Could place and taxa filters be added to the search in projects, as they are for Identify?
It could be handy for a user to be able to search for existing projects to add their observations to. Currently, the only ways I know to search for projects are to:
guess at the right keywords in the project name/description (which can exclude global projects in a different language than the user’s), or
search observations in the same taxon and see if any of them are in any projects (for a broad taxon project like “Mammals of Texas”, that’s a lot of observations to check).
Or better yet, for projects in areas outside your “home base”! I went on vacation to Italy last year and wanted to add my observations to relevant Italian and European projects (especially my observations of invasive species). I don’t read Italian, and there’s no option to limit location, so finding projects with the current search was difficult.
E.g. for taxa: Global Bat Watch isn’t a collection project. If users who don’t read English could search for projects related to Chiroptera, they could find it more easily.
I would also like this very much (I would vote but have run out of votes).
There is a problem with ‘nested’ places though, and I’m not sure if this has been sorted or for how many places. For example, South Africa is not nested within southern Africa, so one has to search for both places. @tonyrebelo was this particular issue sorted out?
I know this isn’t the perfect solution, but there is a way to see nearby projects. Open the iNaturalist app and go to More>Projects>Nearby. That will pull up a list of projects by their proximity to your location. Hope that helps somewhat!
That could be handy. @rangertreaty50, does the nearby there apply to my current location, or to the observation’s location?
E.g., if I am looking to add an observation to projects and I am currently in a different location that I was when I made the observation, will the nearby look near me or near the observation?
I have a related question. How do I find places/projects created by other people? It’s not that I’ve not tried! I can create places/projects and see a list of places/projects worldwide on the “places” or “projects” pages. But after more than a month of looking I see only a place to search by name. For example, I called one place/project “Willet Park” but the park has several names, is located in a city (state, etc.), and so on. But how do I find all the places/projects in a county, state, etc. that other people have created? Can I find places for species species (since projects can be limited by species)?
No, you can currently only search for the species name or location name and hope it is in the project name or decription. You cannot search project rules/terms. That is precisely what this festure request is addressing and the exact reason I am suggesting this.
Yeah, I have the same problem. I finally got a dumb smart phone six months ago to use while I’m in China, but I thoroughly despise the concept of apps and avoid them as best I can. I have added exactly 0 to my phone since I consider it a phone and not a computer. GPS comes in useful when I get lost in China, but I found I could not use inaturalist.org in most places because it loads too slow on my fast computer (slow connections in some places in China). That said, my Chinese friends where shocked with no internet in Yellowstone and much of the American west. They complained because they could not get 5G service in most big cities including San Fran. However, to get back to the topic, I have yet to successfully search for ANY places near me. Perhaps there are none, but you would think Arkansas would have at least one (other than ones I create).
If you go to one of your observations on the website, under the map on the side of the observation there is a “Details” drop-down menu that will list most of the places that the observation falls into. That won’t help you find what projects are associated with the places though.
Thanks! I did that and found several for one site I visited yesterday! That’s a start. For one thing, I can check and see if “my” four projects have duplicated places.
This observation from yesterday was in the middle of nowhere on the Ozark National Forest, Sylamore District. It tells me “Missouri and vicinity” has three places!
Hi everyone,
I will take this one up. Same idea of being able to browse projects per location (and it can be by adding a pin on a map, listing all projects active to that pin).
There is also another filter to use, with the dates of the projects. When I look for a project today, one of the featured one is the city challenge 2020. Which was April 24-27. There are 500 pages of projects available. We just can’t surf through all those pages.