Q's on Identify mode behavior

General
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I am still confused by the behavior of the Identify mode with respect to when reviewed observations are eliminated and the page(s) refreshed. So I have some questions.

The fundamental issue is: When/how is the queue of unreviewed observations refreshed, either explicitly or in the background. The current behavior is baffling. I’ll try to break this down into some small questions on specific actions. All of these questions refer to the Identify mode, with or without a selected taxon, location, or other filters.

FWIW, I work on an older MacBook Air laptop with OS 10.11.6 and the latest Chrome available for that system (103.0.5060.134 (Official Build) (x86_64)). But I’m seeing the same basic (confusing) behavior using Safari or Firefox.

Q1. What does the “View More” actually accomplish? I assume it refreshes the queue, eliminating Reviewed observations. Does it also add very recently uploaded observations now needing ID? IF I am several pages into an ID session, where does it reposition me?

Q2. When switching to a different page of observations (e.g. page 1 to page 2, or page 10 to 11, or any change in pages)–without refreshing the selection–are recent new observations (needing ID) being added in the background to the front end of the queue? Sometimes when I go from one page to the next in sequence, I see a carryover of one or a few observations now shown first on the following page which had been the last ones displayed on the previous page. The only explanation I can guess is that new observations were added to the front of the list, i.e. at the beginning of page 1, which pushed subsequent observations along the queue.

Q3. If I “Mark All As Reviewed” at the bottom of an ID page, and move on to the next page, is there a background refresh of observations in queue? I see that if I mark a page thus, and either go back a page OR refresh the current page, a revised set of unreviewed observations is displayed. IF I mark all on a page as reviewed and immediately navigate to the next page (not using “View More”), will I miss earlier observation in the queue which I didn’t review?

The direction I’m heading is that when I open an ID session, I want that set of observations to be “sticky”, i.e. not changing until I explicitly request a refresh or reset. Page changes and marking things as reviewed within a session should not automatically or immediately result in a refresh. After I understand the expected behavior of the ID mode better, I may put in an explicit Feature Request for this functionality.

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I agree it can be a challenge to navigate. Not an answer to your Q’s, but I bypass all of these issues by working from the last page towards the first when sorted by date added or by date observed. Working from the last page toward the first is not the same as sorting the search results in reverse chronology. My work around doesn’t work when there are hundreds of pages (200 observations per page), but it usually makes it work so I don’t have to think about the “view more unreviewed” button or losing newly added observations in my review process.

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This has been discussed a lot on the forum so you may be able to find specific answers in other threads. You seem to understand it, and most of the answers to your questions are yes. Reviewed observations are removed before the new refreshed pages are loaded. I think increasing the number of observations per page or sorting by date ascending will mostly solve your problem.

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FWIW this isn’t always the case for me. I think basically the observations marked as reviewed may not be fully indexed when you hit “View More”, so your next page of search results sometimes include observations you’ve just marked as reviewed.

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Oh interesting. I think I see that, but the observations aren’t grayed out so I guess I didn’t consider them reviewed. It only takes a couple seconds and usually reloading makes them go away anyway.

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Well, I searched through a lot of topics and couldn’t find answers to my specific questions.

7

Tony, I never hit the “View More” button. I just navigate with the numbered page buttons at the bottom of a set. My Q1 above is still unanswered. What happens with that button?

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How would this be done? I don’t see any option or button to choose the number of observations to display. Am I overlooking some option? The number of observations on the Identify page seems to be fixed at 30 for my system, whether I view them in larger or smaller thumbnails.

9

You do it by adding it to the URL.
See here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki-part-2-of-2/18792

" To change the number of observations displayed per page in Identify, add &per_page= followed by a number up to 200."

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They might not have answers to your specific questions, but here are some other topics:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identify-mode-page-break/11219
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identifying-annoyances/50576
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/previously-not-shown-observations-are-shown-after-refreshing-the-page/36740
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identify-move-to-next-page-skips-some-unidentified-observations/53170
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identified-and-reviewed-observations-not-disappearing-when-identify-page-is-refreshed/3763

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Thanks for those links, @thomaseverest. My search of all topics clearly fell short.

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I like to sort by “Random” so that’s often my only choice.

I honestly don’t know, I’m sorry.

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“View More” is a fresh call for page 1 of your query. New observations are added, if you have it set to not show reviewed, then reviewed obs will be removed, if you have it set to not show RG, then anything that has converted to RG since the start of your session is removed, etc.

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The way it seems to work for me is that when you click “View More”. The ones marked “reviewed” drop out and everything moves up in the queuqe.

If at the end of the page and all on that page are “reviewed”, then those obs drop off and the second page becomes the 1st page.

If all on the page are not marked “reviewed”, then reviewed items will be dropped and following items move up in the queue to fill in.

I don’t think that “very recently uploaded observations” show up until you refresh, but not really sure.

When I have reviewed all, and hit refresh quickly, sometimes the last on reviewed will show up again. as tiwane mentioned **the observations marked as reviewed may not be fully indexed when you hit “View More”

When in doubt, “refresh”

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15

I appreciate all of these subsequent explanations of Identify behavior. I find all of the shifting and background refreshing very confusing when trying to work systematically through a set of observations. It ought to be simpler. I’ll think about this some more and may put in a Feature Request. Thanks again to all responders.

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16

I agree, particularly if one does not have a workflow that includes marking all observations on a page as “reviewed” before moving on to the next page, it makes it difficult to ensure that one in fact sees all the observations in a set.

The workaround that I use is to start at page 10 of the results and then work forward to page 1, then jump back to page 20 and work forward until I reach the unreviewed observations I have already seen (this may be page 10, or page 5 or whatever, depending on how many observations per page I reviewed and thus cleared from the list in the last pass).

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I Mark as Reviewed, but Follow the obs I want to come back to (or to see what taxon specialists add there in future)

Even if you start with the oldest observed date, you can still get … a batch of From My Archives and the goal posts shift again.

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The only way to make it hold every page static while you work through a session is to have all of your results cached when you start. That would require a ton of resources and doesn’t seem like something that’s likely to be implemented.

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