Notify users of drafted taxon changes

Feature Requests
,
1

Platform: Website

Other related requests:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/implement-automatic-delay-for-proposed-taxon-swaps/38701
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/taxonomic-merge-swap-timer/581
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/view-affected-content-after-taxon-change/29776

Description of need:
It is difficult to obtain input from the community regarding drafted taxon changes, especially if people do not respond to mentions and if experts are not very active on the site. People often do not know about taxon changes until after they occur, when a dashboard notification is sent. People do not usually see this “heads up” on a taxon page that is an input for a taxon change draft:

Screen Shot 2023-01-19 at 7.48.18 PM
Screen Shot 2023-01-19 at 7.48.18 PM959Ă—84 12.3 KB

But they do get this notification on their dashboard after the fact:
Screen Shot 2023-01-19 at 8.28.17 PM
Screen Shot 2023-01-19 at 8.28.17 PM646Ă—542 44.5 KB

Feature request details:
When a taxon change is drafted, send a notification to all users who would receive a notification if the change was committed. It could look like something like this:

Screen Shot 2023-01-19 at 8.38.12 PM
Screen Shot 2023-01-19 at 8.38.12 PM628Ă—535 42.5 KB

Maybe the icon could be different so it doesn’t look as similar to the current notifications. Alternatively, the notification could look more like the above “heads up” banner.

Other possibilities to make this request more complicated:

  • Only the top IDers and/or observers (3, 5, 10) could be notified. I think at least IDers should be notified.
  • Curators could be given the option to send a notification on the draft.
  • Curators could choose who to send the notification to (top IDers, top observers, etc.).
  • Notify users associated with output taxa as well (i.e. people associated with split outputs but not inputs that wouldn’t get the notification otherwise).

I personally don’t love any of these additions, but I could see them being helpful in some situations.

I know there is a supposed notifications revamp in the works, so I’m not sure how pertinent this request is, but I haven’t heard about any updates about that for several years.

2

What a great idea! I wholeheartedly support this request (and yes, I voted).

3 Likes
3

Is being notified about a taxon change a new thing? I have never received a notification about any taxon changes

4

They aren’t new. You get them after the fact, but only on the dashboard. There is no push notification at the top. You might be able to subscribe to emails as well.

2 Likes
5

With the current workflow one expects to be able to work on the draft until it’s committed. Change the type, edit the description, etc. That could become messy if everybody gets notified as soon as the draft is saved. Perhaps there should be an additional step required, maybe

  1. save (no notification)
  2. publish (notification happens)
  3. commit.
5 Likes
6

Just because multiple curators might be editing at the same time? That seems unlikely to be an issue, and it would be just as likely if you specifically mentioned top IDers.

That’s sort of what I was suggesting here.

Unless you mean the draft couldn’t be edited after it was published? Only deleted?

1 Like
7

Right, I missed that you had an explicit step there that made the notification happen. Looks good then.

2 Likes
8

Ahhh I see I see, I didn’t know that. I get so many dashboard notifications that anything there quickly becomes drowned out unfortunately so I’ve never seen one

1 Like
9

And show notifications in followers’ dashboards when curators draft or make taxon changes.