Hey all!
Not sure how common this issue is and I think it’s happened to me before, but not on this scale and not consistently over an extended period of time. My public species total on the ‘Observers’ listing (under ‘Explore’) has been going down over a period of at least a couple days to a week, and I have no idea why. I think I first began noticing it a week or so ago, and I had something in the ballpark of just above 12,200 species. At that point, the drop was minor and I figured that it was due to just some taxonomic issues being worked out. However, as of today, I’ve dropped to 11,986 species (it was 12,086 yesterday, and I added a big batch of observations from Texas that included a fair amount of lifers) and I don’t know what’s been going on. As some folks suggested, I went and checked my captive/cultivated graded observations–they hadn’t really gone up from what I remembered/had assigned myself, and at the very least shouldn’t have accounted for a change of ~200 species.
Has anyone else experienced this over an extended time period before, and/or how one might go about reversing or fixing it? I recognize that the ‘My Observations’ species total is always just going to be different (lower, that is) than the '‘Observers’ listing, but I’ve never had this kind of extended drop before. I know that it’s really quite a trivial thing to be thinking about, but I do genuinely enjoy seeing the number go up, especially in response to batch uploads from big naturalist outings. I’ve also used it to set naturalist monthly/yearly goals for myself, so this definitely does bug me a little more than it should.
Any and all help and suggestions would be appreciated!