URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:
Screenshots of what you are seeing:
Description of problems:
UK iNat shows non-UK messages. My name seems to have reached the top for several ichneumonidae spp/genera. So I keep getting asked to identify things outside my geographic area (I’ve seen others decline to comment cos an obs is outside their area too, so not just me).
Messages not in strict time sequence and their order keeps changing.
Messages that you visit can sometimes disappear from the list.
Duplicate entries for the same message
It says you have 15 messages - you look at one and then it says you have none.
No indication of which you’ve looked at, or where you got to last time. At the very least a clear marker for each day would help. And perhaps pyjama striping to help me keep track. And all messages should open in a separate tab.
Message at end of “New Updates” email says “View your dashboard for more updates“ which implies the email list is incomplete, so I still have to look at the dashboard so what’s the point of the email?.
(This is probably one of those postings that I should delete rather than send!)
On iNaturalist, “message” refers to direct messages between users, which you can find at uk.inaturalist.org/messages Are you referring to notifications on your dashboard?
Why did you not share screenshots of what you’re referring to?
I concur that the handling and display of the notifications list is in need of revision to make it more user friendly and make the status of notifications more apparent.
I can’t address all of the dashboard behavior you list–I’m not seeing all of those–but #3 and #5 seem to be the annoying current behavior of the dropdown list of notifications (not messages). When I have any new notifications, my dropdown notification list will initially show only the new, unread ones. However, if I read any one of them, all of the new ones apparently get marked as “read” and are subsumed in the long list of past notifications.
That’s annoying, and I think a change in that behavior is in a Feature Request somewhere. The work-around I use is to right-click on a new notification and open it in a new tab. Then after looking at that one, I can close that tab, go back to the original tab and list of new notifications which remains intact, then repeat the process.
But I would still like to be able to - Mark as Read - or - Keep Unread. And to be able to ‘pick up where I left off’ instead of clearing today’s notifications today.
From a purely end-user point of view, there doesn’t appear to be any concrete advantages to changing network affiliation. The local institutions get access to email addresses and the true coordinates of obscured locations - but my understanding is that iNaturalistUK doesn’t even make use of the latter. AFAICS, it’s just a very thin facade with no localised features - it has nothing to offer the end-user that isn’t available on the global site.
This happens to every identifier sooner or later, since, regardless of network affiliation, we’re all part of a global community. I try to help whenever I can, as I’m always aware that many of my own observations get identifications from people outside of the UK / NW Europe. However, if someone persists in pinging me I may eventually resort to using a canned response that politely informs them they will get better help from someone who’s more familiar with the local fauna/flora.
Top right on your dashboard. If you click the red messages icon - the number drops to zero. First I work down the notifications on my dashboard. When I have looked at today’s, I click the ‘red’ number. All done.
