New chrome extension to select that the community taxon cannot be improved

General
1

I have just made an extension which creates a keyboard shortcut to select the “No, it’s as good as it can be” button under “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” in the DQA on the identify modal.

This is something I run into A LOT identifying grasses, there are so many photos of just leaves which are absolutely not identifiable, but it takes so long to navigate to the DQA page and back without a shortcut. So I made a chrome extension to get that shortcut. It uses “v” by default but I could change it if anybody has a compelling reason.

To install, first download the files, (there’s only one file with the JS code which makes this work, main.js, feel free to inspect the code).
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FqZZBR80-ixgWqiF9reoiT9jJZaljjkC?usp=sharing

Next go to chrome://extensions
Then click the switch to enable developer mode
Then click “Load unpacked” and navigate to the “inatExt” folder
You’re done!

I’ve only tested this on inaturalist.org, but it should also work on the partner / regional iNat variants. Let me know if it doesn’t.

If multiple people are interested in this, I can publish it formally on the chrome web store, but I wasn’t going to bother if there’s no interest, so please let me know if this is useful. I could also add a feature to add a template comment where along with selecting the DQA button it automatically adds a comment saying why the taxon cannot be improved if that is something people are interested in. I could also add shortcuts for other DQA flags if desired. I also hereby release this code as public domain if anybody wants to port this to firefox or other browsers.

2

nice. if you ever get the time, you should expand this to allow users to assign and execute various sets of actions to various sets of keys, similar to what’s described here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/bulk-identification-tool/5029/11 and https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/bulk-identification-tool/5029/34.

3

I was thinking about it. Please comment if that’s something that you’d use personally. I want to gauge interest before I spend time developing a GUI which would allow some customization of shortcuts. Otherwise, if I’m the only one using this I’ll just write the JS code which is way easier.

4

i would probably use it just to see it in action, but honestly, i’m not enough of a high-volume identifier that i would download it from the Chrome store and use it routinely.

if nothing else though, i think it would be really helpful from a proof-of-concept perspective to show a possible path where the Identify module could go in the the future, and i think any really good mobile app implementation of an Identify screen would have to include some functionality to define and apply sets of actions / tasks (due to the lack of a keyboard and small screen real estate). (so that’s really why i’m suggesting this – to plant the seed for that.)

if you’re going to put this in the Chrome extension store, you might consider combining this into @sessilefielder’s existing suite of inat tools.

you might want to gauge interest with a simple forum poll, with a single option to vote yes if folks would be interested.

5

This is great! I will use it all the time. It does save time vs having to move over to the Data Quality tab manually. I note that for me (Chrome on Windows) it only works if I start from the Info tab. If I am already on the DQ tab, or on Annotations or Suggestions, it does not.

I might use a more complicated multi-action version but probably would use it less, because I would need to get it set right to work with multiple different combinations.

The only other problem (which has nothing to do with the code) is that, like all the other keyboard shortcuts, it runs the risk of being stepped on, so I apologize in advance to anyone whose observation the cat marks as Research Grade…

6

Glad it’s useful! I’ll keep that in mind for future more complicated actions. It could be possible to save presets so all you would need is a single click to reprogram a shortcut key from doing task A to task B…

Yes, this was by design so that if you were typing an annotation which contains a letter “v” it wouldn’t trigger the DQA change. I can try to fix this so it detects where your cursor is and makes sure it’s not any of the potential textboxes on those pages it wouldn’t activate. Do you think that the shortcut is useful on those pages?

7

A-MA-ZING

This will be used.

8

Ah, I see. For my current workflow it would be useful to have the shortcut work from the Annotations tab, because I have been entering an ID/comments, then annotations if any, then moving to RG. But there’s no reason I couldn’t change my order of operations and do the ID, then use your shortcut while I’m still on the info page, and then do the annotations! So it’s not a big deal since it behaves that way for a reason.

9

I’d like to “use your shortcut while I’m still on the info page” to add phenology annotations to plants instead of
<shift-right> <shift-right> p l <shift-left> <shift-left>
which I find tedious.

10

I should be able to do that! Give me a few days and I’ll see what I can do. Do you have an idea for what keys would work well for each phenology state (can be anything as long as it doesn’t conflict with the existing shortcuts)

11

Great! I guess “l”-> flowering, “r”->fruiting and “u”->budding should work.

12

It’s gonna be confusing as all get out if that’s not also gonna work for life stage/larva and all the other annotations on that tab. Better think of a consistent set of shortcuts that covers all.

13

i forgot that i had made a similar request on another browser extension thread. over there, i suggested allowing users to customize their shortcuts using a JS definition. i think that’s the same way i would start to approach the suggestion here. once that’s working, then develop the GUI, if there’s still time and desire.