[Resolved] Old Traditional Project Cannot be Changed to Collection Project

Bug Reports
1

I would like to change the San Diego Invasive Species Watch project into a collection project which is what I desired to do from its inception in 2017. I recently found out that “Collection” projects are now an option when making a new project. However I am unable to change the status of the SD Invasive Species Watch from “Assessment” to “Collection”
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Am I missing the option in the “edit project” page or is this feature not available yet?

2

I think I remembered that, when they anounced the new (collection) type projects they sad that one has to contact the admins/support to make the conversion between project types.

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3

On traditional projects that would easily convert into a collection project, I believe you do see that option when editing the project. I think the issue here is that the only rule in the San Diego Species Watch project right now is that observations must have a photo or sound. So if you turned it into a collection project as-is, it would be a project that shows every observation on iNaturalist that has media, which would be huge.

You might get the prompt to change it into a collection project if you added rules that the observations must be made in San Diego county and must be introduced species. That last one assumes, of course, that all the observations you’re looking to have in your project are of species that are actually marked as introduced in San Diego or CA or the US on iNaturalist.

Alternatively, you could just make a new collection project with all of those rules and it will pull in all the old observations from your traditional project (assuming they all meet the rules) plus all the other observations on iNat that also meet those rules. And then delete the old project.

4

Yes, but we soon enabled that tool for the traditional project’s admin. If your projects terms and rules are directly translatable to the observation requirements of a collection project, then you will see a yellow banner at the top of the Edit project page (provided you are the project’s admin). I think the issue here, as @kestrel pointed out, is that its “must have Media” rule does not have a direct analog in collection projects. Your options are:

  • remove that rule from the current project, save, and then go back to its Edit project page, and you should be able to convert it. Once its converted, you can choose “Must have photo” when you edit the collection project.

  • start a new collection project with the observation requirements you want, and delete the traditional project.

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5

Thank you all so much for your help! It was, in fact, the media rule that was preventing me from making the transition. However, I decided not to convert the project due to the loss of access to obscured coordinates. I did end up making a new collection project for San Diego Invasive Animals and will be curating both projects. Thanks again for the help.
-NN

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6

Heh, yes, that was option 2a that I should have added. ;-)

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