While duplicating a project, admins can no longer be removed

Bug Reports
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1

Platform:

Website.

Browser:

Tested in current stable Firefox & Chrome.

Screenshots of what you are seeing:

image
image808×304 17.3 KB

Description of problem:

Step 1:

Clone a project on the website.

Step 2:

Scroll to the bottom and click the ⓧ icon to remove a former admin (other than yourself, of course).

The expected behaviour is for the admin to be removed. Instead, the icon is styled with a coloured outline link similar to followed links and the button otherwise does nothing. Additionally, if you go ahead and Save the new project, any admins that you failed to remove (i.e. were previously joined to the project you’re cloning and then made admins of it) are also joined to the new project.

We always used to follow the advice “Admins can only be added after the project has been created” by starting out with only the owner as admin in a duplicated project, then changing all aspects of the new project to make it into one for the next bioblitz event, then ask our admins to join the new project, then add them (back) as admins. This has always worked in the past, but starting last month, the issue with admins not being removable during project duplication has prevented us from doing this.

We have a few issues if this is intended new behaviour:

  1. Removal of the element of consent
    Being an admin in one of our monthly blitz projects has always been entirely voluntary, so asking them to join the project and have the creator or another admin add them as an admin in the new project ensured that the admin roster solely consisted of admins who gave consent to be admins. Preventing removal at duplication time removes that element of consent.
  2. Unclear instructions
    The “Admins can only be added after the project has been created.” tip no longer seems to be true? The way it is worded is confusing if this is the intended new behaviour.
  3. Confusing widget behaviour
    The presence of the ⓧ icon to remove an admin implies that clicking it should do something. The strange rendering and lack of any other visible action (e.g. passive bubble explaining why it can’t be removed) is confusing. If preventing the removal is intended and you want to keep the icon, then at least signal back to the user when they click it that it didn’t work and why not.

But if all of this is in fact a bug, please look into and resolve it. For last month’s blitz I just notified our admins of the glitch and apologized for it, offering to remove them as admins if they did not want to participate this time around. Soon, I’ll be setting up the next blitz projects and don’t want to have to do that again.

2

This may be a common mistake in English grammar (misplacing “only”). “Admins can only be added after the project has been created” implies “Admins cannot be removed after the project has been created”. “Admins can be added only after the project has been created”, on the other hand, implies “Admins cannot be added before the project has been created”. However, as there are two verbs in “can be added”, the second sentence is ambiguous, but the other interpretation (“Admins are added only after the project is created” is possible) doesn’t make much sense.

3

I’m not complaining that the wording contains an ambiguity, but rather that the observed current behaviour is that the admins of the project that you’re duplicating actually are added to the newly created project. Therefore this notice is contradictory, at least in the case of duplicating a project.

4

Pretty sure this is a bug, and I agree that it does remove the element of consent. Would you say the best solution would be to not include any admins from the previous project? I think that’s what I’d want, but I rarely make and/or duplicate projects.

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5

That’s what we’d want as well. That said, I can imagine there may be others who would want the opposite, e.g. consent may have been previously obtained so no longer copying over the admins would burden them with the chore of repopulating the new project with all of the same admins again. I have my own bias as to which of these I would prefer, but can’t guess which alternative would be the least hassle for admins across the whole user population that frequently duplicate projects.

1 Like
6

Made a github issue: https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/4633

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7

This should be fixed now: when duplicating a project, none of the admins should be ported over. Looking good to me.

1 Like
8

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