Sort observations alphabetically by species and place

On a desktop, you can sort the observation page by the date observed or added. Would it be difficult to make it so you can also sort A-Z on the species and place columns?
Thanks

Which page do you mean? There are two possibilities I can think of here, can you please provide a URL?

For taxon sorting, are you proposing that scientific names be used?

On this page you can sort by date added or date observed, so in my opinion the ability to sort any of those categories should be easy to implement. So I would like the ability to sort on the other categories of species or place. Thanks2019-07-21

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It used to be available there, but was removed as it did not work (too many problems dealing with localization, user name preferences etc).

I know this as I was the one who filed the bug reports about it not working, and as a result received the communication that the decision was to remove, not fix.

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If this were implemented, my suggestion would be to sort by whichever name, scientific or common, that the user’s account setting says to display first.

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Should be fixed. This is absolutely a valuable feature. What was the bug? Even if the order is not as expected, clustering the observations together is valuable. I would use sorting by name mostly to cluster. I note that you CAN click on a species view to group observations by species, but, unfortunately, the images shown there are the default species image, not the observation image(s). Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be a feature to click on it to expand all the observations for that species. Also, I don’t think it shows observations not ID’d to species level.

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Did this ever get sorted in any way, even as an order_by added to the URL? Because you’d have thought sorting by scientific name at least would be an incredibly minor thing to do, just a different sort by phrase. Sorting by family then taxon I would expect to be relatively straightforward. I understand localised name relating to one’s settings would require an extra adjustment.
The main thing is to be able to see observations in a systematic order with the same taxa grouped together not scattered apart. (This isn’t covered by the Species tab because you’re looking for example to see if you’ve missed out uploading any observations, and the species tab is not itself in scientific order either so that taxa in a Genus group together.)
David

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As a newbie, this feature would be very helpful to me. Being able to see species in the same genera next to each other would really help me learn the differences between similar species (along with copious study of Jepson!). If the feature could be added on the Observation screen’s (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=table) Filters Menu option “Sort By” that would be great. If instead, it could only be implemented as a new variable in the query “order_by=” that would work as well. As mentioned previously, there could be a variable that would allow order_by as either the scientific or common name. Thanks!

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Bumping this request! It would really be useful to find duplicates!

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I found this thread when searching for “how to sort observation list by ‘name’ column.” I agree that this would be incredibly useful in all sorts of ways, to learners and experts alike. I’m a learner. This morning I was looking at a plant and thinking “this reminds me of that one I posted a while ago, which an expert identified as a [whatever]. But I’m not sure.” I don’t know exactly when I made the old observation, so I clicked on “name” at the top of the column – thinking it would sort alphabetically, allowing me to go directly to the observation I had in mind. I was surprised to find that date sort is the only option!

Alphabetical sorting wouldn’t require programmers to grapple with common names any more than already programmed in. And being able to see the range of, say, “eupatorium I’ve found near this location” would be incredibly helpful. If someone else prefers to see “bonesets I’ve found near this location,” the alphabet will group observations just as effectively.

Please consider!

Lisa

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There is a separate request to display my images.

based on your description of the problem, it seems like the ability to sort this way still exists, but you have to invoke the sort order yourself using URL parameters. ex: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=table&order_by=species_guess.

it still has the same problems you noted though because of the way the underlying field which is sorted on works.

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What is the use case for alphabetical sorting? If you have observations of, say,
Blue Bead Lily
Blue-footed Booby
Blue Forget-me-not
Blue-fronted Dancer
It is a monocot, a bird, a dicot, and a damselfly, with no relationship to each other except that their names begin with “Blue.” I am trying to understand why this is preferable to how our dynamic life list sorts? So that the Blue-fronted Dancer comes out next to the Variable Dancer?

@jasonhernandez74, because people who want to sort by name know the name they are looking for. For those of us who use scientific names (which I do as a relative newbie, to help me learn relationships among the things I observe) the problem you flag wouldn’t come up. And even with common names, someone who’s wondering – as I was – “is this organism relevantly similar to the [blue-bead lily, or whatever] I saw a while ago?” would be just fine sorting by “blue,” scanning for their blue-bead lily observation, and clicking on it.

Admittedly, I had not heard of the “dynamic life list.” I just looked up the blog post describing it and can’t make heads or tails of it. Sorting alphabetically by name would be worlds easier for those of us still learning.

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I assume you’re referring to this page, correct? Please always include URLs of the pages you’re referring to, it makes it easier for us to all communicate.

If so, you could use the search field:

In which case you’d get these results.

@tiwane , thank you for the suggestion, and apologies for not including a URL. I always start at Your Observations , which does not show a “search” function. It would not have occurred to me to look for “search” under “edit” – but then again, I didn’t know about that “batch edit” feature, nor indeed about that drop-down menu under the profile photo! (I guess I got into an iNat rut fairly quickly.) I usually just edit individual observations, and recent uploads. Thanks for the work-around!

Lisa

You can use the search box top left - to search for anything within iNat - scientific or common name, people or places or projects.
When you get to taxon page you can click Yours to get to your own obs, if you have any for that taxon.

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Excellent point. Searching for doublons, which species have already been observed, etc.
Surprising that it hasn’t been done yet, at least by scientific name?

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