Now, “Kereru food tree” is clearly a specific use case; someone is concerned with New Zealand pigeons, and is monitoring their food trees. “Tree Use” also has a clear use case, in that one could record something that humans are doing with the tree (perhaps using it as a living fence post, as is standard cultural practice with Gliricidia sepium in the Dominican Republic).
But then, “Tree species”? If the observation is being identified to species, isn’t annotating as a “Tree” then exactly the same as annotating as a “Tree species”? And then the same would apply to “Tree ID,” would it not?
I’m not sure what DRPD stands for in “Tree Health–DRPD,” but together with “Tree Condition” and “Health of Tree,” these seem like they all encompass the same general use case.
I’m just not sure it is really necessary to have as many synonymous annotations as there appear to be.
Then what’s the point of keeping this topic opened? If it says the same things basically and answer will be no to merging. Could the old one be moved from feature requests to general or there’s no such option?
Okay, I’ll go ahead and re-mark @bouteloua 's reply as the solution, since there doesn’t seem to be another one. But at the same time, let me propose a mitigation: people should be encouraged, before creating new observation fields, to check https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields and use the search window in the top right to see if there are existing ones which they can use for their purposes. Why reinvent the wheel every time?
