I voted for this feature for the following reasons. I have slow internet and typically only include one photo when I first upload an observation. Uploads of 2 or more photos takes a long while and the app usually times out. For observations that I want to include extra photos, I will upload them after the fact.
I have a number of observations that I will likely upload during the winter when there are less observations to make locally. Uploading observations is the most time consuming task for me. I like the idea of saving drafts and uploading saved drafts once in the proximity of high speed internet. Ultimately, this would make everything more seamless for me.
I need it because I add a lot of Fields, pinned and sometimes modified localities, tags, and copied text. To minimise the hours required I upload as much as possible in batches which will have as much as possible the same localities, copied text, fields and tags.
Often as am working in the uploader I realise I am uncertain about one of those details, and sometimes finding the answer requires opening other windows to search my other observations in iNat to find the answer.
Similarly, if I realise an observation group is needed, I have to find the earliest obs for that group, which may not have had a group assigned to it yet.
By the time I have done this research I am often confused about the stage of completion of the others already in the uploader, and since it is not always possible to see the image details in the uploader I have to find and view the images on my hard disc again.
But if I go ahead and upload before checking and maybe correcting the ob, I can get wrong IDs, confused viewers, locations or localities that need correction manually, and a lot of fields to correct.
A draft upload would allow me to upload in batches and review within iNat before publishing.
I may have accidentally done this. When I was just getting into identifying, I IDed an Unknown as “Plants”. The user (who had thousands of observations) replied with a rude “Yes, it is a plant.” At the time, I couldn’t understand why they didn’t want my help, but now I realize they probably intended to ID it themselves later. Thankfully, this experience did not keep me from IDing more Unknowns, but I have to say that is not a good way to welcome new identifiers!
And it’s a “both ways” thing too… just as the new observer is perplexed at having their plant ID’d as a plant, the experienced and knowledgable identifiers roll their eyes when they see the ridiculous CV suggestins picked by new observers.
The best way to encourage respect for one another is to make people have to practice it!
I realise this is an old thread but I was looking if anyone had already suggested this so won’t start a new one. The reasons why I feel I need a draft mode…
Placeholder photos taken on phone to log GPS to be replaced with better camera shots (or multiple shots) before uploading, rather than after.
There are times when I upload a lot of images as quick as possible to log the location while it’s fresh in my mind after a day out, but I’d like to be able hold until I’ve had a chance to have a stab at ID at leisure. At the moment I feel it can look like a load of lazy “ID this for me” dumped on the site if you’re not careful.
When I’ve uploaded a lot after a day’s recording and want to stagger them a bit to save spamming the “Identify” section.
Any movement on this? This is a necessary feature given the limitations of the mobile app to avoid posting observations that are not complete. Disabling auto upload doesn’t address this, I still have to upload partial observations to then modify them in the web app (plus that feature is buggy, the iOS app starts uploading the queued up observations at times regardless).
I doubt there will be any movement on this in the existing apps, as the new cross-platform app is in beta. I don’t know if it is slated for inclusion in the new app or not, but it may have an improved upload process that would reduce the problem.
yeah i continue to wish this existed nearly every time I do a big upload. if anything the new app seems like it will make the issue worse because it currently has very little functionality when one doesn’t have cell service, making the observations need more editing not less. And it’s really hard to do on the phone even with an enhanced app due to the small screen and lack of ability to look at other tabs with ID references, other iNat observations, etc. I know the new app will likely see significant improvements from where it is now, but even still it’s hard to see how it could possibly cover this functionality that would be covered by a draft mode.
I also get the impression from this whole thread that the importance of this is misunderstood, that the absence of this feature is seen as a mild inconvenience. From my limited experience here it seems to have bearing on community identification. From what I am seeing is if I upload initial low quality observation, and then update it later, I get no community identification for the observation, it seems disappears into a black hole of observations past in it’s initial state. I don’t know how to work around this other than not using the phone app at all.
I think a lot of people are casual users for whom it doesn’t matter. The site has always struggled with the balance between casual users (lots of people, few observations each) and ‘power users’ (much less accounts, but much more observations). Those in charge of iNat seem to more often prioritize making the site more accessible to casual users and less often prioritize things that are needed by ‘power users’ such as more offline app features, more flexibility in how to ID things, draft mode use, more complex annotations, more flexible taxonomic system, etc. Basically flexibility that’s useful for power users (who are often also the users on this forum) can be confusing or distracting to casual users, so it often doesn’t happen seemingly for that reason. I recognize it’s a hard balance to walk! But i’ve had frustrations about this from the start really. It’s too bad there isn’t some sort of pro mode for the app and website. I’d pay for it as long as it wasn’t exorbitant like ArcGIS and such.
I came to feature request this then found this older request.
When uploading from mobile, I regularly run into the following issues:
Autosuggest is painfully slow on phone, so I end up entering a very coarse ID (e.g., “Plants” or “Reptiles”). That clutters the system and creates extra work for identifiers who then have to wade through vague placeholders.
Cropping and duplicating obs is far easier on desktop. In the field, I often take broader habitat shots intending to crop them later into multiple observations (leaf, flower, fruit, etc.).
