Can't add observation to a project

Bug Reports
1

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About):

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Firefox

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/101279872

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Map the Mistletoe
Map the Mistletoe1314×987 154 KB

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

The following applies to existing observations; new observations are usually OK.

Step 1: Go to ‘My Observations’; choose one.

Step 2: Click Edit to check details and then enter ‘Map the Mistletoe’ in ‘Projects’ box. (See screenshot.)

Step 3: Nothing happens! If I leave the Observation page and return later, Projects box will be empty. The observation does not appear in the ‘Map the Mistletoe’ Project.

Step 4: Delete the observation and re-upload as a new one. Fill in the details including the Project. Click ‘Submit’. Observation still doesn’t appear in the project. But a completely new observation will be added OK, as long as it conforms to the project limitations.

Any ideas for what I’m doing incorrectly?

2

This is a collection project, and it’s not possible to manually add an observation to a collection project. As long as you make observations which meet the project’s requirements, your observations will be included automatically.

If you go to the project’s page and click “View Yours” you’ll see that currently two of your observations are in the project.

3

Yes, I understand that observations must meet the project requirements - and I can now see that those in question are outside the date range! It would have been useful for this to be flagged perhaps when entering the project name ( which I assume is a redundant process then?).

Thank you for forcing me to look more closely. And as a rider (not strictly on topic), what happens if a photo has no metadata? Is it automatically refused or can the data be entered manually?

4

When you enter the name of the project in the Projects field and it’s a collection project, iNat puts a red border on the field (you can see it in your screenshot, although it’s a bit subtle) indicating that you can’t add the observation to that project - it doesn’t do any other sort of validation. I don’t think running the observation against the project’s requiremnts would really work at scale (although I’m not a dev, but I’m pretty sure this could really increase load on the site especially if the collection project is complex).

Yes, it can all be entered manually.

5

Thank you tiwane; you are surely right about increasing load on the site. I did see the red border but had no idea what it represented! Now I think I will be well furnished for future observations, so again, many thanks.

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