Problem creating a custom project list for a traditional project

I have created a traditional project and want to restrict the observations to specific taxa. I understand the way to do this is to create a custom project list. When I edit the project I see a box called “Project List” but when I click inside it nothing happens. So how does one populate this custom list? Help!

I’m not sure if Project List is the way to achieve what you want but you can select must be in taxon under observation rules. I just tried and added two specific unrelated taxon to a mock up project. I’m sure your could add more taxa to your project that way. I would be interested to see what others say as far as project list is concerned.

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Yes, the key is in the sentence “This can be useful to restrict observations added to your project to those matching taxa on your list via the “must be taxon on the project list” rule.”

In the section above the Project List box, there is an “Observation Rules” box. You must add the taxa you want to restrict to as rules there.

Project instructions are here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/managing-projects#traditional

The “Project List” option is really only a convenience thing I think that shows a checklist of species for your project accessible via a tab like the one seen here on the right side:

I don’t think it changes how the project itself really works.

Thanks for the help. I am able to add taxa one at a time via the “be in taxon” rule. But what I was trying to do was use the “be of a taxon on the project list” rule. This seemed like a quicker way to add the whole list in one go. Only, I don’t see how you create this project list. Because the “be in taxon” rule does work, it is probably not worth pursuing the project list approach. I just thought I was missing something simple.

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You should still be able to use the project list to filter taxa, see here.

After your project is created, you go to the project page and follow the link to the Project List, where you can batch edit the list.

This is indeed the kind of batch listing I was expecting. I did go to the Project List page and clicked everything I could, but nothing brings up the “Add a Batch of Taxa” dialog box that is shown in the post jwidness sent. User bouteloua does not say exactly how this dialog was activated. I’m stumped. Here is the project list page I see:

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That is all I am seeing too in my test project.

Incidentally, I do have some test observations in the project. But even these do not show up in the Project List page.

It looks like you must have Curator or Manager privileges in order to batch edit the Project List, which is probably a bug because Admins are supposed to have all the privileges of Curator/Manager, plus more.

image

At any rate, the project Admin can’t easily get Curator/Manager status. Which means it takes two people to get to the batch edit screen. Person 1 creates the project and is the Admin, Person 2 joins the project, then is promoted to Curator or Manager by the Admin (Person 1). At that point, Person 2 can batch edit the Project List.

Alternatively, Person 1 can make Person 2 the Admin, and Person 2 can give Curator/Manager status to Person 1, then also give back Admin. Then Person 1 will be have both Admin and Curator privileges, including batch edit on the Project List.

Out of curiosity, is there a reason you’re using a Traditional Project over a Collection Project?

Ah ha! I was beginning to suspect there were parts of the system I didn’t have access to, but this didn’t make sense since I was the admin. All clear now. As to your question, I chose the traditional project because I wanted to add an observation field that participants had to fill out for the observation to be accepted into the project. Basically, what I am trying to do is port an existing C/S project that is currently done via Excel sheets over to iNat, so that the data serve more than one purpose.

Pretty sure this is caused by this bug: https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/3402

An update has been released to prevent it from happening again and any project which suffered from this issue should be fixed as well, so I’m going to close this.