Right now those unedited wide shots go live immediately, which frustrates identifiers who expect clarity. Ditto when it comes to adding annotations and more detailed notes into the observations.
Identifiers get grumpy (understandably) when unclear or messy uploads appear in their feed. But the current app flow leaves me with the choice of either not uploading in the field at all or spamming placeholder-quality records.
The app itself is not wholly reliable for reviewing photos. It’s hard to properly go over multiple images on a small screen, and the app sometimes crashes when handling a larger batch. This makes careful editing on mobile unrealistic.
A draft/holding mode would solve this neatly: I could do a quick phone upload in the field, then refine IDs and images properly on my laptop before publishing. That way, data quality is higher, identifiers aren’t annoyed, and observers aren’t forced into a broken workflow.
My issues are less about “observer convenience” and more about data quality and identifier workload. Right now, in some cases, identifiers bear the burden of the mobile app’s limitations. A draft mode would help shift that work back to observers, where it belongs.
Between out in the field - poor internet - and observers who want first chance to ID their own obs - this remains an issue. Placeholder text is part of this problem, which would also be solved by draft mode (if the observer chose that option)
I added the very-challenging tag to it. Adding a draft mode would require, at minimum, I think:
entirely new user interface designs on both mobile and web, plus new explanatory text which needs to be translated, etc
space on our servers hosting observations that are not public, and a new area in the database to store these
crucially, some sort of limits when it comes to number of observations availble for draft mode, and how long they can be in there. 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.
IMO this is too complex of a fix.
the new app allows the user to save their observations and upload them later, when they’re ready to. If being the first person to ID one’s own observation is that important to the them, they can use that option. So there’s basically a “draft” mode in the app already, and that’s the main use case presented by @NancyinSunnyvale’s original post.
adding cropping and basic image editing tools to the app and website would allow the user to fix the the photos in the app before uploading. And would be a useful addition in general, so I think I’d prioritize that. (I’ll say I’m now in favor of adding image editing tools to the website now because with the app showing in-camera IDs, there’s more of an incentive to use the app’s AI camera than there was in the past, and it would be great if people could crop those photos if they want to.)
@sbushes you didn’t say which app you use, but I assume it’s the new iNat app. Also, are you taking the photos with your smartphone’s camera app, or the iNat camera? If the former, it seems to me that you could do the cropping, etc on your computer and then use the web uploader when ready?
I guess I see it as… by this logic and with the workflow you suggest, I would just not use the phone app at all? For me this feature request is about making the phone app itself more serviceable. So that approach seems sort of irrelevant unless I´m misunderstanding what you mean.
Fwiw though, atm I photograph with my iPhone camera app …and yes… then I could pull off iCloud on my laptop. With the older app I did… I was forced to go into iCloud and do on my browser because it was so so slow to log lots of obs …I think I just stopped using the phone app largely until the new one came out.
In this regard I am really enjoying iNat Next , it´s become a lot more useful now we can upload 10 at a time, etc. There is something about taking phone photos and uploading them through the phone that feels less of a faff even if its a bit slow and clumsy - its just more casual and what I´m in the mood for sometimes. Especially when travelling - I love the immediacy of it - I don’t want to use my laptop so much when I´m on the road. But I see / accept that some identifiers are annoyed at me as the upload is often less optimal.
I hadn’t considered the downsides you mention of how to grapple with the storage.
The way you picture it they do sound like challenging issues to overcome.
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?
I could tag them or mark a note on them atm of course, but with this method they would be more formally noted as WIP so to speak. And in addition, identifiers could just not see them by default in the Needs ID pile.
For example if there was a draft mode on the web uploader, it might be like this :
That would bypass your concerns as I understand them, right?
It wouldn’t require a huge edit to the UI, it wouldn’t require a unique space as such, and wouldnt matter if they were left tagged indefinitely in theory, as they could still be findable and go to RG.
This was my initial thought too. But then, to provide functional access to such records by the observer for further edits, they really would require a separate data structure and interface, since draft observations could not yet be assigned a regular observation ID, nor be indexed into places, projects, observation counts, etc. as happens when uploaded observations become “live.”
I can see why the developers would prefer that people make the best of the in-app “draft mode” that already exists, hopefully with the eventual addition of the basic photo editing tools that Tony mentioned.
yes I accepted @tiwane´s point on that - therefore as I tried to say above, I think better just to make them “live” as with any other observation upload… but simply not visible by default, e.g. like cultivated plants
In the identification portal, identifiers can actively choose to look at draft mode obs and identify still even if they wish. That way they remain part of the broader pool of obs and won´t get lost or require complex infrastructural edits… they are just more clearly delineated as a work-in-progress.
The draft mode toggle could relegate them to casual as the cultivated toggle does.
But it might make more sense if it didn´t even do that and draft mode obs could still go to RG.
I think this approach would largely avoid the issues @tiwane mentions in denoting the feature request as “very-challenging” (?)
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? Could something like that be done on the desktop? iNaturalist would basically be putting out a desktop app rather than using the web browser. I don’ know if that’s more complicated or less, but it would eliminate the issue of
