This may sound like a silly question, but on a number of occasions I’ve one looking for an observation that I’m certain I posted, but it’s not there and I have to go looking for the photo on my computer and re-upload the observation.
These are observations that I’m dead certain I uploaded and IDd, but they’re not on iNat.
The most recent time this happened was today with an observation of a North American River Otter that I wound up having to re-upload.
If they weren’t observations that I’m certain I’ve not only uploaded but also revisited I’d definitely go with that, but these are ones that I”m sure I’ve come back to several times after uploading.
Observations are never deleted intentionally by the system in any automated way. (staff will rarely manually delete grossly inappropriate images or other content that violates the terms/community guidelines)
It seems pretty unlikely, any bug that did that would affect enough people that you’d think more than one person would’ve noticed by now.
I’ve noticed sometimes if my connection drops out before the app has finished uploading an observation, then it remains pending in the app. That’s about the only situation where I think I’ve added an observation but it hasn’t gone in, but you can see it pending in the app and it finishes uploading later.
Alternatively if you start adding an observation on the web version but then don’t finish it (distracted, browser crash, etc.) then you might remember adding the observation, but because it was never saved it never went in.
The best you can do, if you’re sure they are disappearing, is start a spreadsheet or similar, with the name of your photo in one column, and a link to the observation in the other column. Then if you come across one you think you’ve already uploaded, you can search your spreadsheet for the image filename and then you’ll know for sure if you’ve uploaded it or not.
It’s a bit of effort but it would at least prove your point if you could find one that disappeared.
I once witnessed an observation I uploaded disappear. However, it happened immediately after the upload was complete. In a way I couldn’t understand, after the upload was finished, if I uploaded, for example, 10 observations, only 5 were uploaded. But I realized this was due to a problem during the upload process. I think some of the characters in the tags I used were preventing the observation from uploading, or something like that. It never happened again after that.
I wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility (anything could happen), but it would be highly unlikely. For what it’s worth I only see 3 deleted observations for your account, but we don’t have details about the observations themselves.
Is it possible you had/have a second account? People often mistakenly make second accounts via third party log ins.