I was looking at a peregrine falcon observation and tried to flip to the previous observation (a false monkeyflower) by using the green arrows next to the username of the observer.
I’ve seen this also, often when I’m trying to page through several adjacent records rather quickly. I assumed it was just an issue with page loading and my internet speed/connection.
I have a similar issue which I have also put down to something to do with my internet connection. But in my case, the name stays the same and everything else changes.
Here is an example that just occurred:
I added the ID of “roses” to a different observation, then clicked on this observation. This observation loaded, except the displayed name which is the one from the previous observation. This particular observation actually has no ID at present.
I see this occasionally, especially when I am doing edits on my own observation or commenting/ID’s on others. It does seem to be a connectivity issue, or perhaps failure to load the updated file from a cache somewhere.
Usually it can be fixed with a reload of the page, sometimes with the control key (Windows)/command key (MacOS) held down to force a reload from the server and not the local cache.
This happens to me a lot, it seems to happen more to me when I am flipping through several of my observations very fast. With that though it does seem to be ok if I let it sit for a couple seconds before doing anything. It also only happens to me on computer if I am using my phone then I don’t have this problem.
I also have this problem. I use firefox, my internet is on the slow end for where I am but it is not bad. I most frequently have this problem going through my own observations and especially if I also am uploading observations at the same time, and even more so if I click to go to next observation before the current one has completely loaded in.
the next time this occurs to anyone, you should open up your browser’s developer tools and look for errors in the console. that might give a better understanding of what might be going on. without that kind of information – or a set of steps that allows the problem to be consistently reproduced – i doubt there’s any way to realistically even begin to troubleshoot this.
how fast can you go through the records? for me, there’s at least a half-second delay before the arrow buttons even become enabled. by that time, the photo from the last observation would have already been removed, and the photo from the current observation would already be at least half loaded (if not fully loaded).
FWIW, if you’re going through a lot of someone’s observations I’d recommend using the Identify page rather than these arrows. The Identify page is made for going through observations quickly.
why do you have 5 tabs to upload observations? if all of those are going at once, what’s probably happening is you’re getting throttled because you’re sending too many requests at once to iNaturalist.
You are probably correct. In my experience uploading I have found it overall faster, when I have more than 100 pictures to upload if I split it into batches, as one is loading in pictures, the next I am inputting missing locations, the next inputting preliminary identifications, as each page has everything filled in I press submit.
Also do it this way since sometimes uploading gets stuck on a single photo and I can remove it from the page to upload later so it uploads faster.
Currently putting between 100-200 images into one upload page (day of inatting while hiking, 1-4 images per obs) will take around 4-5 hours, whereas splitting them up takes 2-3.
Not the intended method but it works?
i think the symptoms of the problem are more likely to surface – at least temporarily – if you have a slow connection, but the original description of how to trigger the issue must be wrong.
i don’t think you can reproduce the issue by using the green arrows on the screen. i’m fairly certain you have to use the browser’s forward and back buttons.
i tried to replicate the issue using only the green arrows and i was not successful. here’s what i see:
the green previous / next buttons become available only after the screen has issued requests to determine the next 6 and previous 6 observations and received valid responses. (if valid response is not received from both requests, the buttons never become available.)
if you mouseover the previous or next buttons, you’ll get little pop-ups telling you what the taxon of the previous and next observations. (this is because the screen already knows what these previous and next observations are from #1 above.)
if you go offline / disable your network and then click the next or previous button, you’ll get the basic outline of the next or previous observation with all the text but missing any photos or maps. (this is because the screen already has all the basic details about the observation from #1.)
if you’re online and click the previous or next button, the screen doesn’t even make a request after your click to get details for the previous or next observation (because it already has details from #1)
this tells me that there can’t be some sort of race condition when using the green arrows, and there can’t be some sort of failure to get infromation for the previous / next observations using the green arrows (because if the arrows are available, then those observation details have already been retrieved). i think that means it’s impossible to recreate the symptoms of the problem by using the green arrows.
however, if i go back and forth between two observations using by browser’s forward and back buttons (while i have my browser throttled to 3G speed), i can see the signs of a race condition happening there, similar to what’s described in the original post. if i wait long enough, it seems like the page will usually load fine in the end. it’s possible that maybe if some of the requests fail or complete in the “wrong” order, you’ll end up in the transitional state where information from both observations get mishmashed together, but i didn’t try to get to that point.
i think the main point that i wanted to clarify first was that the triggering of the issue must happen with the browser’s back / forward buttons and not the observation’s green previous / next buttons. is that what others see?
When it’s happened to me it’s while using the green forward and back arrow buttons on the record (observation). That’s the main way I browse through my own adjacent records on a computer.
