Duplicates are a major problem for both observers, identifiers and project managers.
Every image on the site has a checksum.
Every image a user tries to upload also has a checksum.
If a user is trying to upload a photo which has an identical checksum to an image which is already on the site, you could simply ask the user to double check whether they’re already uploaded this image.
This could prevent a whole lot of unnecessary duplicates.
Sounds like a great idea, as long as it is just a notification, and can be ignored when needed. For example there are sometimes instances where I have used the same exact image for multiple observations of different organisms (e.g., an insect on a flower).
Hey there, not necessarily advocating that you combine threads because they’re a little different but just wanted to make sure you were aware of this somewhat parallel, definitely relevant, discussion/ feature request thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/create-a-way-to-flag-duplicate-observations-and-remove-rg-status-from-the-extras/201
Hi Mira, thanks for letting me know about that thread. I agree, it is different though.
If would be good if we could CATEGORISE the TOPICS within the feature request part of this forum!
If you have feedback about the forum, definitely start a topic at https://forum.inaturalist.org/c/site-feedback
We’ve written a spec for the team to review and see if this is feasible, so I’m going to close this topic.