Long Source title causes "I ate iNaturalist.org" error when creating new taxon

Have been trying to create a new taxon this morning (cranefly species), but every time I press save changes I just get the whale shark error and it doesn’t work. Have tried using different computers, but can’t fix it.

I’d be curious to try to replicate if you can provide steps to do so

Dicranomyia punctipennis is the species, under parent taxon Dicranomyia.

I then provide https://ccw.naturalis.nl/documents/Theischinger,_1994b.pdf as the source and type in all the relevant reference details. From there I click save but can’t seem to make it work.

Still getting the error 3 hours later.

I wasn’t able to reproduce with the following steps:

  1. go to https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/new
  2. enter 173903 as the parent
  3. Dicranomyia punctipennis as Scientific Name
  4. Species as rank
  5. created a new source
  6. Save

The above successfully creates the species - can you explain how you’re getting the whaleshark?

I literally followed the exact same steps you just wrote, and I still get the error??
image

Just a shot in the dark here – that comma in the source URL that @thebeachcomber listed above seems like a potential choke point…

can you provide what you’re entering in the source form?

Title: The Limoniinae (Diptera: Tipulidae) of Australia
V. The genera Helius LE PELETIER & SERVILLE, Toxorhina
LOEW, Limonia MEIGEN (part), Tonnoiromyia ALEXANDER
and Collessophila gen. nov. (all tribe Limoniini) and Atarba
OSTEN-SACKEN, Amphineurus SKUSE, Erioptera MEIGEN,
Cheilotrichia Rossi, Gonomyia MEIGEN and Idiocera DALE
(all tribe Eriopterini)

In text: Theischinger, 1994

URL: https://ccw.naturalis.nl/documents/Theischinger,_1994b.pdf

Citation: Theischinger, G., 1994. The Limoniinae (Diptera: Tipulidae) of Australia
V. The genera Helius LE PELETIER & SERVILLE, Toxorhina
LOEW, Limonia MEIGEN (part), Tonnoiromyia ALEXANDER
and Collessophila gen. nov. (all tribe Limoniini) and Atarba
OSTEN-SACKEN, Amphineurus SKUSE, Erioptera MEIGEN,
Cheilotrichia Rossi, Gonomyia MEIGEN and Idiocera DALE
(all tribe Eriopterini). Stapfia 36, pp.37-276.

Thanks - ok the error is that the title for a source can only be 255 characters long. But iNat should never give 500 errors (failwhales) so I’ll file an issue. Thanks for catching this.
https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/2246

No worries Scott. So just shorten the title to ‘The Limoniinae (Diptera: Tipulidae) of Australia’?

I thought it might have something to do with the source. That’s the only place I’ve ever found any form of error in creating a taxon (though I think I was also trying to be too fancy with the citation entry in adding links to different sections of a long document). I forget what I did in the end, but I got something to work well enough.

“The Limoniinae (Diptera: Tipulidae) of Australia V” would be my own thought for the title text - just in case anyone ends up citing anything else such as I - IV. If I count correctly, the 255 mark would fall in the middle of “Erioptera”.

Cheers Jonathan