While working on the Virtual Seed Library idea, I wound up creating an observation field viewer (used to show insect activity on plants offered through the library). The viewer requires a project_id and/or user_id and a comma delimited list of obs_fields.
In this case, I’m also telling it to “merge” the observation fields. The reason for this is that I’ve been bad at normalizing my own data! I use all sorts of fields when I see an insect on a plant. Was it nectaring, pollinating, resting, eating, or what? What was the insect doing there? Sometimes I’m not sure and don’t really care but it’s worth noting that for whatever reason, that insect was visiting that plant.
So… it’s useful to be able to merge and un-merge the data. If I navigate to the link above and click one of the obs_field id’s at the top, it filters out everything other than observations with that one obs_field. In this case, I clicked “498 - Nectar Plant”. This allows me to see only those instances where I chose to add a secondary observation where I perceived that the insect was nectaring on a plant…
Because I’ve now filtered out everything other than that one observation field (nectar plant), I can click a plant in the “Nectar Plant” column and only see the list of insects observed nectaring on that specific plant. In this case, I’ll choose “anise hyssop”. And now I can see all the insects I’ve perceived to have been nectaring at anise hyssop…
I can then select a specific insect and only see instances of that specific insect nectaring at that specific plant. All of this data is reachable through the iNat front-end but is organized and presented differently. It’s not realistic for iNat to imagine every possible scenario for presentment of inherently customizable user defined observation fields.
** alternative presentment is like the ropes hanging off the goodyear blimp. they’re probably important for something, but they aren’t the blimp. this is the core/custom model. inat is the core engine but maybe there should be endless customized presentment based on any specific use case.