Observation showing two active IDs from the same user

I’ve been able to replicate twice more. All you have to do is go to the identify page, click on the photo part of an observation, hit the agree button there, and then go back and hit the agree button on the outside. I’ll make a quick video detailing the steps. In the meantime, here are the two observations (with screenshots) of what I was able to replicate.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39064950

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39064942

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Well, it seems you can’t upload videos, so here it is in pictures (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39065356):

The one circled in red is the one I’m doing it to.

I then hit the agree button that is circled in red.

I then very quickly exited out of the picture view (by clicking on the gray area outside it) and hit the other agree button circled in red.

This yielded my double ID.

I was also able to do the same thing to https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39065355.

I also tried this on a few other observations, but it didn’t work. This usually works a little over half the time.

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Thanks for the replication information! I think staff will want to take a look at this.

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@abersbird thank you for the detailed instructions. However, I haven’t been able to replicate this on Firefox on my computer. Which browser are you using, and do you have any idea how fast your internet connection is? I have a pretty quick one which might prevent this from happening.

I was using Chrome and have a moderately fast internet connection.

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I can replicate sometimes so I think it is speed dependant. From New Zealand on a chrome browser relatively fast internet.


https://inaturalist.nz/observations/39197540
https://inaturalist.org/observations/39197540

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Heh, can’t do it in Chrome either. When I click agree in the pop-up modal, then close the modal and try to click agree on the grid view, I can’t click anything until the “Agree” stops spinning:

image

What do you see when you close the modal? Do you see the arrow animation next to agree? Are you able to click on it while it’s spinning?

I’m clicking the agree in the thumbnails before it starts the animated graphic.

It seems to do the double IDs if I don’t move the mouse immdeiately after clicking the thumbnail agree? Maybe it’s a state verification event triggered by the mouse over instead of mouse click?

I have noticed in the past that if I, say, delete an ID from the observation view in a different tab, and then go back to the Identify page/tab the deleted ID is still there (logical, nothing to tell it otherwise), and then a left arrow to go to previous observation followed by a right to bring back the target observation, will logically show the correct current state… but if I toggle a reviewed setting, it seems to figure out what the current state is, so there is definitely some sort of state checking happening within the modal.

[edit]
just noting observations that I have tested on to go back and “tidyup” after we finish exploring this:
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/39199341
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/39199061

I’m able to replicate this as well, see: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39207201

Is this something one would do often, though, click agree and then click agree again on the same observation’s thumbnail?

I don’t think so! Nifty little trick for when there is an absentee identifier and you need that “one more to tip it…”. Maybe call it a “feature” :)

[edit: this was a joke by the way, I do not advocate using it for this purpose!]

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Interesting. It’s true that the sparrow @alexis_orion linked showed 4 votes when I first opened it. But forcing the observation to re-index by checking and unchecking in the DQA removed the duplicate vote; now it only has 3. (Sorry if you wanted to keep the double ID up.)

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I have also occasionally had this exact bug. Never tried to replicate it though.
For me at least it tends to happen when my connection is just a little slow

Was able to duplicate it just now. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39273204

I was also able to do it in reverse order (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39357074):

Seems like this is fairly easy to replicate intentionally. But I think more to the point, it does happen accidentally too, along with other redundant ID situations. So I’m going to shamelessly advocate again for this feature request:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/prevent-duplicate-identifications/6498

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It seems I can do it another way also. If you click on the photo of the observation, bringing up:

And then bring up the actual obs itself on a separate tab (say https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39365763, the one I was trying this on). Clicking agree in rapid succession on both will yield a double ID. This is easier if you have your tabs separated into two different windows. Combining the first way and this way may yield a triple ID, but you’d have to be very fast.

In fact, it does yield a triple ID (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39367752):

Doing the same thing but having multiple windows open, may open the possibility of a near infinite amount of IDs by the same person (as long as they have enough screen space). This is relatively easy to exploit, if say someone is upset about their ID being mavericked, or are just frustrated with people contradicting them, and probably should be fixed as fast as possible.

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I don’t think there is any urgency on this. It doesn’t break iNat when it happens, for the most part you have to be consciously trying to do it, and any malicious use of the bug would likely land someone a suspension. As a community we have to conduct ourselves with a degree of good faith, and if we spot anyone making multiple IDs in this manner and they refuse to correct them after a fairly straight forward conversation, then that can hardly be viewed as good faith.

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It’s also pretty easy to undo, just by ticking and unticking one of the Data Quality Assessment items at bottom to force the observation to re-index. (Haven’t tried it on your example yet.) But it does end up cluttering the activity feed needlessly and creating confusion. Seems like a no brainer to just not allow this to happen in the first place.

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