Create a "Draft mode" for uploaded observations

[tiwane]

@tiwane

iNat is about sharing one’s observations publicly, so there would have to a limit to how many observations could remain in draft mode. And also, a time limit - they shouldn’t be in there indefinitely, we’d either have to automatically erase them after X days, or automatically post them in X days. Neither is a great option and basically removes the element of control here.

Was thinking more about this and it could be possible to just limit draft mode to a small number like 10 obs and not perform an automatic post or erase, but I feel like all the work just to use draft mode for a small number of obs might not be worth it.

@sbushes

But could a simple solution not just be a toggle or a tag for draft mode which gives the user the option not to immediately put them in front of identifiers?

Maybe. I wonder if that would not solve the problem mentioned above, in that observations in the queue are based on when the observation was added, so this would push them further back and make them less likely to be seen. I guess you could make changing an obs from draft to “live” mode add them to the queue, but then people could just do that over and over to get their observations to the front of the queue.

@arboretum_amy

On the phone, observations you’ve made but not uploaded are saved on the phone itself, yes? And if you were to log out off the app and back in, they’d disappear, wouldn’t they?

Correct.

@arboretum_amy

Could something like that be done on the desktop?

My understanding is that’s basically what’s happening now, although I think the observations in the web uploader that have not been submitted are stored in RAM (although I could be wrong). Depending on you computer’s specs and how many photos you have, that could cause memory issues. Also, the security token expires after 24 hours so you need to log in again on that page if it’s been open for longer (that should be the process, I haven’t actually tested it in a long time).