But I will be back when the Great Southern Bioblitz obs are queueing up ;~))
I’m not sure if a hash search is needed (I rarely find duplicates, and then I identify the one with the lower number and add a comment with that link to the higher one saying something like “duplicate of URL, please delete”). If somebody has too much time, one could run a hash algorithm over the image storage and look if there are many duplicates.
And since we also have the lazy-observer-problem, if the auto-detection-with-merge were implemented it should also look at the observer’s notes. I sometimes see observations in “unknown” that say “hongo” (spanish for fungus) or some chinese word that google translates into butterfly. They aren’t frequent, so I haven’t yet encountered the combination of both (i.e. duplicates with such notes), but I can imagine that an observer might intentionally upload an image of a flower with a beetle on it and have a different note in Chinese on them. Similar for placeholders.
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Please stop assuming laziness rather than any number of other reasons like poor internet connections or struggling with iNat’s interface (i.e., not realizing what field the ID needs to be entered into or that the typed text wasn’t correctly recognized by iNat as a taxon).
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Thanks for this. Are there any plans currently to enable combining observations on the website after they’ve been uploaded?
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Hi all,
I hope someone can expand a bit for me on @bugbaer 's helpful reply to Question 1, which reads:
“If you write anything in the notes with the ID, the system just gives the recipient an alert that there’s an ID, not that there’s a comment with it. Since a lot of people don’t follow up on every ID (especially if it’s agreeing/supporting), adding whatever you’re saying as a separate comment increases the chances people will actually see it. (I don’t believe comments in IDs are searchable either.)”
A. Does this apply to only Supporting IDs, or does it also apply to Leading and Improving IDs?
B. Is there no way to know if, in my own Notifications, someone else’s agreeing ID has a comment attached, unless I take the time to click on every one of these notifications? I like to read any/all comments, even if associated with an agreeing ID.
If this only applies for Supporting IDs, then I see I must change my habit of making an ID/comment combo and must first click Agree then make any comment I want to add in a separate box. I have seen some folks doing that and some folks doing like me and making an agreeing ID/comment combo, and I have not understood what the different end results were. So my thanks to @clockwood and @bugbaer for clarifying this for me, since the whole reason I add comments is for them to be read by the original poster and/or other subscribed IDers.
If the no-notification-of-comment also applies to leading and improving ID’s, then I’m puzzled as to why the design of the box would even include the “Tell us why…” section.
I frequently leave an ID/ comment combo with leading and improving IDs since I generally ID a few difficult groups of plants and am often making either the first ID to species or am disagreeing with the current ID and either suggesting another species or dropping the ID back to genus.
My apologies if I am asking something already covered elsewhere…I did find this discussion in a search but it didn’t clarify things for me:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/not-receiving-notifications-for-comments-associated-with-agreeing-ids/3937/23?page=2
Thanks in advance for any further clarification anyone can provide. I try to do careful ID work and I enjoy engaging in discussions with other iNatters about the IDs, but at the same time I want to learn how to make my iNatting effective and efficient.
Pros and cons. ID and separate comment means the taxon specialist gets twice as many notifications - and since we can’t yet manage notifications, that is a different source of friction.
@mention , ID and comment = 3 notifications.
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Yes I know, the notifications system is pretty nightmarish. I think I’d have long since given up quantity IDing if it were not for @pisum’s amazing iNaturalist Observations Update tool. Comments stand out immediately, even if accompanying an ID.
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Thank you @DianaStuder and @lynkos for your replies. Maybe at this point I’ll just keep doing about the same thing until I have a better understanding of it all! I’m not tech savvy like you gals :-)
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The Dashboard page does show the comments that go with an ID. So, it’s only that the notification doesn’t show you the comment text. For that reason, I always look at the Dashboard and will see every comment.
For duplicates, how important is it to link to the duplicate observation? The duplicates would not normally be difficult to find by viewing the observer’s observations. Most duplicates are directly adjacent. For this reason, I comment that it’s a duplicate, but don’t go through the trouble of cutting and pasting the duplicate link. Is that too lazy?
I was asked to add the duplicate link. So I do make the effort.
You have already done the clunky part of finding and noticing that it IS a duplicate. What is blindingly obvious at first glance, slides sideways when obs 1 goes straight to species with a taxon specialist. Obs 2 goes to a helpful broader ID - which gets lost. Obs 3 snarls with duplicate to Life and Casual.
Then I must use the observer’s calendar to retrieve the duplicates.
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I don’t think it’s required to do it, but I do. I think it may help the OP to find their own duplicates and see what the example is to avoid. Also,
so for me, it is worth the added few seconds to paste in the link.
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