I’m not sure I know what you mean?
I think @DianaStuder is suggesting a motivation.
People on social media are not used to being tightly moderated.
If they are new to iNat, they may experiment with what is allowed here.
And what is a good reason, to show a weapon on an iNat obs ‘where I engage with nature’
Hunters often take pictures with the animals they have killed, in such a picture the hunter’s weapon may well still be on them, and it is a legitimate observation, hunting is a form of engaging with nature.
An armed person incidentally in view while taking a picture of an organism, for example photographing an arctic seal while a bear guard is in view, or photographing a tree that is near an armed policeman, is not problematic, these are people engaging with nature as intended (in some cases photographing an armed person could present a risk to you, but it’s a valid obs)
On the other hand photographing an ant and purposely zooming out just so you can stick a pistol in the field of view is not a good observation
AI summary concludes with
intentionally including a weapon in an image for no good reason is not acceptable
That I do agree with.
[quote=“jamesjarrett00, post:5, topic:59910”]
I’d say it’s probably not the optimum post but unless they are getting real stupid[/quote]
What is worrying is that there are large groups of people out there now who would definitely take that kind of statement as a legitimate challenge.
Your not wrong. I wish it wasn’t true, but here we are. Whenever you have a very large group using a platform like this, there is always someone who want to push boundaries and what most consider socially acceptable behavior. I did it when I was younger in other ways.
In a couple of my older observations, I used my handy pocket knife as a scale object in the background so you could get an idea of how big the organism was.
But I agree with the majority of sentiments being shared on here ~ as long as there’s nothing explicitly violent happening and if the observation is being made in good taste ~ I think its perfectly okay to show a gun or knife, or other weapon. Maybe not a bazooka, is that too far?
I think it is really context dependent. A weapon that is naturally part of the scene, or was naturally present and used to show scale, (knife, hunting gun, ect) is fine. This was originally about filling the frame with a pistol while having the organism at gunpoint in the corner as a joke.
I think this same general principle applies even to a bazooka, while it is true that a bazooka is rarely naturally present in the scene, there are situations where a photo taken in a war zone could include a bazooka, eg soldier on downtime photographs self with an organism while their bazooka is strung over their shoulder, photo of tree in war zone also includes soldier, ect.
There are of course security concerns with photographing military, but from an iNat offensiveness standpoint I think these scenarios are OK