I don’t understand how ‘projects’ works. I have posted observations seeking identification but the observations have been tagged with ‘placeholder backup’ and ‘unknown’ - both seemingly preventing identification. Can someone please explain.
I’m not completely sure if the problem you describe here is related to “Projects”. Would it be possible to provide a link to such an observation ? In the case you don’t add an initial ID, like something simple like “animal” or “plants” the observation would be “unknown”. If you enter an initial ID in a format, the system does not understand like adding additional text (eg. author or year, etc) the observation gets a placeholder. Typos are sometimes a problem, too.
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Projects are collections of observations and do not affect the identification of observations within them. It sounds like you tried to input an initial ID for your observations and it didn’t go through and was saved as a placeholder, while the actual observation remained listed as Unknown- the top-level placeholder for completely unidentified observations.
“Placeholder backup” seems to be a project dedicated to saving the placeholder text, since it’s immediately overridden once an observation is given any identification.
There’s various projects related to Unknown observations so I’m not sure which one may have added your observations.
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Hi Anne, welcome to the forum
here is one of your observations described in your post: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/245884836
no doubt someone will add an ID after seeing this, so here is a screenshot too:
When you uploaded this record, you entered an ID of ‘Gomphrena celosioide’. However, that name does not equate to a species; rather, it is a slight misspelling of the species Gomphrena celosioides (an ‘s’ at the end of the species name). Because of that, and since you did not select the dropdown that would have appeared for the correct spelling, the system could not recognise your ID, and instead inserted it as a placeholder in greyed out text next to the label ‘Unknown’.
The ‘placeholder backup’ project and observation field you noticed are just a customised project that user @jeanphilippeb created to save placeholder IDs as an observation field.
having a placeholder ID does not prevent the record being identified. You, or another user, can add an ID to the record at any time. The new ID will override and ‘destroy’ the placeholder
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Just to add to what thebeachcomber said, for you there should be a small gear symbol next to the project name. There you can interact with the project and even remove the observation from the project. Not saying you should, but it’s an option if you’d rather not have this observation in this project.
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Thanks a lot for explaining!
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Since our project triggers a lot of questions, I wrote a journal post
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/placeholder-backup/journal/98782-placeholder-backup-project-what-is-it-and-why
For the City Nature Challenge, as I ID, I start with catching these placeholders.
Set to my chosen location for the African continent
If the observer, carefully says, spider - then I can look for it in their photo. No spider that I can see, did you intend …
If the observation field text and project bother you on your own obs - you can - delete the obs field, and withdraw that obs from the project. Once the obs HAS your preferred ID, then the project has served its temporary assistance purpose.
That is filtered to the CNC dates. Over 3K obs if someone would like to help ID before the Sunday night deadline ?
PS 5.7K caught and waiting Friday 2 May
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For example - catch the placeholder - 30 minutes to sp (warning A Snake)
That link is not ‘calling out the observer’ - it is demonstrating why we made the project.
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