Duplicate metadata fields? Example: 'Habitat - Fungi' and 'Fungi Habitat' + metadata field maintenance and descriptions / data cleansing

Hi,

This is a question about iNaturalist’s database, more specifically it’s metadata fields, which I understand can be made by anyone. I notice there are the following 2 fields, when editing an observation:

  • ‘Habitat - Fungi’; and
  • ‘Fungi Habitat’.

I notice that the former has the following description:

Describe the general habitat your specimen was found in.

And the latter has no description. Does it thus make sense to merge them? Would such possible merging be the work of curators or iNaturalist staff?

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P.S.: I also find the description quite short. I have some fruit fly for which I want to connect the observation of the fruit fly to the observation of the fungi it was found on, which field do I use for this purpose?

I am not sure if e.g. ‘Habitat - Fungi’ is the field to describe the habitat of a fungi observation, or is it a field for a fruit fly observation where you can disclose information about the micro-habitat of the fruit fly, in case that micro-habitat was a fungi.

No, sorry. Observation fields are managed by their creators. Curators can’t merge them together and staff do not.

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A response from iNat staff, 2019 Mar 8 (almost 7 years ago):

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Additional previous threads about this issue:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/merging-duplicate-observation-fields/16510

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/merging-host-plant-and-host-plant-id-fields/24898

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/are-there-redundant-observation-fields-and-if-so-should-they-be-merged/34116

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