When uploading images on the web, observations are stuck for a long time on the message “Uploading metadata…”. This seems to be misleading, AFAICT it is actually uploading the photo when this message is displayed. If the message was changed to “Uploading photo…” or similar it wouldn’t be as misleading, and would indicate what steps the user could actually take to reduce the loading time (i.e. reduce photo size or improve connection speed).
It’s a phrase that’s used to cover both cases - the photo does need to be uploaded, then the metadata parsed on the server and displayed in the browser. To me it’s a bit of six of one, half dozen of the other.
Perhaps, but i found myself waiting and waiting, thinking the problem was the metadata, whereas if it had said “loading file” with the size, or something like that, i might have twigged to the need to make the pic smaller. By no means a major deal, but once i found out, i’ve started downsizing all my pix, wh/ shd be less of a load on the servers for storage too. Still, not a biggie
I agree. I even did a test where I stripped all metadata from the image and then tried uploading it. It still tells me “Loading metadata” even when there isn’t any. So it’s just uploading the image.
a little off topic, but after loading a bunch of observations over the CNC, i was surprised to find that iNaturalist seems to have at least 2 different kinds of processes(?) that pick up stuff to be uploaded. a lot of my observations were in Memorial Park in Houston, and i upload via the web on a connection that is not super fast. most of the time, the location would pop up in the observation more or less right away, or within a few seconds, and it would show as “Washington Avenue Coalition / Memorial Park…”, and then the photo would continue loading. but every once in a while, the location would not appear until the photo seemed to be fully loaded, and in these cases, the location would finally display as “Harris County…”. it seemed to be random, maybe with a ratio somewhere between 6:1 and 3:1 the former vs the latter. i don’t know if this is a bad thing, but i was just surprised that there were 2 different behaviors. i would normally expect systems to behave more consistently.
technically, i don’t think you can strip all metadata from a photo. you’ll always have at least things like file date and image size. but i agree that “loading metadata” isn’t the best way to describe what’s happening.
