Localisation and name format settings not used in email notifications

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Description of problem: My country is England (UK). I’m not getting my preferred “Scientific name (English name)” format in the email notifications. It doesn’t give the scientific name, just American names (not even English) so they mean little to me.

Online I frequently see American (I guess) names not the English ones. Like today: Vespula spp is “Ground Yellowjackets”.

https://uk.inaturalist.org/observations/307842942

And even then it’s wrong: it should be Genus Vespula (Ground Yellowjackets)

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Hi Malcom. Looking at the Taxonomy tab for the genus in question ( https://uk.inaturalist.org/taxa/61356-Vespula ), I don’t see any particular UK English common name for Vespula.

Compare this to the species Vespula vulgaris ( https://uk.inaturalist.org/taxa/127777-Vespula-vulgaris ) where the name “Common Wasp” is clearly stated as the English name in the United Kingdom. If you believe there’s a UK English common name for Vespula, you can add that and you should see the name when logged in to uk.inaturalist.org.

I’m unsure whether there is a broader issue for email notifications. Your bug report seems to imply two things:

  1. Your language/locale setting is not being used for email notifications. To verify that this is set for you, go to Account Settings > Account and choose “English (UK)” as your language/locale.
  2. Regional common names defined for a particular taxon (such as “Common Wasp” for Vespula vulgaris in the UK) are not being used in email notifications.

It would be helpful if you could provide a little more detail of this, such as screenshots of your personal settings and an email that is showing the issue you’re experiencing.

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Can you please forward one of these emails to help@inaturalist.org so I can check it out?

Thanks. It was set to “English” not “English (UK)”. (With the usual arrogance of the English I expect “English” and “English (USA)!”

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I’m glad you got this fixed. BTW I thought our default, arrogant expectation was “English” and “Foreign”. :-)

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Here are my settings and a recent email:

will do!

https://uk.inaturalist.org/observations/314760119

This is online not email.

So why do I get “Asian Lady Beetle”, which I assume is the American name, not “Harlequin Ladybird” which is the English name?

I think you’ll need to choos the United Kingdom as your preferred place for common names. See https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000175913

For example, my setting is this:

If I remove it and add this:

I see Harlequin Ladybird: