One thing that seems to have changed recently is how quickly the new observations are being IDed.
I don’t get time to fill the annotations because people are jumping on the posts within 2-3 minutes
I DONT LIKE IT!
Please give me time to switch from uploading on the app to the internet (still using my phone) to fill my own observations.
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I uploaded a common plant in bloom 2 days ago and it’s been untouched by other users. Want to swap places?
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2 days is ok with me… I know I have stuff lingering for much longer
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The new app seems to be drawing in quick IDs on new posts. That isn’t always a good thing.
I mean quick as in I don’t get time to upload and switch from app to internet to fill out my own annotations or notes on my own observations. This is happening within 1-5 minutes of posting.
GIVE ME TIME TO DO IT MYSELF.
Please start checking how long a post has been up before responding.
Some folks upload as unknown and check those times too. That happens with the new option of uploading more than one observation at a time. Give them a couple hours, at least, so they can have a chance to ID on their own post. It’s not a dang race!
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I don’t think this has anything to do with the app.
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I do, although it’s more about the speed of responses, and how it’s being used.
It started with the new app, which lets one now upload more than one observation at a time.
When I do this, the first few observations are on line before the last few, meaning it does take more time to get to the internet portion to add what the orginal observer needs/wants to add. We may want to add our own id, annotations, projects, observation fields… before someone else gets there.
If this is how it’s going to be I’ll drop the convenience of several observations at once and slow back down to one at a time.
Responses coming in within the first 10 minutes is not needed.
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I understand your concern. I usually go back at least a day or so when IDing because otherwise I may end up overlapping with others working on the same observations and that is not an effective division of labor. However, many people simply sort starting with the newest first, resulting in the situation you are describing.
Nonetheless, it is not inherently connected with the app.
I find it hard to think of any reason why other people’s behaviors would be affected by which app you are using. It doesn’t make sense: once the observations are online anyone can view them; until they are online they cannot. It does not matter how you uploaded them. People do not see observations more quickly just because you used the app.
I sometimes batch upload with the web uploader and find that some of them have been annotated before I have a chance to go through them, so it is not a phenomenon unique to the app. In my experience it is mostly a question of who happens to be online and looking at observations at the same time I am uploading.
If it takes you longer to switch from app to browser when you batch upload (thus there being more of a delay between upload and editing), this is not about other people IDing your observations more quickly, but about your workflow being different – i.e., your behavior has changed, not theirs. In that case, it seems to me that there is something you can do about this – simply do not batch upload, or maybe you could try uploading in offline mode and then syncing and see if that gives you more control.
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It is my opinion . Thought that’s what the topic was.
I’m not trying to dismiss your experience. But it is helpful to make sure that the source of the problem is correctly diagnosed, because this affects what actions can be taken. E.g. an issue that is not actually caused by the app cannot be solved by changes to the app interface.
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I agree with the comments above that the posts about the speed of IDs and annotations aren’t inherent to the new app. The comments were also distributed across two threads, so I condensed them here and titled as best as I could to keep this conversation together and also to keep threads on the new app focused on those topics.
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Nothing about the app should give it more weight on the Identify page. By default it’s just ordered by date added.
If you’re talking about batch import, you can always just save an observation if you want to work on it later before uploading, while still going through the other observations in the batch:
Then just upload the observation whenever you’re ready to. You can choose to upload observations individually or in a batch.
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I’m guilty of this for a few species. I go to the web site, pop into Identify, and search by the species I’m familiar and Need ID. If I see a few, I ID them quickly and add some Annotations. Some identifiers just ID them and don’t add annotations. So once in a while I search for observations without a specific annotation.
In my case, I’m just trying to keep a species I like as complete as possible.
On the other side of the coin, there are users that upload observations and don’t annotate them. And when that occurs, we end up with the likes of Coccinella or Lepidoptera.
A solution for this would be to upload observations in draft mode from the phone, and access them from the website. Or maybe the observation could have a “Publish Delay” timer to delay making it public to others for 10, 20, 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, features like those don’t exist and would need to be voted on by the community.
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So the app effectively has the draft mode that website users asked for back in April 2019.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/create-a-draft-mode-for-uploaded-observations/2538
I ID and annotate what is uploaded today.
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I don’t know as there is a way to tell if you just uploaded from the app or uploaded from your computer at home.
I’m out. I’ll figure my own way through it.
Thanks.
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Maybe you’re just in too popular of a place. Here in Vietnam many observations linger for years with no IDs, especially plants and arthropods. Similarly, it’s taken decades for some of my South America observations of get IDs.
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i’m not sure why this would be an issue, but i ID before i upload and probably most of my observations don’t get IDs for hours, days, or ever.
from what i’ve seen, this is most users.
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I have noticed an increase in IDs on my observations too, but I thought it was just a side-effect of the German Botanical Garden BioBlitz. (By the way, If you want to ID some older observations: The Botanical Gardens of Bonn are just a few additional species away of reaching top 3 in terms of biodiversity here. Soooo… :P).
I confess of being a “hasty IDer” too, though, as I just leave the filters set to “sort by date uploaded - descending”. I notice that quite a lot of people just upload without adding an ID (not even a broad one) and add a very specific ID later on. I think they and us hasty IDers live in a constant state of mild co-annoyance.
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Will saving it in this manner allow annotating it? I believe the original complaint was because, when using the app, you can’t add annotations until after uploading.
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