I recently made a place for a certain area, but I later learnt from the forums that the species tab doesn’t update on it’s own anymore due to a glitch and has to be updated manually.
I later learnt about projects. They have both an observations and species list just like a place does, however the way it’s formatted seems a bit better? It also allows you to search through the observations, which places do not seem to allow. I believe I’ve also read somewhere that projects enable observations to be automatically added, which is a stark contrast to what I’ve experienced with places.
I’m wondering what is the purpose of places and projects? How are they different? Is one better than the other?
I changed this to the “General” category as opposed to a feature request.
I’m not 100% sure how best to answer your question, but places are necessary for certain location-based projects. The answer will also depend on which type of project you are referring to.
Collection projects basically function as saved searches - a place can be part of that search.
If you are just looking to visualize the observations in a place, a project is probably more user-friendly for most applications.
Places allow for some functionality that projects don’t as they have attributes associated with them that projects do not. Places can have checklists (which can have entries for organisms not observed there), they can be used for atlasing taxonomic changes, they can have linked information on names for species associated with those places or establishment means, etc.
Thank you for moving my post. I had been typing up a feature request post, but didn’t end up posting it. After deleting the text from it I left the website only to return later and type up a new forum post. I reckon it might have saved as an empty draft in the feature requests category and I began typing and posted without realizing.
Thank you for your explanation. It appears that perhaps projects might be best for me. I made a place originally because I was very keen to see a visual of all species present and how many records there has been in the area (something that projects appear to do better).
I will have to have a look into starting a project instead. Thank you very much.