Just wondering if there are any established guidelines. Ran across an observation recently involving someone “jokingly” pointing a firearm at a small organism, and it hit my probably-not-appropriate-for-iNat instincts.
Then again, I’ve seen a fair few deer hunt photos with the rifle included in the shot and that doesn’t particularly bother me, so idk. I’d like to hear input from others before I take any actions.
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It doesn’t seem to me that we should get involved in censoring photos with weapons. Maybe in the most extreme cases (committing a crime, maybe). This seems to me like the kind of thing that’s best ignored, not because it’s really OK but because doing anything will just result in more questionable behavior.
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Flag it and leave it to the moderators to deal with
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How about a Swiss Army Knife? 
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I’d say it’s probably not the optimum post but unless they are getting real stupid, I’d just ignore it. Sometimes people take a picture for one thing then realize it works for something else.
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Well, I am a moderator, so I figured I should ask the right way to deal with it myself :)
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I feel like this topic may need to be delisted or edited since OP mentiones a specific user conduct issue
As a general matter I do not think a weapon in the photo is grounds for removal, there is no reason to remove observations if the organism was near an armed person, (hunting photos ect). The situations where I think guns may be inappropriate that I’ve seen are things like posing with an organism that is not at all a hunting target at gunpoint like “haha I’m about to blast it”
This latter case I am interested to hear what others think about
Could picture have been cropped to show the organism without the weapon?
ID as Homo ‘sapiens’ for the ‘joke’ weapon. Rule 1 - be kind. Rule 2 - engage with nature. We have observers living in countries at war - weapons are not a joke.
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This violates the rule that Identifiers should follow the observer’s intent when multiple organisms are in the photo
This actually works imo. The swiss army knife doesn’t really have any negative connotations.
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True, but where do you draw the line? Can spear guns be shown? Mouse traps? Fly swatters? Clam rakes?
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I would mark those all as Reviewed and move on
to more interesting obs.
To be honest, I don’t remember seeing any. Dead fish - yes, but not The Weapon.
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While I agree that this doesn’t sound like an optimal observation, I don’t personally think there’s an issue that merits further action unless there’s some kind of threat to a human implied (either in the picture or directed towards another user) or some other violation of the community guidelines.
I think asking the question about the situation here on the forum is fine and appropriate to ask as it doesn’t include a link to a specific observation or PII.
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Is a mouse in a mouse trap ‘captive’? ;-)
Not in my book, but the purists seem to think that if an animal is captured then it is a captive. And if it’s a captive then it is in captivity and that means any observation of it is casual.
Even being in a cage doesn’t necessarily mean that an animal is non-wild and in “captivity.” It’s easy enough to imagine a situation where animals are captured and temporarily held in an enclosure of some kind while they are being weighed, measured and marked and then later released.
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Which should be noted in the observation.
Some people enjoy picking apart every thread that doesn’t suit their egoic need.
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Please stay on topic.
As for weapons in photos, I think it just has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. A deer trophy photo with someone holding a rifle seems fine. Someone pointing a gun at someone else in a threatening manner, not fine. Is the post about the weapon, or is it about the organism?
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I think the issue is weapons designed for use against humans, where the weapon is not naturally part of the scene (so hunters with guns, mice in traps, ect are fine, and fly swatters or clam rakes really aren’t weapons in the human context) Where I’m thinking of an issue is if someone photographed an insect and put a pistol in the frame for no good reason
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testing the waters.
Will iNat let me get away with this?
And this ??