Something is off with the observation and species count

[cmeckerman]

Something seems to be off with the observation and species counts.

I use iNaturalist in my classroom and so I look at student observations and they are supposed to make a certain number of observations but the number is different in several places.

For example, I will use a student example. At https://www.inaturalist.org/people/wachnin you can see that it says that the student has 15 observations and 6 species. But if you click on their observations it says 12 observations and 11 species.

I keep track of their observations in a project at https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=83623&ttl=120&v=1600533510000&place_id=any&verifiable=any&view=observers that captures all of their observations and it says that the student has 13 observations (I can understand it if had less because of non-wild observations but not more).

The actual number of observations is 12 if you count but not sure why it is not correct in the other places.

I have been grading my students observations this week and this is just an example. I have observed this problem with several of the observation numbers and so it is definitely not a one off.

[cmeckerman]

I think I figured it out. Playing around with the filters helped me display the correct number. I apologize for the bug report, I just hadn’t run into this particular issue before.

[Star3]

I think it’s been announced before that there are problems with the counts on the profile pages (unless I am conflating that with the issues on lists).

I see an actual number of 13 on their observations (both in the header and by physically counting).
No idea why you see 12, though.

[malisaspring]

I think this is due to a recent change on the observation page. It no longer shows casual observations automatically.

See: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=wachnin&place_id=any&verifiable=any
vs https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=wachnin

Hopefully they switch it back to where the &verifiable=any is the default when clicking on a users observation… Otherwise, you should be able to add &verifiable=any at the end of the url to get the full number, but that might be onerous to do with every single student

[jwidness]

The student has a total of 15 observations, but 2 of them are casual and thus aren’t picked up by the project, which is set to only Research Grade or Needs ID. I’m not sure where you’re seeing 12, I’m seeing either 13 or 15 depending on where I look.

The species count is calculated differently in different places on the website. More info here.

@malisaspring

I think this is due to a recent change on the observation page. It no longer shows casual observations automatically.

That’s a sort of misleading statement. The Explore page always defaulted to only verifiable observations. The change is that most places that used to go to inaturalist.org/observations/username (which shows all observations, not just verifiable) now instead go to www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=username. More info here.