Verifiable=false in url: strange behaviour

[reuvenm]

The verifiable=false parameter works in urls:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&verifiable=false returns 4.8 millions observations

If I then try to filter by birds, the resulting url changes to “verifiable=any”:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&verifiable=any&iconic_taxa=Aves HOWEVER it still returns only unverifiable observations (800 thousand of them)

If I hit the back button in my browser, I go back to the url:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&verifiable=false but it is now showing me both verifiable and unverifiable observations! (all 35 million)

If I then refresh the page I will go back to seeing only 4.8 million unverifiable observations, despite still having the same URL.

To summarise:

• verifiable=false will change to verifiable=any in urls whenever I change another filter in the UI, but it will still only show unverifiable observations
• This mismatch between the url and the observations shown will remain through multiple filter changes
• As soon as I go back in my browser, the page will now show both verifiable and unverifiable observations, even if going back to the original page with “verifiable=false” in the url.

[tonyrebelo]

It dont know if this is related, but I will put it here anyway.

Why are subspecies not verifiable?

e.g.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=149496&subview=grid&view=species
gives

but if I click off verifiable I get
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=149496&subview=grid&verifiable=any&view=species

Not the position of Protea caffra changes from 32 observations with verifiable=true to 10 observations with verifiable=any

If I click on the “10 observations” line in the verifiable=any screen, I get::
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=149496&subview=grid&verifiable=any&view=&taxon_id=129721&page=
which displays 32 observations comprising:

• 5 observations research grade & 27 needs id
• 28 observations ID’d as subspecies falcata & 4 as subspecies caffra
• 17 have more than one image & 15 have only one image
  Simply: I am baffled by what is happening. Where does the 32 (logical) vs 10 (how does iNat get to 10?) come from.

Note that this may change soon, as I am expecting confirmation of the IDs as South Africa wakes up.

[pisum]

@reuvenm

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&verifiable=false

it’s not quite the same functionally, but i bet there’s a common underlying technical cause in the thing i noted here:

@pisum

this is more of a minor bug report, but i just wanted to note it in case the revamp of the page doesn’t automatically address it. here are the steps to reproduce:

1. open the explore page
2. query for any taxon that you have previously observed. (i picked Marsh Wren.) this should pull back observations of the taxon by all users.
3. open the filters box, and check the “Your Observations” checkbox. this should automatically fill in your id in the user filter box and also reduce the set of observations to just yours.
4. don’t close the filter box. don’t click the “Update Search” button. instead, click the back button on your browser. that should eliminate your id from the filter box and also brings back observations from all users, but it does not uncheck the “Your Observations” checkbox.
5. now uncheck the “Your Observations” checkbox. you’ll notice that it’s working in reverse now. your user id is filled in, and only your observations are brought back.

[tiwane]

What are the use cases for verifiable=false?

[reuvenm]

Well, pretty limited, I think I was using it to find my own observations that had been mistakenly marked as casual by the data quality assessment. More reporting this in case its a wider issue that can cause unpredictable results for other searches. It does seem like something is going quite wrong if the same URL can result in two different sets of results.