Platform Website
Browser: Firefox, same in Chrome
URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/138656985
Screenshots of what you are seeing
Description of problem: For a species with an acronym (KZN) in the common name, it shows on the homepage as title case (Kzn) instead of uppercase. It shows correctly on the observation page.
Step 1: Interact with or follow observation.
Step 2: View an update to the observation on the homepage.
I don’t know if this occurs for other names, as it’s my first time encountering this, it but I figure it might affect other names which shouldn’t be in strict title case as well.
In general, I would argue that acronyms are confusing and should be spelled out in common names - otherwise they can be quite confusing. This is the first acronymed common name I’ve ever seen, so I would think the issue is limited. This particularl one appears to be in very limited usage (one use outside iNat according to Google). I don’t know that there’s a way to automatically detect acronyms in common names - having them display as entered without forcing standard case would also lead to (potentially more?) issues with names that weren’t entered with correct case.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that common names with acronyms should be banned (as some people may use them), but I think they should be spelled out as well and then the spelled out name could be given preference. Or, if a non-acronymed common name is available, that could also be given preference. That seems to be the case for this species, with “Natal river crab” being an available common name that would perhaps be better as the default as it seems to be in use.
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That’s all fair enough, it’s the first name with an acronym I’ve seen either. I just figured I would point it out as I assumed it wasn’t intended behavior and that perhaps there was some kind of easy fix, given it displays in all uppercase when you go to the page itself. But if there’s only a few names where it might come up, and they’re kind of dubious names anyway, perhaps it isn’t worth the labor of changing it.
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Yes, I think it’s totally legit to flag it as a bug report! I just think a possible fix would be considering policy for whether acronyms should be favored in common names or not.
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To put this in context
Natal is a colonial name and no longer PC.
Today the province is called Kwazulu-Natal
which is a bit of a mouthful so often abbreviated to KZN (but that should be upper case)
Similar to using CA for California - altho I don’t know how Californians deal with their common names.
Both the linked obs and the taxon page show as KZN to me now.
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The common issue that with common names not always only the first letter of a word should be in capitals has been raised earlier.
