I’m just curious :) I personally write down details of the sighting, like in what biome, on what plant, at what time of day and so on.
I came across an observation without media and the notes were just blank, so that got me thinking, how do people utilize them.
So, how do you utilize them?
I use them when I see something that I consider notable but wasn’t able to get a photo. Ultimately my observations serve to help me remember my experiences with nature. If I have photos or audio that’s ideal for jogging my memory, but just a species and location is better than nothing. The one time I saw a fox in my neighbourhood late at night where I’d never seen one before, or the times I saw an Amazon River Dolphin or a Blacktip Reef Shark while travelling and the views were too brief to get my camera on them.
personally, i don’t.
i have lots of encounters with organisms that are just for me :)
I don’t have any observations without media, but I have a ton of casual observations from things I wanted to make a note of, especially domestic plants I wanted to take seeds from when they were ready. I’ve also heard of people making an observation where they have the media, but can’t upload it right then. Sometimes it takes them days or weeks to get around to adding it
I use them to enter sightings I’ve carefully recorded and identified but don’t have photos or other media to attach for any of various reasons. Keeps track of my sightings–don’t know if it’s of any benefit to others. I do this often for birds (birders traditionally go on an honor system, and dedicated birding sites like ebird accept records all the time without any sort of media) as well as mammals.
One annoying thing I’ve found, though, is that sometimes people will add a comment to my observations without media–“please add photo.” Comments like that are silly and waste everyone’s time–if I had or wanted to add a photo I would have already done so! I usually mute commenters who make such comments because they don’t understand the purpose of casual observations. So please avoid making such comments.
I always feel weird about adding one so I usually put like a little sorry note, something like “Too fast for a photo”. That’s stupid of course, it is a legit way to log observations. But it feels so wrong.
same here. I observe a ton of things where I don’t have the time to get a photo/audio. I also usually don’t have time to make an obs on inat (like when I’m driving). and trying to remember what I saw and where I saw it on those occasions just isn’t worth it (because I will usually forget for days or even much longer, when remembering details of what it was or where I saw it are even more difficult).
I’ve seen a number of cases (including a few of my own observations) where there’s no photo even though there’s supposed to be one because the upload glitched, so some of the commenters may be trying to alert you because they think that’s what’s happened. I guess you could do something similar to those paradoxical “this space intentionally left blank” labels you sometimes see on official documents, although it sounds like you’ve already come up with a system that works for you.
Yes, often it’s just a glitch while uploading. Can also be a reminder for a past observation without foto, or a remider to check for a species at that place in the future.
Back in the days before we had iNaturalist, I was with a group that did a BioBlitz at a local site just to show its biodiversity. We had a lot of taxonomic experts on site and made lists of what we found, but no photos. Years later I took the lists that had survived and posted them as no-media because the IDs were relatively trustworthy and it would help characterize the site going forward.
I use them exclusively as placeholders, when I’ve collected something at that locality/date but need a reminder for myself to get photos from the specimen or at least to get them uploaded to iNat.
I’ve never done it. Closest I’ve come was photographing the footprint if a puma who chased my dog. I’ve had plenty hung up on bad internet while on a trip. These give me a ‘casual’ rating until the IT gods finish uploading it. I’ve never gotten a comment from anyone about those.
I don’t post observations without photos – at least on purpose – but some people do to record for themselves that they saw species x at this time and place. Useless to others but useful to the observer. I just ignore them or mark them reviewed. Asking the observer if there should have been a picture is reasonable, given that sometimes things go wrong with uploading.
While you may be using iNat for personal reasons, this is a community effort mainly focused on documenting wildlife in a way that can be used for researc ( and media supports this mission. Only a very small fraction of observations lack media. Others are simply communicating with you because they do not know why there is no media. My experience is that the community is generally trying to be supportive not obnoxious. It would be especially helpful if, instead of the inevitable comments and questions that will come whenever you submit observations without media, you would communicate by providing a short note saying why there is no media.
To clarify, I’m agreeing with and expanding on @bugbaer’s comment.
This statement
is incorrect, though that may be how some users see it personally. iNat’s stated mission is
“to connect people to nature and advance biodiversity science and conservation.”
The “connect people to nature” has always come first. Many iNat users use medialess observations are a way to connect to nature. If iNat’s founders didn’t want there to be medialess observations, they wouldn’t have made it an option.