I’m identifying observations and I come across some where the person takes the picture from a car and the organism is so distant that its just a useless observation. I just ignored one where the road was most of the picture and the tree was so faraway it could be anything. The same goes with ones t…

I think you’re doing the right thing! Some folks also add a third step: See low quality observation. Get (mildly) annoyed and ignore. Mark as “cannot be improved”. I usually stop at step 2. If the observation is so low effort, I doubt it’s worth (seriously) reviewing. Granted, maybe these are fro…

I usually mark these “reviewed” so I don’t have to see them again in my regular ID flow.

[image] jeffhansen1: the organism is so distant if the observation is identifiable, i actually don’t mind distant or even blurry observations. sometimes blurry or distant is all you can get, and it’s nice to be able to have similar reference photos to compare against. one of the more useful …

I’m sorry, but your description is nothing about “awful” observation, if obsect is present and idable, it’s not an awful observation, it’s a good one, if it’s not idable for you, skip it, add particular observer to you filters, etc. But iNat is not a photo competition. And it’s not up to you to deci…

I think skipping is the best option. I was just wondering if they could be flagged to be ignored.

It depends on what your idea of the purpose of iNaturalist is. It is not necessarily about world-class photos and perfect data collection, as Marina said. iNaturalist can be that, yes, but it is many more things that make it great, including citizen science and community education. There are peopl…

yeah, this tone here is really unnecessary. People aren’t obligated to take pretty photos, and just because you can’t identify them doesn’t mean others can’t. Some species are easy to ID from blurry photos if you know them. If you can’t identify it, mark reviewed and move on. If it’s one person in p…

It’s important to keep in mind that what is unidentifiable for one person may not be for another person, even with low quality photos. Knowing the area, understanding how a species moves, recognizing some key feature that’s not well known by others, etc all can lead to one person being able to inst…

I missed a bit of nuance that others have pointed out: for animals, especially birds, there are some very talented identifiers, who seem like they have the ability to “Enhance! Enhance! Enhance…”, some good examples in topic: Poor quality photo observations from the past have received Research Grade …

Blurry or distant observations

General

jeffhansen1 December 22, 2022, 3:14am 4

I mark them reviewed but i often id them as dicots if it applies and say too blurry to ID. but really I think they should be deleted. so its best just to ignore the crap.

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Records on iNat that are of "no value" because they're not identifiable General	58	6910	July 8, 2019
Poor quality of observations General question	69	2836	August 26, 2025
Overzealous observations General	41	4550	September 23, 2019
Observers Mocking Identifiers? General	52	3994	September 6, 2023
Identification/Verifiability of unrecognizable blurred dark images General question	58	1866	May 19, 2024

Blurry or distant observations

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