The question here is if others find that sometimes they cannot conjure up the field they are after because there are so many closely named. Is it me or is this a common finding?
Specifically I am often after Plant association or Name of associated plant. Most time the drop down menu that I see for fields suggest some of my most commonly used fields (great!). Occasionally this seems to corrupt and I end up with a list of suggested fields that don’t give me what I am after so then my next move is to type in the desired field - however because there are so many associated fields, what I want does not show up. I believe if I reload the page, sometimes my old list will show up.
This has been of particular frustration when trying to record a one take tutorial video of using the field and then it is not there and I can’t simply get it back and I have to start from scratch.
Is this just my experience?
Do you need to see examples?
Can one just put in the specific field “slug”? If not, is a feature request by me needed for this?
@tiwane Sorry about the delay in responding here. I found that I could not use my usual browser (Firefox) to take a screenshot of the Observation Fields drop down box - it kept disappearing. I finally found the time to reliably repeat my experience and take a screenshot using Chrome.
Usually I get the below drop down which includes my desired field, Plant association
On occasion I will get something like the following that does not have my desired field
When I type in the field I want, I get the following responses
or
Just to clarify, when you click the Observation Fields field, it shows you the 10 fields associated with the most recent Observation Fields you added. If for example that Name of Associated Plant field was the most recent one you added, and you only added one Name of Associated Plant field, and you deleted that observation field, it would disappear from the list since it’s no longer associated with an existing obs field
I’m not able to replicate this:
I’m able to see Plant association as an option every time I type it in, either at the top or second.
What’s the URL of a page where you see this happening?
This is the particular URL I was working with. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/177590859
I was trying to do a tutorial video for a group I’m with that had me doing a few retakes because I was fumbling on what I was saying. So that had me deleting the field and restarting. What you are saying makes sense, Maybe the system was trying hard to not have my choice come up again by having other choices offered instead.
This can be a real problem. I joined multiple projects related to pollinator/plant associations. Turned out two or more had associated fields named “Nectar Plant” and others had very similar names. These were not the same field, as far as I can tell – two or more “Nectar Plant” fields would come up in my list. Too confusing. I reduced the number of projects to one (Pollinator Associations) and by now I have only one field name coming up on the list of 10 most frequently used. Is it the field actually associated with the project Pollinator Associations? I have no idea.
Aah. So it is not just me (but I don’t know if just two is enough). This is where I think having the additional ability to put in the slug would help. I know that one can look up the projects that are using certain fields under said fields ie https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/498 but this is cumbersome to do on the go.
One can explore the field from an observation by right clicking on the field and picking the bottom choice in the drop down box, Observation field details
