make them happy (i.e. 
).
➝:restroom:➝:toilet:➝:persevere:➝:poop:➝:roll_of_toilet_paper:➝:grin:
” (sometimes used in place of laughing emoji, sometimes to convey irony) would be confusing to older generations/ people who don’t use much in terms of social media.