I have been using the Identify mode for several weeks now. Even though I use the “Mark All as Reviewed” button when I get through the thirty obs, on subsequent visits I keep seeing obs that I have seen before–can verify because I see the comment or ID that I made earlier that day, or even days or weeks later. It really slows things down when I have to keep clicking past obs I’ve already seen.
Is there something I’m missing about how this works?
You need to unfollow / unsubscribe each obs where you have automagically subscribed - comment, ID, fave.
? But I must be missing something in turn.
can you give us some specific examples? also, when you click “mark all as reviewed” do you give iNat enough time to execute the command before you move to the next page?
I normally identify observations that were uploaded the previous day, so I don’t see them again when identifying. They do appear in my feed if someone else comments on them or identifies them, upon which I guess they are no longer marked as reviewed, because something’s happened which I should review.
@DianaStuder @phma
“Marked as reviewed” and “following” are separate functions.
The first determines whether observations are displayed in Identify (unless you have changed the settings to include reviewed observations).
The second determines whether you receive notifications for activity on an observation.
Adding an ID to an observation triggers both of these statuses (it will be marked as reviewed and you will be subscribed to it), but they are not inherently linked – e.g., other actions such as commenting will subscribe you to the observation but not mark it as reviewed.
I have found that the “mark as reviewed” function is a bit glitchy. If I mark an observation as reviewed without IDing it, sometimes the tick does not appear on the page (but will subsequently show up if I use the arrow keys to move to a subsequent observation and back again), which can result in me clicking it again (and thus unintentionally unclicking it).
The last one or 2 on a page of 30 sometimes roll over for me … but if I wait, I haven’t seen - I have reviewed that, why is it here again?
As Astra said, if you’re using the “mark all as reviewed” button, you have to wait several seconds for it to work before going on to the next page. If you’re leaving an ID and it isn’t automatically marking the observation reviewed, I think it sounds like aglitch or an Internet connection problem.
Unfortunately this is the case sometimes. Happens to me as well. I’m not sure there’s a whole lot we can do to speed it up, from my understanding.
Yes this happens if you click “mark all reviewed” after going through the observations. You’d have to wait for the spinning arrows on the button to finish. It can take a long time sometimes.
It happens so regularly that I’ve changed my workflow and now I click “mark all reviewed” before looking at the observations just so I don’t have to wait when I’m done.
That’s a great idea! This usually isn’t a problem for me, but sometimes the next ID page will be almost 2/3 observations from the previous page and showing as reviewed.
I do wait for the “Mark All as Reviewed” function to complete–or at least it seems that’s what I’m doing, because it does its “spinning” thing and when it appears to be ready I then click on Skip to Next Page. However, I suppose I can try marking all as reviewed before I review and see what happens.
Barring that, I suppose I can click on the Reviewed box on each post, but that is slower and it seems to me that the other way should work better than it does. Ah, well!
This happens to me as well, but it seems to be just a few now and again. I don’t always wait for the spinning to stop, but sometimes I do. I am not sure it is worth marking each one individually. It probably takes less of your time to see a few again in the future vs. individually selecting that on each one.
I will suggest that I’ve noticed if I comment on something (without suggesting an ID) it is not automatically set as reviewed (like it is when I suggest an ID). So sometimes what I am seeing are obs that I commented on outside of Identify mode. Then in ID mode, it still comes up because the comment didn’t mark it as reviewed (which I actually prefer because often my comment is suggesting they have multiple species or is a question and I want to see it again to follow through). Not sure if that could be the same for some of yours or not.
How I have been working with the Identify page:
I first filter to place, which is primarily Florida–but when I’ve exhausted that, I do visit other states and the Caribbean. Once the filter has sorted itself and I’m shown a page with 30 observations, I click on the first one, which gives me that pop-up window to work in. My main goal here is welcoming new users so I’m already using that pre-filter: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?user_after=2w
When I open that first image, I then click over to that user’s page, scroll down to their very first observation, and if no one has added a welcome blurb (with the links to useful pages etc), then I add it. Then I look through all their obs and see where I can help with broad IDs and further notes about how to use iNat.
Then I’m back at the Identify pop-up, where I click through until I get to a user that I haven’t seen before and repeat the process. When I get to the end of the 30 obs, I click Mark All as Reviewed, wait for things to happen, and move to the next page. All seems well and good.
The next day, or next week, I very often see the same posts over again. I will make a point of looking to see if there was further activity after my note, but I feel like that’s not always the case.
I don’t have a solution (other than what tiwane suggested that sometimes this just happens), but I want to say how nice it is that you are welcoming new users! I love that.
Trying to be useful! Without any real expertise, I figure the best thing I can do is at least try to get the ball rolling in the right direction. The great thing is that I’m learning a lot as I go!
So smart!
Thanks, I missed this option and I think ‘‘unfollow’’ is not yet included in the help files.
https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/search?term=unfollow