Wanted to know if its against Inaturalist tos to have a group account where one could upload key observational records from social media sites (facebook, whatsapp, etc). I wanted to ask this, as often times these records go unseen/unused as uploaders don’t really want to make accounts on inaturalist/other biodiversity databases, but their observations could provide valuable data as well as be useful for inaturalist users for reference. I have heard a bit about the questagame issue but couldn’t make much sense of it, would appreciate if anyone could explain that situation if it is important in this conversation. I don’t intend for this account to spam anywhere near that amount of observations if that is an issue, as I said before, I intend for this account to be for key observational records.
Thanks in advance.
if uploaders don’t want to create iNat accounts or load to iNat, i don’t think it’s anybody else’s business to put their stuff onto iNat. the primary purpose of iNat isn’t to create data for science. that’s only a byproduct of connecting people to nature.
Group accounts are discouraged and your case of use doesn’t fall into those accounts that already exist. It’s pretty easy to make up an iNat account, people who know where photos were done and saw the specimens, are better suited to upload them, plus that is what falls within iNat rules.
Ah, I see. Could you tell me on what instances group accounts would be permissable? Also I wasn’t able to find a specific rule which prohibited uploading different individuals’ observations with their permissions so is it just discouraged to have such an account or plainly a bannable offence? Could I know why group accounts are discouraged as well? I believed that the observations could be useful to inaturalist in some way or the other, or is that just a misconception on my part?
Thanks for replying!
Observer needs to see the specimen in situ to upload it.
Existing group accounts are: family, organization of forest workers, the rarest records from ornithologists, class group.
All of them should be avoided.
Pretty sure it’s somewhere in rules, but as you mentioned questagame which had more problems than just being a group account, there’re topic directly discussing group accounts.
Ah, I see. Thanks! I suppose if inaturalist needs users to have seen specimens in situ I can’t argue against that. Could you also link me the main thread where questagame was discussed as there are quite a few and I wasn’t really able to make sense of them.
I would suggest reading all, but the summary was given there:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/v-quick-question-questagame-users/3383
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-was-this-reply-by-questagame-flagged/13494
Thanks!
Apparently, somewhere in the TOS a direct line of communication is required.
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