See the “Data quality assessment” for this observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4910798 . As you can see there is a big disagreement on whether this should be considered a wild observation and similarly whether the location is accurate. The snake obviously is out of range and very …

Ticking multiple options in the DQA is a practiced employed by some iNat users to make observations go to casual that they don’t like seeing on range maps/think shouldn’t be Research Grade. It is often employed when that user’s initial downvote in a DQA field where there is some “gray area” like Wil…

I see it all the time on observations of arthropod hitchhikers, as well. I almost never see it outside of herps and arthropods, though.

A quote from iNaturalist staff member @tiwane concerning escaped pets — “I would definitely mark the organism as wild. The wild/captive attribute relates to the individual organism, not the species. Here are iNat’s definitions of the two terms: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#captive” Source…

Non-captive organisms should be properly documented — science over advocacy. Escapees/exotics — if they’re there, people need to know about them …some may want to study them. It would be absolutely unacceptable to me if iNat, at some point, revised its policy on exotics.

[image] dan_johnson: The snake obviously is out of range and very likely could be a released pet, but there’s nothing about the observation that indicates it’s not wild. I knew EXACTLY which observation this was going to be before I clicked. :smile: And I stand by the points @sandboa & I mad…

Agreed; I’m using the forum’s bookmarks to save it.

Thanks, I didn’t know we could bookmark things!

Oh yeah! For anyone who doesn’t know: click on the ellipses on the bottom of the post you want to save, then choose the “hanging banner”. [image] Then set a reminder date/time, if needed (I always select none): [image] You can find all your bookmarks under your profile: [image]

[image] cthawley: One advantage of this (for the downvoter) is that DQAs don’t generate notifications, so other users may never notice that these additional downvotes have been added, and the observation may remain as casual. Another “advantage” is that you can filter for observations flagged…

Disagreements on "Organism is wild" and "Location is accurate"

General

raymie May 2, 2022, 4:22pm 10

Thanks, I didn’t realize that post had been made! That’s direct confirmation from the staff, this will be useful!

Topic		Replies	Views
Marking Exotic Animals as Captive When They're Clearly Not General	17	1053	August 24, 2025
Way too many observations of wild organisms getting marked as captive General	17	1542	August 7, 2022
How to mark escaped/free-roaming pets? General	22	1548	September 8, 2023
iNaturalist.org "user" weirdly improving casual observation General	3	960	September 25, 2019
Escaped pets with no established population General question	29	4160	October 8, 2019

Disagreements on "Organism is wild" and "Location is accurate"

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