[1000005389] Can people please stop doing this? Or should we maybe start cracking down on it more? I empathize if it’s a misunderstanding or if it’s someone new to iNat who doesn’t understand how to use those yet, but if people are doing this intentionally to shotgun blast their observation, plea…

If it seems like someone is making intentionally incorrect entries (on annotations or other parts of iNat like IDs, DQA, etc.), I would flag for curators to take a look there. In the case of annotations, I would flag the observation itself and leave a comment explaining the issue. You can also leave…

I tried to leave the user out of the image cause I didn’t want to single someone out. Basically the image in question was a photograph of a live organism. Just the organism alone. Not separate feathers, bones, constructions, or eggs. Just a simple organism picture. This has happened several times. W…

I have seen this as well. On occasion, someone will select every annotation, which just means someone has to downvote them to get them off the scored annotations. Annoying, but that’s about it.

It’s very annoying. People who annotate EVERYTHING is exactly what I’m posting about. It eats a lot of ID time needlessly, also pollutes the data. I get we can all down vote it, but there is a frustratingly large glut of this kind of thing. I do understand for some, they may not get how to use the …

Yep, that’s why I’m being careful, I get there are honest mistakes, but might be time we track repeat offenders? Or put more “PSAs” out? Not sure. I get we can down vote, leave comments, etc. but there is a glut of it.

In the screen shot you shared it looked like only “organism” was marked as “yes,” but is what you’re saying that it was annotated as all of the above, and the down votes were added by you to counter them? If so I can see the confusion over feather. I would not think to annotate a whole bird with “…

Ya, that’s part of why some PSA or FAQ about what annotation means what could be helpful, like feather on a whole bird is one I can see the technical logic behind, even if it’s not quite right. This post wasn’t just about the singular observation I screenshotted, I used it because it was a particul…

Also, yes, the agrees and disagrees in the screenshot were me. There was neither on any prior.

Thank you for clarifying. I agree, clearer official instructions would be very helpful. Maybe even in the form of a popup, “when to use this annotation.” And I think you did right by not revealing the observer’s identity here on the forum.

It looks like this person is agreeing or disagreeing with the fact that there is or is not “Evidence of Presence-Feather…etc” instead of agreeing or disagreeing with the vote of another person. It seems that they are disagreeing to the fact that there is a feather…. I don’t think that this person …

If a polite message does not work - and you have explained WHY it is a problem, pass it on. Annotations cannot be changed like IDs. Stacking up downvotes does not ‘achieve’ anything.

Annotation Abuse?

General

ncb1221 February 17, 2026, 12:02am 20

I’ve run across this quite a bit as well. I agree the behavior should be discouraged. But there also needs to be a way to correct it.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/make-annotations-correctable-not-just-marked-disagree/34660

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Annotation Abuse?

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