Do not overwrite placeholder text

[cas4moss]

Move to comment, maybe?

When choosing a category, could the placeholder text not be automatically replaced and erased?

I keep accidentally overwriting placeholder text when I’m barrelling through the Identify sideways scroll pop-up, because it’s faint, small, and out of the way. There is no way to get it back once I’ve loosely categorised something and all I can do is apologise, argh.

[juhakinnunen]

Yes, agree.

Sometimes the placeholders are in a language I am not familiar with, and sometimes they differ much of my opinion. It would be nice to keep the placeholder alive for us all to see, for academic IDdiscussions etc. As a comment maybe?

[dlevitis]

I’ve had this same problem. When I’m in the field with no cell signal, I will often put in a placeholder ID, and upload when I get home. By the time I’ve uploaded and want to put in IDs, other have often put initial IDs in (plant), erasing my much more specific placeholders (grey pine). It would be great if there was some way to still see my placeholder.

[dianastuder]

I have learnt painfully, once I realised the system deleted placeholder text - to either make it a comment. Or use the placeholder as an ID (sometimes new people don’t know HOW to get iNat to accept that ID) - with a comment ‘was the placeholder’

As the text disappeared, I thought wait, what did it say!

[tony_wills]

@cas4moss

There is no way to get it back once I’ve loosely categorised something

If you temporarily withdraw your ID (assuming no one else has made a subsequent ID, in which case they’d have to do the same) so that there are no IDs, the placeholder will come back. You can then copy the placeholder and restore your ID afterwards.

[schoenitz]

@dianastuder

As the text disappeared, I thought wait, what did it say!

The placeholder is not actually gone. From the identification etiquette wiki thread:

@schoenitz

Just to add a side issue to this whole discussion:

charlie:

However if you add a coarser ID “mammals” or a different ID “Bison bison” it deletes Bos taurus which can be really annoying to the observer.

I found out the other day that it doesn’t actually delete the placeholder, it just hides it. Try this: in an obs. with a placeholder, enter some taxon. Now the placeholder appears gone. Then change your mind, and delete your ID. Now the placeholder is back!

So it should be technically feasible for the system to take the placeholder, and insert it as a comment before the ID that clobbered it.

[tony_wills]

@schoenitz

So it should be technically feasible for the system to take the placeholder, and insert it as a comment before the ID that clobbered it.

In earlier iterations of the iNat site it did actually overwrite the placeholder (I think it is/was stored as ‘species guess’), but for quite a few years now it does indeed preserve it somewhere.

[cas4moss]

@tony_wills

If you temporarily withdraw your ID (assuming no one else has made a subsequent ID, in which case they’d have to do the same) so that there are no IDs, the placeholder will come back. You can then copy the placeholder and restore your ID afterwards.

YESSSSSS thank you! :)

[kiwifergus]

I experimented recently, not intensively though, and it seemed to replace the placeholder with the vernacular of whatever you ID it as, and deleting that ID didn’t restore back the previous (first) placeholder.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/searching-placeholders/3496/10?u=kiwifergus

[tony_wills]

But what I suggested does work, I often do it, and tested it again before posting. But it doesn’t store it in species_guess as you say, but the .json dump is only a selection of useful stuff from the database entry.

[kiwifergus]

Relief!

The mystery, then, is what field is it stored in, and is it accessible to us somehow to query against?

[tony_wills]

Example in case you don’t believe (just believe ;-) https://inaturalist.nz/observations/1017592

[kiwifergus]

(Hey hey) I’m a believer! :)

[charlie]

oh, interesting! that is good to know

[erininmd]

Placeholder can be pretty confusing for a new user. For a long time I thought placeholder was a computer suggested ID when the observer hadn’t selected anything for ID. I only realized that it was user input when I saw something like “lunar eclipse from X location in wetlands” or some other landscape description. I suspect in that case the user thought they were entering a description but were in the ID box.

[tonyrebelo]

Why not just duplicate the Placeholder into the description?
Is there a reason why this is not desirable?
(the user can edit it out at a future date if they dont want it easily visible)

[Star3]

The only undesirable reason I can think of is if the observer has something in both description and as a placeholder. You would have to make sure to append their placeholder, so it doesn’t completely overwrite whatever seperate info they have in the description.

[Star3]

@cas4moss

There is no way to get it back once I’ve loosely categorised something

In addition to what others have said, if you are on the website (not the mobile app) and just directly add “.json” (without quotation marks) to the end of the URL in the address bar, you can see the placeholder in the “species_guess”.

This is useful if several other people have added IDs so that removing your own won’t revert it.

[llsrvd]

But can the original observer still see it?

[bouteloua]

Yes, as mentioned above, anyone can find it by entering .json at the end of the URL. It’s hidden in an obscure location, but not fully gone.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1017592
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1017592.json

So it should be possible to take that information and display it somewhere more visible rather than make it appear as if it’s been completely overwritten. I guess it should only be displayed until the observer has added a new ID?