If a taxon page has less than 8 images manually assigned to it, it will still display seven with the additional images coming from the subordinate taxa. For example, even though Solanaceae has only two photos set to its page, it still displays seven, with the additional five coming from the subordinate the subordinate genera and species. But recently I noticed that if a taxon page has less than eight images custom set to the page, it will display it like this:
This really should not be happening, and this may seem like a small issue, but it’s personally a little irksome because I have spent a lot of time arranging photos for higher-level taxa, and now a lot of that work is being obscured.
@kueda Any chance restoring grid view for higher taxa as it was before? Most higher taxon pages now just show one main image instead of a nice selection from the descendant taxa default photos.
Nope. We removed the backfill photos in an effort to reduce the time we spend re-indexing taxa (which we do a lot) and reduce the average size of the taxon responses from the API, which has pretty serious impacts on the amount of data transferred and memory usage in the apps, particularly when getting vision results. We think these benefits outweigh the benefits of grid vs. not grid on higher-rank taxon pages.
As I think I’ve written elsewhere, the best way to address the response size issue is to overhaul our API so clients can request smaller responses, which we’re starting to think about, but that’s a ways off, and even without that, the performance gains of not backfilling probably still outweigh the benefits of the grid view.
If you really want that grid back, just choose 9 or more photos for a taxon.
Closing as it was an intentional change, and not a bug, to remove grid view for higher taxa, unless they have 9 or more photos selected. (sad trombone)
