I run a project that gathers all wild animal observations from my neighbourhood. Lastly, someone who doesn’t use iNat observed and photographed a very rare insect in that neighbourhood and I would like to have it included in the project. I don’t want to post it as my own observation though and the observation’s author is not interested in joining iNat. Is there any way to add the observation? I asked the original author and he doesn’t mind
2 Likes
I’ve seen this done by observer giving credit to the original observer. For example, see these canada geese.
1 Like
This shouldn’t be a regular thing, but once in a while it’s OK if you have permission and give proper credit.
5 Likes
I’ve done this a handful of times when one of my friends send me a picture. They don’t really care about ownership and most of the time they took it with me in mind so I don’t see it having any problem being listed as one of mine. I usually note that a friend sent it to me though. The main difficulty is when they can’t remember where they took it.
1 Like
I do this every time someone I know sends me a photo. I just write ‘This photo was taken by another person’ in the notes.
1 Like
Again, this should be very limited. iNat’s really about your personal experience with nature. Pleaes encourage friends to post to iNaturalist directly.
5 Likes
Many of my friends I have encouraged to do iNat never bothered to make an account or if they did, never use it. It seems they’d rather just send me the photos to post on their behalf I guess cause it’s really not that interesting to them. Is there a legal issue here that you are concerned about?
I kinda think it is going to be scant by nature. If they are the kind of person who loves taking pictures of nature, I would expect them also to be the kind of person into (or at least willing to be) posting things to iNaturalist. I’m not sure it needs to be significantly discouraged in the fear of the scientific community loosing out on an observation because the original observer didn’t bother. If someone specifically sends you a picture because they know you do iNat, I fail to see how that as a problem.
1 Like
Probably I haven’t been precise enough as everyone missed a key factor: I don’t want to post it from my own account. I’m asking if it is technically possible to post an, let’s say, authorless aka anonymous observation.
I don’t think that personal experience if the observer is what matters foremost. What we want is get the being IDd and having it in the database with location and time so that later researchers know that species X is not extinct yet.
It is not. As mentioned above, very infrequent posts of observations made by others are allowed on a user’s account as long as the originator is credited, but this is not ideal. The case of a one off of a rare insect with conservation value should be ok.
2 Likes
Thanks. So looks like I have 2 options if I don’t want to post it as my observation:
A) give up on the observation
B) make a fake account and post it from there
iNat is a social network that generates data, which comes from its community’s personal experiences with nature. It’s not a place to post photos from anywhere.
4 Likes
Of those two, only the first option is viable. Fake/duplicate accounts (ie, users having >1 account) are prohibited on iNat in most situations. There are a few exceptions, like users managing an institutional account or running an account for someone underage, but this wouldn’t be one.
I would definitely suggest a “third” option of posting it on your account with attribution to the neighbor in the description if you feel it is a valuable observation.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.