Is there currently any way of filtering out/blocking a particular user? I find it diminishes from the experience of helping people with genuine ID requests when the list is swamped by users posting several of the same thing, photos of the same tree from a different angle, or just posting observations of the same thing on different occasions repetitively. Many of the photos of this user are often poor anyway, and give insufficient detail for an ID The person is more focused on jamming in as many observations as possible. It would be handy to have the option to âclean upâ the list to make the job less cluttered withâŚwellâŚjunk mail for want of a better word :)
It would be good if you could also filter out users, rather than just filter to see content from certain users.
Alright, then go to your profile, click âEdit account settings & profileâ, and on the right-hand side there should be a section titled âYour Relationshipsâ. One of the options there may be what youâre looking for. Iâve never used these options, so I canât advise you further, but the help links there seem to explain everything clearly.
You can block up to 3 users which means you will not see their content. However, I will emphasize and note that the documentation on blocking states this is not an appropriate use of the blocking tool.
It is meant to deal with harrassment not situations like this.
I have a similar problem with a particular user in my area with sometimes multiple pages in a row of observations which donât provide enough evidence to confidently ID but also are probably correct most of the time. Itâs an irritating situation because I donât want to âdowngradeâ all of the observations based on lack of evidence (though I might be justified to do so) but also canât confidently add an identification. Thus itâs not a great use of my time to go through all of those observations. Ideally, I could just filter out this userâs observations (as OP suggests) so I donât see them when identifying.
Thanks for information on the blocking option, this will have to do for now, though seems like a somewhat inappropriate use.
I agree with Chris, blocking is for serious situations. We really should be trying to correct any bad behaviour, observation wise. It may be a legitimate use of the site, too, so one has to be careful to approach it with an open mind. If it were me, I would start a dialogue, see where it goes. Sometimes we learn something new ourselves in the process!
some of this is sometimes just people using the site differently. several observations of the same organism is frowned upon but several observations of the same species on a hike is fine, some people are interested in fine scale mapping or phenology, etc, others are not.
I do not believe muting hides a users observations from your view which is what the request is. From the description of what muting does
âMuting someone prevents you from receiving notifications about things they do, including commenting on your observations, messaging you, mentioning you, etc. Muting helps you ignore someone without preventing them from doing anything.â
vs blocking again from the description on the site
âBlocking someone prevents them from messaging you, commenting on your observations, identifying your observations, and otherwise interacting with you on iNaturalist.org. It also removes their observations from your search results and removes your observations from their search resultsâ
Oops, I didnât realize muting was an actual option, thought it was just a good word for what I was trying to achieve. So no, the muting option does not do what Iâm trying to accomplish.
If removing an userâs observations from my view was a part of the muting feature, that would be great.
Thanks for the explanation! I have not had the misfortune to need either function, so had not looked into how they work. Possibly there is a URL hack that could exclude observations from a named observer?
It has been suggested to periodically search for all of someoneâs observations in identify and then mark them as reviewed so that you wonât have them come up again. Perhaps this will help in the short term?