Duplicate observations by the same user on two different accounts?

General
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I would like to report this case of an observation duplicated between 2 different accounts. The observer responds that the other account is not used any more (I understand that the duplicate won’t be fixed):
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/33885245

There are several closed “Duplicated observations” threads.
What is the current iNaturalist policy?
Is there a preferred thread for discussing this subject matter?

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Are they 2 accounts used by the same person?

As long as it is credited and used with permission, sharing of photos between multiple users is permitted on the site

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The bigger problem with these two observations seems to be that the same photo is mapped in two different places. I’ve asked the observer to check which is correct

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In this case the issue appears to be that a user with ~1100 observations had his account suspended and created a new account in order to continue using iNat.

  • Unlike many other cases, this particular duplicate observation is not one that would be solved by a checksum feature. The user intended to re-add the observation under their new account.
  • One of the flagged observations that caused the original account to be suspended (this one) might have been improved by a checksum feature that would have alerted the user to the fact that he uploaded the same photo three minutes later (here)
  • The original account got suspended based on three flagged observations. One was a duplicate that seems plausibly to have been an oversight; one was an overspecific spider ID (happens all the time); and the last was an incorrect centipede ID. In my opinion, none of those things rises to the level of requiring account suspension, and the result has just been duplication of the orphaned observations, which isn’t an improvement. A lot of decisions like this are delegated to curators and perhaps they could receive clearer guidance on how to handle minor issues of this sort.
  • This situation also touches on the issue of the potential need for an account merge feature.
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Yeah, forcing curators to indicate why they have suspended an account has long been something considered. There is something odd about that entire flag, the flagger is listed as iNat, which should mean it was an auto-generated flag, but the comment is in Portuguese, which the iNat account would never do ?

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Just to followup, the flag appears to have been created by an account which has subsequently been deleted, and then depending on where you look at it, on different pages it either says the flag author is ‘iNat’ or ‘deleted user’.

A single curator appears to have flagged 2 of their records, one for duplication and one for a wrong ID, and then just gone ahead and suspended them. Have to agree, this seems heavy handed.

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I’m not sure there is a good solution to this particular case. The admins can merge the accounts, but apparently as the user recreated records under a new account that will just create duplicates which will start the cycle of flags again.

Perhaps @tiwane can reach out to the user and ask if they duplicated all the records in the suspended account and if so get the OK to delete It?

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I can reach out to both the suspendee and the suspender. I agree that suspension was likely not merited here, unless we’re missing something.

I think a flag on the observation in question would be good.

iNaturalist staff can do this, so the best thing to do is to email help@inaturalist.org. We’ll confirm the user owns both accounts and can merge them. I don’t think it’s a tool we’ll make public.

Now that things have slowed down a bit, I’m planning on addressing some moderation/curation issues, including splitting curator roles, adding a moderation notes area, and requiring that a moderator provide a reason for suspension.

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I moved this discussion to a separate, unlisted topic since it wasn’t related to the checksum request and became more about moderation of a particular user. After to doing some digging, I’ll say the original account was suspended for legitimate reasons, it looks like they were using a sockpuppet.

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Thanks for these helpful answers. I agree that iNat staff are the best stewards of any account merge capability. Maybe there could be something in the account and password guidance that directs users to email help@inaturalist.org if they need to merge accounts for some reason. I like the plans for more guidance on curation and user admin actions.

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For context, the observer seemed to have requested that the older account was taken down. In a comment (in Portuguese) on the first linked observation, he mentioned that the older posted observations were by his daughter and that the account will be taken down, he requested such from the moderators (“A conta antiga vai sair do ar, já fiz o pedido para a moderação”).

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Yes, I’ve been messaging him about it, thanks.

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I hope this will be only be for “non-standard” suspension reasons. For example, when flagging spam accounts, the reason is already spam, and asking the curator to re-iterate that would greatly slow down dealing with the constant spam stream.

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When you flag a user as spam, they’re automatically suspended. So I don’t think it will slow down anything.

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