I have a couple of collection projects with many places. I would like to be able to see running totals and be able to go directly to each place from the dashboard as is possible with umbrella projects. I don’t want to create a whole lot of new projects for each place just to see this. I suspect many people do though.
i don’t think this makes sense. reasoning:
- i would bet most projects are set up with just one place.
- there are lots of criteria that you can use to set up a collection project besides place. why break out places, as opposed to, say, taxa, or users, or anything else like that?
- how would you represent cases where you’ve excluded places in your criteria?
…
if you want to get a count of observation in places, and you don’t want to set up up separate collection projects + umbrella project, you could always just query for the data in the Explore page, or you could use the API to help automate the process. for example: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_places.html?project_id=sc-state-parks&stats=observations&place_id=109414,109420,127564,147084,147163,147164,147165,147166,147169,147171,147172,147173,147174,147176,147179,147185,147186,147187,147188,147189,147193,147195,147196,147199,1597696,175285,175292,175344,175350,175352,175363,175743,175750,175751,175796,175797,175798,175824,175825,175828,175846,175847,175856,175876,175877,175896,175897,175898
It may not make sense for all cases, like the bullet points you mention, in which case, yes create individual projects for each place, but …
I’m not suggesting this as a default, just an optional representation. The info is available and being able to link to the places directly from the project would be handy for a couple of my projects.
Maybe a separate stats tab? The above example URL would actually be a good start if available on the project page so everyone could see it. Is there a way to generate that URL without tabulating individual place numbers?
I am loathe to create a whole bunch of projects that I wouldn’t use just to see observation numbers and having links to the individual places.
Maybe create a parallel umbrella style project for places, instead of projects?
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/south-carolina-dnr-heritage-preserve-wma-properties
even if it took no effort to implement code to do what you’re asking for, i still don’t think it would be something that gatekeepers would necessarily want to allow.
if your functionality were available, i can imagine someone setting up a project with every country in the world, or every state in the USA just to get that bar chart of leading countries / states. the problem with that is that although the data exists, gathering that data for presentation in such a chart is not necessarily an efficient task, and querying by geography is not necessarily an efficient task in general. stuff like that could easily bog down the whole system, i think.
just for example, look how long it takes to gather all the data for a CNC umbrella project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021.
so if you really want a leading places bar chart, i think you need to prove it by putting in the effort to create all those place projects + umbrella project, or else go with some other solution like what i referenced earlier.
We don’t plan to implement this request so I’m closing it.