Move "opt out of the community taxon" toggle to less prominent location on Android

Feature Requests
1

Rather than in the “three dots” menu prominently displayed on the Edit page, perhaps it could be:

  • moved to under the Data Quality subsection or underneath Annotations, or
  • only displayed when the observer’s ID does not match or is maverick to the community taxon, or
  • removed as an option from the app itself altogether, as it’s a pretty niche need that causes more confusion than help

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Wherever it is placed, it needs a consistent, detailed, but iNat-novice-friendly explanation that should point out what the current community taxon is.

Current language is inconsistent:

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2

If it is not good enough, what should be the correct text?

1 Like
3

The website message is significantly better than the app message.

1 Like
4

Regarding placement, what is the problem you’re trying to solve by moving it? If you’re concerned its current placement is so obvious that people are using it when they don’t understand what it does, do can you cite some examples? IMO, the three-dot contextual menu is a fairly obscure place to put it. Regarding the proposal to remove it, this is functionality I personally want in the app (and everywhere else) so I can opt-out of the community ID for those rare occasions where I am completely confident the community is incorrect, so I’m not in favor or removing it. I am in favor of making the language more consistent.

5

Can you compare relative number of Android obs that have opted out vs iOS and desktop?

6

Personally I find myself accidentally tapping it all the time, in an attempt to try to further edit the observation or something, but I’m just n=1.

3 Likes
7

I can! You can’t opt out of the community taxon in the iPhone app, so here are the numbers for observations added between Aug 1 and Aug 14:

           app           | opted_out | total  |     opt_out_rate     
-------------------------+-----------+--------+----------------------
 iNaturalist Android App |        56 | 356305 | 0.000157168717811987
 Web                     |       258 | 505132 | 0.000510757584156221

So

  1. Android users do opt out of the community taxon
  2. The number of observations added via the Android app that are opted out of the community taxon is vanishingly small
  3. The proportion of observations added via the Android app that are opted out of the community taxon is considerably less than the same proportion on the web

IMO, this seems to imply that people aren’t using it that much. Can’t say whether or not Android users are confused by it, but I don’t think it’s doing much damage.

3 Likes
8

That’s great to see, and a lot better than me attempting to find past examples - not even sure how I would have - thank you!

Aside from me accidentally tapping it all the time, maybe it’s confusing (to me) because it is the only thing in the menu? Needs a “Duplicate observation” friend.

3 Likes
11

I’m going to close this. The “opt out of community taxon” now has a lot of neighbors in the three dots menu.