In iNat Classic I liked the ability to take a suggestion (to avoid typing) but to start to type in something different if the suggestions seemed off. I’ve run into an issue with new iNat where it sometimes jumps to the species level when its confidence is reasonably high, doesn’t offer genus and doesn’t give me a way to type that in myself (am I missing something?) For example, I recently tested this on a known population of Lobelia siphilitica that wasn’t in bloom and thus missing some features for easy identification. Classic iNaturalist put the correct genus at the top and then offered a number of species including L.inflata (top choice) as well as L. siphilitica and some other unrelated choices. New iNaturalist offers the same suggestions but omits the genus selection option and doesn’t give me a way to type in that I can see.
Go to Menu then Settings; is Advanced Mode toggled on for you?
I didn’t know that setting existed, but yes already toggled. I did try changing the “after capturing or importing photos show” from “ID Suggestions” to “Edit Observation” which didn’t work as I expected. I guess Classic’s approach is a combo of ID suggestions and edit observation in one UI which I like.
You can also tap the “i” next to a species and choose the genus on the following page.
Hitting the magnifier (which I admit I hadn’t noticed) brings me to a list at the Kingdom level. So I can type in my genus if I remember how to spell it yes, but that’s something I don’t have to do with Classic
I don’t have a solution to your problem but I want to encourage you to continue to press this issue since it is a fundamental problem with the suggestion interface on mobile. By omitting the genus, the user interface is encouraging users to over-specify. Thanks for pushing back on this.
I’m with you. This is why I still use iNat Classic. I like to leave most things to genus until I can get home and research them no my own. There are many species that can’t be ID’d to genus by lay people anyway.
thanks for this encouragement. I think I will add to the Feature Request channel.
I’d wait until we release updates to the CV that are mentioned here.
I just want to second that I have the exact same reaction (having switched to an iPhone recently from android). I like the old way better and using the new version I find myself sometimes picking a species because it’s such a hassle to enter the genus. I didn’t notice the little magnifying glass for a long time. Sometimes I later learn that the species I picked can’t be IDed readily from typical photos or is otherwise unlikely. I would have been happy to have picked genus if that was more easily available!
i also wonder if different versions of the app have a higher rate of overly “optimistic” species level IDs (that later need to be reverted by expert IDers). This idea might be difficult to test but perhaps if could be done with a sample of several genera that are known to be problematic.