Getting error message when batch editing more than 100 observations

Bug Reports
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1

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website, Mac OS Ventura 13.4

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Tested both in Safari (version 16.5) and Firefox (version 114.0.1) with the same result

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: Not connected to a specific observation.

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Screenshot 2023-06-14 at 12.54.34

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: I wanted to batch edit many of my observations that had missing GPS accuracy values.

Step 2: I successfully batch edited the first 3 pages of my observations (200 displayed each, about 80% of them were selected and edited)

Step 3: It worked for pages 1-3 of my observations, but on page 4 I always get the error message " Incomplete response received from application". I have tried different browsers, logging in and out etc. but I always get the same error. I also tried going to the next page (5) of 200 observations, still the same. I can go back to the batch editing page but the changes are not being saved.

Step 4: Lowering the number of observations per page to 100, it now seems to work even if I select and edit all of them.

5 Likes
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I’m having the exact same issue - works fine for 100 observations. Perhaps the web page should either limit batch editing to 100 or at least have a warning message.

3 Likes
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Why is there no answe to this?

I have the same problem, and it’s very annoying. A few times it worked okay this morning, but now it keeps crashing. You know, for 50 observations I don’t need the batch option, I can do this manually if necessary. However, for 500 observations it would be crucial to have this option (and not crashing, please).

Thank you for looking into this. I’d appreciate.

2 Likes
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It’s an old page on the site and I think sometimes hits a limit or times out.

I’m curious, what sorts of things are you editing at this scale if you don’t mind me asking? It looks like GPS accuracy value is one.

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Yes, for me it was GPS accuracy. I had many observations (uploaded from my old phone) without GPS accuracy values. This was a problem because RG observations pushed to GBIF also get shared with the main Swedish biodiversity platform Artdatabanken, where missing accuracy values automatically get set to 20 km accuracy. So when I realised this I set all observations uploaded from that old phone to 30m accuracy, which in my case made sense because I always make sure to report as precise a location as possible (and most of the photos from that phone got automatically GPS-tagged anyways, just without accuracy value).

2 Likes
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out of interest is this intentional or a bug? Seems like a poor decision if the former

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I never found out the exact reason why, just realised that my observations without accuracy values ended up with a 20km circle while the ones with accuracy values had that exact accuracy propagated all the way through, and then decided I would simply add an estimated accuracy value to all my past and future observations.

My guess would be that the Swedish portal has a requirement for an accuracy value (it has when I directly upload observations there), and fills in automatically with a conservative 20km when the accuracy is missing from iNat, so intentional/intended behavior. And to be fair, I think it makes sense to set a low accuracy by default when you don’t know where the observation comes from.

1 Like
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I agree with your reasoning that being conservative is the best approach if necessary, but I don’t think the best approach is to invent a value that did not previously exist; just seems like poor database management to me that a value must be included, almost all databases allow a non-value in that field

4 Likes
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I am having the same issue. I created a project for work to track biodiversity which now has 3K+ observations. Bosses have just told me that I now need to obscure geoprivacy. Updating a few batches of 200 worked fine, but now I get the same error message as the OP. Google Chrome, Windows 10.
The changes do not save if I go back afterwards to check.

2 Likes