How not to automatically add observations to a project

I have created a new project devoted to alien species in the area of the Italy-France Marittimo Programme area:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/aliem

Editing the project there are only three possibilities as far as the native or alien status: any, native or introduced. Choosing one of the three results in adding automatically the corresponding species to the project. Of course I clicked on “introduced” for this project.
Anyway it is possible that I have a broader point of view as far as which are the species that are alien to this area.
Thus, I wonder if I will be allowed (or not) to add species that I consider alien to this area but that instead are considered native in the iNat database.

Thanks

If you are willing to take the time you can individually add the species under the taxa rule. There may be a numerical limit to how many can be added. Otherwise i see no other option

ok thanks.
Is there the possibility to edit what is alien and what is native to a certain area?

See these projects I created for South Africa alien plants
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/nemba-alien-species-south-africa
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/nemba-category-2-flora-south-africa

Yes, you can edit what is native or introduced to an area. It’s not an obvious process.

  1. Go to the places page and find the place you want to edit.
  2. On the lower left side click the link to view the check list page.
  3. For any species in the checklist, click on Edit to change the occurrence and status.
  4. If you need to add a species to the list, the link is in the upper right corner of the checklist page. There is also an option to add a batch of species with their status by uploading a CSV file.
  5. Once you have made changes to the checklist they will automatically be reflected in your project.
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That being said, you should not be changing these according to the desire of what you want or dont want to appear in your project. These are global settings for the species in those locations. They should only be changed or added if there is legitimate evidence the information currently in there is wrong.

Yes, I forgot to add that. You should only change the occurrence and status in the checklist for the iNat place that defines your project area. You wouldn’t change it for all of Italy or France, unless there is good evidence ot do so.
I forgot to check if your place had a checklist and it does not. You might not be able to add a checklist for such a large area.

Thank you for these suggestions.
I have another question:
If a place still hasn’t a checklist, has it to be added manually (species by species) or is there a way to automatically create a checklist?

You can edit the place and there is a checkbox to allow checklists, which automatically create one. The size of a place that can have checklists is limited because it causes a lot of server resources to calculated the list.

Ok, I see…
Yes, I had already checked that box but nothing happened.

ok, I agree but what do you mean for “legitimate evidence the information currently in there is wrong”?
What could be a legitimate evidence that, for example, a species is alien to a certain area instead of being native? Maybe a published paper could be such evidence?

If there is evidence that what has been entered is clearly wrong (or even wrong for a vast majority of the individuals).

For example, banding studies show a small number of Canada Geese migrate across the Atlantic (they get banded in North America, and then are later refound in Europe), but clearly the vast majority of Canada Geese seen in Europe are introduced, or offspring of introduced birds.

If someone had used the banding studies as justification to have marked Canada Geese as native in Europe, it woud be fair to reset it to Introduced.

There is no fixed standard for what is used as evidence here - papers, checklists, government biodiversity databases etc are all cited.

ok, very exhaustive.
Many thanks

I think the general point is that while the application allows uncited changes to be done, there is a preference that data changes be cited or sourced to an external body, rather than ‘because user X says so’

Ok, I agree.

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