Assuming they added it with the iNat Android app, they need to add the date in the app and sync their observations for changes to appear on the website.
Further update on this: For the last several days I have been going through the Casual grade insect observations (with filter for observations which have photos) for Ontario. The Vast majority of these are simply stuck there because the date didnāt save properly for android app users, and most of them are from within the last year or so. Itās getting really annoying that the majority of my ācuratingā time is spent telling people that their app isnāt allowing them to use the platform to its full potential.
Many of these are from regular users, but there are also many from new users as well. It saddens me greatly to see a user with fewer than 100 observations, nearly all of which are stuck in casual, who has gone inactive. It tells me that the user got discouraged by the platform not working for them, and decided it wasnāt worth their time to continue - all because no one is interacting with their posts due to a glitch.
Can some technical investigating be done to figure out how so many users are having issues with getting the app to interface with the main platform? Like does it have to do with what app they are taking the photos with that the metadata isnāt in the right āplaceā for the inat app to read it? Or to do with having cell/data signal while in the field?
At the very least could something be added to the app which makes a pop-up if the user tries to save the observation without the date?
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Exactly my feelings as well. I am usually checking observations of new users on a weekly basis and filter for casuals to find the ones with missing dates and write to them, hoping to further encourage them in using the platform
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While curating observations, I notice that many observations in the recent past do not have date observed leading the observation to be marked as casual. while casually highlighting to observers, they say it was unintended. It seems that this could be a bug. Wanted to highlight this.
Cheers.
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itās very difficult to take action without more detailed information. this sounds similar to several other previous bug reports, but itās hard to say much more unless more details are providedā¦
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I suspect the auto detection of date while uploading observation to not be working. This observation is from cases in India.
please provide specific examples
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thanks, I m leaving the discussion until I hear or see more. Since I have not been uploading posts during this time I canāt tell. the idea of making this post was that if other users felt so too then the issue can be addressed faster. So far , It seemed suspicious and I have been raising it personally with observer.
When you encounter this again, please share links to the specific observations where this happened so we can investigate.
It may have to do with the interpretation of a time zone via one of the apps, but weāll need to look at specific observations to investigate further.
Great. Thank you! Will do as suggested.
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This was an issue with observations made South Australia (itās since been fixed), its time zone is +9:30 UTC and that non-standard offset caused a problem where the observationās date was not filled in, even though it was recorded, and the observations were casual. Not sure if this has a related cause, but the end result sounds similar.
@tiwane @carrieseltzer : Here are a bunch of observations by this observer. He confirmed that he uses the app and his observations donāt get updated inspite of even manually trying to update the observation date, he said. But heās able to make the changes on his observations via the web/laptop.
I am not sharing all his observations since there are many and the oldest of such observation without date dates back to March 2019. as per date of upload. Here are some of such observations of his.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/50111533
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/50064677
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Thanks! Iāll send him a message to get more details.
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I had checked with one other person as well where she had transferred the file via WhatsApp and it resulted in date missing while upload which I m guessing is normal.
Tiwane : Here 's another who is having some issues, something similar with a bunch of observations.
(note: I merged some posts here from a related topic)
Actually over the last one month i have been providing a few IDs everyday from India and nearly everyday 1-5 of these observations everyday have missing dates and i am guessing this is a related issue.
I briefly used the iNat app a few months ago and i noted that when i had spotty network there was a lag in picking up location and time so they picked different location and so on especially when i used iNat app directly to upload an observation instead of say taking a picture on phone and uploading via iNat app. They showed missing time or location and sometimes even said observation missing and could never be recovered.
This month i have been frequent in uploading pictures via laptop. I note that edited pictures can sometimes have missing time and location. I had used photos by mac . Drag and dropped pictures had had missing metadata. I then tried by exporting and uploading. Safari still missed picking up metadata. I had to manually enter location and time. But Brave browser picked up the metadata. I also think clearing cache and reducing the number of observations while uploading can help in picking up the location and time better. Uploading 50 pictures at a time seem to load metadata better than say 100 or 150 pictures at one go.
Iāve been seeing a lot of missing dates in India for ages too. Here are a couple of examples: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/87810541 (and quite a few others from this observer; from Android app)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/80880035 (also missing location; from Android app)