I’ve been thinking about my pet peeves since this was posted, and I realize that they change, depending on what I am looking at. Or else I have a whole lot of them. Whatever.
iNaturalist insistence that each photo must be of one individual. For a little while I thought I was doing it wrong, but then . . . Copulating insects? A mated pair of birds traveling together? Adult and chick chukars together? Of COURSE photos have more than one animal, which may differ in life stage or gender. I’d like to see that accommodated in the annotations. Though I’m not going to waste energy expecting it.
I can’t reach into the photo and turn that leaf over! Please photo the top and lower surface of leaves, especially with willows. In grasses, get lots of details, some of them not in the inflorescence. (15 flowering heads of a weedy barley and no auricles??? I can’t ID it.) And the so sad absolutely beautiful flower pictures not accompanied by photos of the leaves or whole plant. (A good flower pic often allows ID to genus, but leaves are often needed for species ID.)
With grasses and sedges, we need to see the little bits that are hidden in crowded inflorescences. For goodness sake, crush one of the heads, spread the spikelets or perigynia on your hand, and photo them.
Taking multiple photos of one individual and then spreading them out as multiple observations. Often more than one angle or plant part is needed for identification. From the point of view of identifiers, the photos get separated and we can’t see what we need. I know it’s just a problem of inexperience with the site (I went through it too) but it does frustrate me.
Meeting the same misidentification a dozen times, or 50 times. I think, “Haven’t I told you a zillion times how to tell these apart?!?” Of course, the problem is that these misidentifications were made by a dozen or 50 different individual humans, and they don’t know until taught. So I take a deep breath and try to remember this is an inherent part of citizen science.
One taxon, two or three taxa. But one species, two or three species.
Places marked “Private.” Sometimes I can’t identify the plant without knowing at least what continent it is on! Plus, identifying it doesn’t seem worthwhile since the data is useless to other researchers (though I identify it anyway, if I can easily). Please use “Obscured.” Please. Pretty please.
Uncooperative cameras. Believe me, I have this problem with my camera, too. Photographer tries to take a close-up of the flower head, but the camera insists on focusing on the background. It may help to put your hand directly behind or beside the flower head, to tell the camera where to focus.
I guess I’m becoming a crabby old woman. I could feel bad about it, but . . . Deal with it.
I always wondered what is the use of such data. First time uploading such photo - then yes, use is obvious, it is educational: people learn what cannot be IDed from a photo at all or how the organisms are to be photographed to be IDed. But repeated uploads by the same person of (let us say) Lepraria lichens (90 % can be IDed only by chemistry), especially from the same area - how such data is helpful and what info does this provide?
Depends on how big the area is, if the obs is from a little spot the author or someone else can come and get samples afterwards. If the area is big it shows the distribution of the genus, some taxa are just unidentifiable without DNA, but we still should upload them if we saw and documented them. e.g. someone sees 10 spots of Lepraria now and someone else comes in 5 years and finds none, it is valuable to know what was there, no matter how high the taxon is, though genus is pretty low.
I will miss the info that you and others have provided on what to include in my observations, though. Maybe just closing it (no new entries), rather than deleting it? @tiwane, your thoughts?
Thanks for the translation @leschij. I just wanted to say that iNaturalist is an international community and people can respond in whichever languages they prefer. Since there isn’t a built in translate option I recommend using something like Google Translate. The staff are also looking into ways to make the forum more useful to people who speak languages other than English.
The point is: I want to have an observation for every individual. There’s no need for another point… Is it valuable to some other pearson? Possible not, but does it causes any harm to someone? Don’t think so. Maybe iNat should have a field “count” or “number of individuals”…
I understand this, but if I want to say something to someone who is writing in english and if I was able to read in english, I should make the effort to speak english. At least that is what I try to do…
This is a very nice effort from iNat, but important stuff will still be discussed in english.
Есть достаточно причин фотографировать каждую ель в лесу, в общем-то многие этим и занимаются, это показывает вариабельность вида на территории, то, какие биотопы предпочитает вид, как изменяется популяция в течение времени. Смысл в том, что сайт для того и создан, чтобы каждый мог загружать столько особей, сколько захочет.
I’m going to close this topic, as this Forum is specifically not meant to be a place for complaining or airing grievances, even if they’re small ones. If there is a specific issue bothering you, start a discussion that seeks to understand the issue and perhaps make it better.