Multiple languages in species_guess field in download

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Platform (Website):

Description of problem

I use the site in English. The species_guess field uses several languages for the entries.
Here is a snippet from the download

Gallareta andina
Plumbeous Rail
Yellow-billed Pintail
Many-colored Rush Tyrant
Pato maicero
White-tufted Grebe
Wren-like Rushbird
Mourning Sierra-Finch
White-eyed Parakeet
Mealy Parrot
ara ararauna
Roadside Hawk
Cocoi Heron
White-winged Swallow
Buteogallus urubitinga urubitinga
amazónek modrohlavý
Yellow-browed Sparrow
Crane Hawk
Красный ара
Mealy Parrot
Pale-vented Pigeon

Here is the query

Query quality_grade=any&identifications=any&place_id=7513&taxon_id=3&user_id=grizzlymarmot

Columns id, time_observed_at, tag_list, latitude, longitude, species_guess, scientific_name, common_name

Here is the name of the downloaded file

observations-245353.csv

It looks like the upload feature only uploads images! But that’s a feature request.

Thanks
Charles Jacobs

i’m fairly sure this isn’t a bug. that species_guess field is just a placeholder field, meant to be relevant only until a taxon is actually selected for a given observation. so for example, if you type in “big bug” and don’t actually select a taxon, “big bug” will go into that field. eventually when you actually select a taxon, the name of that taxon will replace whatever is in that placeholder field. but by that that time, you have values in the scientific and common name fields to reference.

the species_guess reflects whatever language the observer uses because there’s no sense in translating something like “big bug”, but the common name will be displayed based on whatever language you use.

welcome to the forum.

The species_guess field is says that it represents ‘the name the observer entered for the observed taxon’.

The language of the ID returned from the query does not match the language of the ID entered into the database for this field.

For example - I entered ‘Scarlet Macaw’ as my ID. When I used the download function - ‘Красный ара’ was the output.

I understand how you have described the field. But that does not match the text description - which seems to imply that the field represents my initial id. As I reviewed the download - it does not represent that. It is updated after further id information is added.

But anyway, that field does not respect the user’s language preference.

Yes, there is a known bug that sometimes sets the species_guess in a language that the user has not selected. This has been reported before in the context of batch editing, emails, and the iOS app, but the root cause has never been resolved.

1 Like

what exactly are you trying to achieve? (why are you exporting the species_guess?)

i think this is unrelated. the species_guess may be set to text that is a different language than what the observer uses (looks like the language of the first IDer after observation is submitted), but the point is that the species_guess is only a placeholder and so should not be translated and should become irrelevant once an ID has been made on the observation. so it should not be relied on at all, unless there is no ID for the observation.

in case it’s not clear what i mean by a placeholder, take a look at this observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/94288383. note that this observation has no actual ID, but i still input something when prompted “what i you see?”. so in this case, my species_guess is “this is just a test”. it would not make sense for the system to try to translate “this is just a test” to the preferred language of the next person viewing the observation.