Open synrg opened 3 years ago
Note that #164 partially implements ,user set lang en
, but it does not prevent non-English common names from matching.
Of all of the possible approaches I listed above, I like keeping the matched name as close as possible to how it works on the web, but also provide an easy way to select an alternative if the top match isn't what was desired. That, in effect, is what the autocomplete on the website accomplishes: the top match is usually, but not always, what the user wanted. Therefore, the rest of the matches are shown in case they wanted a different match.
Here's another case, but it's not quite the same as the cases above. If you search for rhododendrons
, the matched_term is rhododendronsläktet
which very likely is not what you'd like to see:
See https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/taxa/autocomplete?q=rhododendrons
If you look at how it works on the web, it's not showing matched term here, but instead shows the preferred common name:
Problem: the user meant to match a particular common name and the bot selected a different one
Two examples brought up on Discord:
,t kagu
matches an Estonian common name for a bird with more observations than the desired match:The correct result can be brought up with the
,t lang
subcommand, but almost nobody knows about this:In fact, there's a second problem here, which is that "kagu" is not the preferred common name for the genus. "kagus" is. This, too, can be provided for using an
rank sp
filter, but again, most users don't remember that this can be done.,t redshank
matches a non-preferred common name:If the bird was meant, the user needs to know that
in birds
must be specified to filter:Subproblems:
There is a whole grab-bag full of different issues here:
Possible approaches:
,user set lang en
and/or,inat set lang en
that makes it ignore any non-English names (i.e. changes,t
behaviour to be like,t lang en
,t lang any kagu
,t preferred redshank
,t redshank
, then show a tip about using,t preferred redshank
to only match preferred namesEach one of these possible solutions should have its own issue. None of them are mutually exclusive, and each covers a different aspect of the overall problem.