Cicada Safari 4+

Along with other outlets, I credit Cicada Safari for igniting an unexpected excitement for the anticipated invasion of (of all things) bugs. The night they emerged we were borderline giddy uploading pictures and video to the app. After the waiting period I was low-key traumatized reading submissions were rejected. Are they rejected because images were poor quality, or because app was unable to collect enough data from the transmission. Or do they feel my entries are deceptive stock art? Just stating my submissions have been rejected is a bit vague, cold and disengaging. Maybe I missed something but I found no avenue to directly contact the organization with my questions. Nevertheless, I’m hoping the weather warms up again soon to allow this brood to bounce back and give me another chance with this app. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to seeing these winged wonder again in 17 years.

This is a great idea to track the cicadas and crowd source data for research. However, the execution is not user friendly. You have to take photos through the app which, in my opinion, doesn’t seem to be great photo quality. When I try to upload from my camera roll for better picture quality, it says there is no Geotag. Once you finally get a good shot, it seems the photos sit for awhile in “pending approval” status which doesn’t make it much fun for the user. Perhaps they have “favorite” scouts because if you look at the leaderboard, there are folks with thousands of approved photos and I can’t even get a few through. Oh well. I’m still enjoying the cicadas on my own...

The app needs to tell people their photos won’t be approved anytime soon due to the large volume of pics being submitted right now during the emergence. After 4 frustrating days of wondering why mine were continuously “Pending Approval,” and no communication from Cicada Safari, I had to come here to the App Store to read reviews (and the App developer’s replies) as to why pics weren’t being approved quickly. Apparently it’s the sheer volume of photos being submitted right now and each one has to be looked at by an actual person. Ok, fine, now I get it. But while that’s understandable, do you think the app could COMMUNICATE with people when they submit pics, or a message popping up when it’s opened, that there will be major delays right now due to so many photos being submitted at once. It wouldn’t be hard to do that. Please communicate with the users about this, as all it’s doing is annoying everyone and turning people off. Thanks.