It seems pretty common for people to not have figured out how to use the computer vision tool to help with identifying their own observations, as easy as it is. It would take fewer words to explain it to them if the words were the same on the apps and website.
The android app says “What did you see? View Suggestions”.
The website says “Species name”.
I’d probably use the app version, but I just want them to be the same.
It looks like that might involve a change to line 140 of ./inaturalist/app/webpack/observations/uploader/components/observation_fields_chooser.js from
I may have accidentally flagged this post, which I think is a terrific idea. I don’t see how to unflag it. I tried double clicking the flag, but no joy. I’m sorry.
This is a valid point, and I’d like to see a general conformity between the Apps and the website.
Many new users write a comment such as 'what is this beetle’ or ‘Can somebody help me with this plant?’, leaving the taxon field empty - instead of entering a coarse taxon suggestion themselves.
So when welcoming and replying to help these users, I first have to check how they uploded the observation - because in the (Android) App the field is called ‘Notes’ and on the web uploader ‘Description’.
Please make this congruent! It helps us to support new users.
This is how it looks on the website (uploader or editing): ‘Description’
It would also be nice if this taxon field had the same labels as when adding an identification to an existing observation. On the android app it says “Species Search”, and on the website it says “Species name”.
‘If you can identify your observations to even the level of plants / animals / fungi, that helps people who are more familiar to find your observation and help identify it. Also, iNaturalist has an incredibly capable computer vision system for suggesting identifications. To use it, just click on the first field of an observation or identification (labeled “What did you see?”, “Species name”, or “Species Search”), and it’ll give you its 10 best guesses. Its first guess was right on this one.’
Up to now we haven’t made a consistent effort to standardize across the three apps - Android, iOS, and Web. There are some upsides to doing this (e.g. easier to take advantage of native ‘ways of doing things’ etc.) but also down sides (having to explain each platform separately as you mention)
We’ve recently discussed (in the documentation topic) auditing iNat terminology and trying to come up with more standardized language across the platform. e.g. we currently throw terms around like species vs taxa pretty haphazardly across the platform. I think that would address what you want here.
but then again maybe doing this in isolation is relatively low hanging fruit rather than waiting for such a larger effort
