A frustration I’ve run into before came up again for me last week at a Bioblitz. An uncommon species was found, which I posted as an observation. When I went to see where it had been seen around me, I found that several others had posted the same individual, making it seem like the species was more common than it is. I brought this up to some of the other folks who posted, with lots of no replies, and ended up removing my own observation. I see this often happens with bioblitzes, class trips, nature clubs etc.
It would be great if there was a way to make collaborative posts in the same way Instagram does, where there would be a field “Other Observers” where you could tag other accounts who were present for the observation, or could maybe contribute photos, notes, etc. Does something like this exist?
Just a thought, but this would definitely increase the community aspect of observations :)
You can use the field “associated observation” and “associated observation 2” to put links to the other observations of the same individual. Or just put the links in the notes or comments.
Yeah, I’d really like something like what eBird does with shared lists. You could share an observation with X additional people, and everyone could add their own photos.
I’m sorry you felt a need to delete your observation. Many people use their iNaturalist postings as a “life list” or a gallery of their own biodiversity observations. This is perfectly legitimate and it doesn’t matter if a hundred other people have logged the same specimen. Because this is a community database, there are few restrictions to guarantee the quality of the data. People who use iNat data for research or to gain personal understanding are responsible for vetting the quality of the data they use, appropriate to the question they are asking. That’s how crowdsourcing works. Please let’s all welcome everyone who makes observations to connect with nature. I hope you’ll put your observation back in!
Why would you delete your observation? iNat is not used for abundance data, it only depicts you seeing a specimen, there’s no need to delete a record just because someone else saw it too.