"Zero observations" for user with one observation

[chemistree]

I was identifying unknowns when I came across an observation where the observer’s observation count displayed as zero:

While I was in the identify portal when I found it, “zero observations” also shows up on the observation’s page (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13659754) and on the user’s profile page (https://www.inaturalist.org/people/vladnet). From all three locations, if I click the link on the “0 observations”, the resulting display in Explore mode shows the observer’s one observation. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing weird about the observation besides the fact that it’s not being counted.

[erininmd]

I’ve seen this from time to time and wondered about it myself. I hope someone can offer some insight.

[JeremyHussell]

It’s a longstanding bug. Last I heard, the staff don’t know how to replicate it, even though there are lots of examples: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/Vm9_lzMa-DY

[tiwane]

Yeah, we still haven’t figured this one out, unfortunately.

[chemistree]

Ah, okay. Thanks for the background info!

@tiwane, if more examples are found, would you like links/associated usernames shared here?

[chemistree]

Found another one: https://www.inaturalist.org/people/alec25
[edit] one more: https://www.inaturalist.org/people/jonrice
[edit] and another: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12213144

Don’t know if the trend holds through the examples in the Google Group post, but for both all four of the examples I found, they were using the iOS iNat app.

[vynbos]

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13694859

[pisum]

i didn’t look at the examples from the Google Forums, but looking at the examples mentioned in this thread, they all seem to occur on users who created their accounts and posted observations only during window sometime during May 2018 and June 2018. i took 3 of these examples and looked for other users created around the same time:

doing this, i found 8 other users (+3 = 11 total) that fit the same pattern:

1. displayed observation count = actual observation count - 1
2. user was created sometime during May 2018 and June 2018
3. all the user’s observations were created during May 2018 and June 2018
4. first observation is associated with a timezone that is either UTC or whose last 3 characters resemble one of the USA timezones (ex. PDT, EDT, CEST, etc.)

i found 10 users whose observation count were okay, and they seemed to all not meet either 3 or 4 above.

so i wonder if this related to something whose source has already been fixed but where the data (a stored observation count?) just needs to be updated?

[carrieseltzer]

I haven’t seen this bug as much recently, but my past attempts at getting to the bottom of this have uncovered no common conditions, so we haven’t prioritized this. Here’s my spreadsheet where I started keeping track of them. If anyone wants to dig in further, feel free.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MyAtmfj6-eFo5vBJDSdN3VLpv1NO0CehZH50kcJQX6E/edit?usp=sharing

[pisum]

digging in too much without proper access to the database to do some querying is probably a super inefficient task. i wonder if there’s a way to trigger the system to recount the observations for users whose last activity was between, say, April and June 2018? that might fix many of the problems, even if no one has the time / resources to do a proper root cause analysis.

[pisum]

it might be a slightly different kind of problem, but i just wanted to note here that i came across a case where a user made an identification but the user’s profile indicated 0 identifications:

the API (https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/users/chloe1414) also reflects 0 identifications:

{
  "total_results": 1,
  "page": 1,
  "per_page": 1,
  "results": [
    {
      "id": 2513649,
      "login": "chloe1414",
      "spam": false,
      "suspended": false,
      "created_at": "2020-01-03T20:22:00+00:00",
      "login_autocomplete": "chloe1414",
      "login_exact": "chloe1414",
      "name": null,
      "name_autocomplete": null,
      "orcid": null,
      "icon": null,
      "observations_count": 0,
      "identifications_count": 0,
      "journal_posts_count": 0,
      "activity_count": 0,
      "universal_search_rank": 0,
      "roles": [],
      "site_id": 1,
      "icon_url": null
    }
  ]
}

[bobmcd]

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings): N/A

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Chrome, Firefox, Edge

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/people/helenmartinez

Screenshots of what you are seeing .

.

Description of problem : Not sure if this is a problem or just a glitch. Not my account but I was notified when an ID was added to an observation present. However, when I looked at the observation page , the User has 0 observations. It says this as well on the User profile page but when you link through to the User’s observation page, the one observation that I received notice of shows up. Is there a logical explanation for this?

[bushvipergirl]

I’m not really sure for the reason of this, but when I had started, I never really had any trouble with it. I used the INaturalist app, and I’m not really sure if this has anything to do with it, but I hope that this helps

[fffffffff]

Same situation.

[roysh]

Found one today: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/user-with-out-observations-in-identify/28697 (published a new bug report as a little search didn’t show me this thread)

[matthew_connors]

RE dates, here is one from 2017