how do you remember it working in the past? the way i remember things, the original placeholder has always been wiped out when an ID is made.
i’m writing all this just based on my memory of what happens, but i believe the thing here is that species guess changes to the observation ID. so when you add an ID, the placeholder gets wiped out. then if you delete your ID, since the original placeholder is not retained anywhere, then how does the system decide what to put back in species guess? given the choice of replacing species guess with null or the current ID, then it seems to make sense to me to replace with null when the observer has not made an ID, and to replace it with the observer’s deleted ID, if the observer had previously made an ID… or something like that.
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here’s a related feature request that may be relevant: Do not overwrite placeholder text - Feature Requests - iNaturalist Community Forum. you’ll note that the decision was made not to accommodate this request. but maybe it could have more traction if it was reframed and narrowed to “Do no overwrite placeholder text on others’ observations”? (it’s a stretch, i think, but it never hurts to ask, i suppose.)