Sometimes when I want to comment on an observation, the best way to explain a point I’m trying to get across is to add a diagram/gif file/annotated jpg or similar. If it’s something that’s on-line already, fine—I can just link to it. But if it’s something I’ve created and it doesn’t have a life anywhere but on my desktop, I’m not sure how to add it. I can’t copy and paste to insert it in a comment, and I can’t paste it into a journal post and link to that. Is there a simple way to add a file like this to the site so I can link to it in a comment? It could either be directly into a comment (ideal), or in some other location on the site so I can link to it in the comment (acceptable).
Example: I looked at this obs: https://inaturalist.nz/observations/30860156, IDed as a hare. After doing some checking, I thought it was more likely to be a rabbit. I put together a composite of a photo from a website, with my annotations, plus one of the original photos from the obs for comparison, and took a screen shot. Much easier than trying to write out a lengthy explanation about the width of gaps in the skulls. However, the only obvious (but ugly) way I could see to show this was to load it as a fake ‘observation’ https://inaturalist.nz/observations/31106990 and link to that in a comment on the original post (as noted, I’ll remove the ‘obs’ as soon as it’s no longer needed).
Mission accomplished, but very untidy. Surely there’s a better way.
No, yours is the workaround I use too, though I just have one observation labeled human that I upload multiple images to. Not ideal. The idea is to have some simple tools for formatting and images in journals and comments like what are available here on the Discourse Forum, but I don’t think it is very high priority.
You can also upload the image to any existing observation, copy the url, and then deselect it in the observation edit page. Use the url in any image tag on comments or in descriptions etc.
The downside of this variation on that theme is that if iNat do a big cleanup of orphaned images, then the links will be broken. I have many observations and comments that have used images in this way, and I have not yet seen any go missing. Just no guarantees :)
Dropbox is quite useful - you can drop a link in that anyone can view if you upload a photo to it. I think that’s the way I would probably do it. Like this sort of thing:
Yes, when @thebeachcomber mentioned Google Drive, I immediately thought of my Dropbox account too. I suppose I was just hoping there was a simple way of doing it internally on the iNat site… Apparently not.
Another place, considering their depreciated nature anyway, is to create a draft guide, and upload your images there. You can then insert them into your comment using the HTML code <img src=“picture URL” width=“250px”>
OK, it seems there’s no simple intended way to do this, but there are several workarounds. Maybe I’ll take a leaf from @bouteloua’s book and just leave the Halswell lagomorphs where they are for a while in case they come in handy again.
Thanks all.
Just be aware that many governmental and other institutional networks consider these and similar sites to be security threats, so they will be blocked for users attempting to view from such networks. I deal with this all the time, having to save some things for when I get to my home machine.
I upload to imgur, then put a direct html link into the comment using the img tag. This is what it looks like (though in this case the photo isn’t hosted on imgur).
