Say I’d like to know the list of families I’ve observed in order Insecta. There should be about 40, based on the taxonomic view of my Life List.
This search gives only the observations that are currently ID’d at the family level (not below), so there are 6 insect families represented there. Taking out the lrank restriction gives every insect observation (which makes sense). I also can’t spot a way to do this within a collection project. What I can do is download the taxonomic CSV from one of my life lists and find the distinct families from there.
That list display interface is an older feature and I believe has been deprecated. And to get an accurate display you may need to use the tools to “Re-apply list rules” and “Reload from observations”.
Yep–that’s how I got the 42 families that are the “answer” I’m looking for. But since Lists are deprecated, I don’t like relying on it. I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t some other easy solution I was missing.
Yes, I just re-read your question and realized that the taxonomic view of your life list is the starting point from which you figured that you have about 40 insect families. Sorry!
If you’re looking for something that you can use instead of the deprecated life list, I think that will have to wait until iNat develops new functionality.
If you’re looking for a simple text list of families, it seems your CSV workaround is probably the best approach.
I think they are redeveloping the observations view, so it might be worth mentioning it in the thread for ideas on that. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/ideas-for-a-revamped-explore-observations-search-page/8439
For instance, when you view the species tab, perhaps there could be settings to allow you to show certain taxa levels. Currently it doesn’t show ssp (they get lumped under the sp) and it only shows leaves. The filters would ideally give enough control to bring in your observations such that you are getting your full “life list” as it were.
Having discussed it a bit here and reconsidered the vocabulary, I think that this suggestion is a much clearer request for the functionality I want. It’s also included here. So I probably won’t clutter that topic with a repeat.
tl;dr I’d like to be able to define a minimum/maximum “leaf” level when viewing observations, instead of the default “species and below”.
Just to be clear, lists are not deprecated on the site. They are old and buggy code the site would like to update, but I don’t think the concept is going anywhere.