Search doesn't work

Bug Reports
1

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Mac

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About): Web

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Safari

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: Default search page when the filter link is clicked

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Nothing

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: Upload an observation and identify it to species.

Step 2: Someone else rejected the species.

Step 3: Add a tag with the species name.

Step 4: Search for the tag just entered.

It seems that the entry to search for tags does not produce any results if those results match only observations where that species was rejected. Example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/61485454#activity_identification_bc5fc5a0-5df8-407b-85cd-5eafee4f34cc

I should be able to search by the tag I entered using the tag search field.

2

The box labeled “Description/Tags” searches on 4 things: the description/notes field, the tags, the taxon name, and the place description. If you limit it to just tags by adding &search_on=tags to the URL, your observation is 15th in the list.

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image1103Ă—1143 124 KB

More details here.

3 Likes
3

@victorengel Is it possible that you misspelled the word in the search? I notice that it’s misspelled in your comment.

1 Like
4

Boy is that counterintuitive!!! Limiting the search to just tags should produce a result of just those observations with tags that match. NOT limiting the search to just tags should produce those AND the hits to the other fields it is searching for. Especially when the field description is Descriptions/tags. I included the name in both tags and descriptions, and it didn’t pop up. What actually is the logic here? Search for all the fields but reject the results because … ?

I shouldn’t have to remember how to modify a URL manually when I’m following what’s labeled in the UI.

P.S. My search was limited to my ID (I was searching my observations) so it was coming up with nothing since I have no other observations with that ID.

5

Hmmm - there must have been a glitch in the system. I just tried it again using the filter screen, and it comes up.

6

There is often a short delay while the system indexes information newly added to observations. If your first search was attempted immediately after adding the tag, the indexing necessary to support the search may not have completed yet.

3 Likes
7

In your step 4, you say “Search for the tag JUST entered”… If you were searching right after adding the tag, be aware that new observations (or newly amended observations) will typically take several minutes to get indexed in the local search engine.

2 Likes