For some reason the iNat uploader is extremely shy. If there’s even a slight hint of a less than perfect internet connection, it will immediately terminate the uploading and leave the page full of “could not be uploaded” observations. Often times it’s very much like swiss cheese. Half of the observations work, but the others don’t. Repeating the same failed upload generally fails again for 5, 10 or more tries before it finally sticks. It’s a horribly time consuming process having to scroll down, check every hole, and find that specific file to try and upload it again and again. Can we not have the uploader be a little more patient? Or a retry button, at least?
This applies to Windows Edge, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox as I’m seeing it.
It happens with any number. I have tested it with just 10 and the result is the same. I suspect my internet connection is being interrupted in very short milisecond increments. It might be to do with the wifi being shared among the house. Regardless, it’s very annoying as an issue, and as a core feature it seems like there should be an easy way to refresh an upload attempt.
For those unfamiliar, here is what this issue looks like. I started with a blank page and uploaded 10 photos as a test. Notice how I upload the same photo 3 times and 2/3 fail with no particular reason as to why. On average a failed upload takes me 14 retries before it succeeds, and of the time I spend uploading, 40-50% of that time is having to go through the upload page, find the failed uploads, and continually drag the file in until it works. It’s really annoying and highly time-consuming.
Also noting that iNat’s “decision” to mark an upload as failed is apparently nearly instant. It doesn’t even give it a full second to figure things out. That’s most of the problem.
I also have had this problem many times. I upload in batches of 30-50 photos, and if I’m spending an evening uploading several such batches, I almost always have at least one batch that I re-upload because some of the photos failed to upload.
I find it faster to close the page and re-drag the same set of files, which I’ve left selected, into the upload page, than to record the file numbers of the missing files, select just those, and drag them in.
This happens to me during every batch I upload, whether it’s 10 obs or 40. I guess my internet is a little jittery too. Maybe it’s my ignorance but I think it’s bizarre behavior for the upload to fail during brief connection drops. Other upload interfaces across the internet simply pause until the connection is back–why doesn’t this one do that?
Does anyone here move the photos on your computer while they’re still being uploaded in the browser? That’s caused me issues before, although I imagine you’re not doing this.
On my end, my testing has shown it’s not related to that, nor anything to do with the files themselves (I can upload nearly blank 1kb files and the same issue occurs). It’s evidently entirely related only to internet connection.
I do still hope that some more “patience” can be coded into the uploader here, I’m genuinely not exaggerating when I say it could cut a third of my upload time if it was expedited. For a whole day of photo uploads that’s a pretty big deal on my end.
Similar experience - number of files doesn’t seem to be a direct factor. Indirectly more photos means more time which means more time for connection to fail. Connection reliability varies a lot where I’m based - it can be weeks with few problems, but then suddenly it’s cutting out every 5-15 minutes.
Having to drag and drop replacement files for the records with errors is a bit of a hassle especially when photos are combined and the photo with error is hidden behind another. A retry button would be welcome.
(Just to add: occasionally an upload fails seemingly randomly with no apparent connection problem - yesterday 1 photo out of 200+.)
If possible, can someone experiencing this open up their browser’s Network panel (View → Developer → Developer Tools and click on Network. Then drag and drop some photos and, if any of them fail, please send us a screenshot of the entire panel?
Below is a a screenshot of part of the panel, showing where to click in “Network” and that we’re interested in the Status column, espcially for any errors that show there they should be red).
Please email it to help@inaturalist.org and don’t post publicly, it might contain some token information that wouldn’t be good to have on the forum.
It would also be really helpful to know, within the minute, when you go the error message, so we can take a look in our server logs and try to find the error.
