For my first observation I uploaded two separate photos of the one insect, I’m grateful to the people who identified it for me. I was asked to ‘combine the other observation of this insect into this observation’. I’d be grateful if someone could let me know where I could discover how to do this.
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honestly, i would just worry about it for future observations. when you are creating your observation(s), you can add multiple photos (and/or sounds) of the same organism to the same observation rather than creating separate observations for separate photos of the same organism. how you go about this depends on how you’re loading your observations.
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How did you upload the observations? The exact instructions may be a little different based on whether you used iPhone, Android, or the website.
I don’t think there is an equivalent to a merge button after upload in any of the these. You can add the photo from the 2nd observation to the one that has an ID. Then you can delete the 2nd observation.
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Welcome to iNaturalist and the Forum @parlance
It looks to me like the observation that you are talking about was uploaded via the computer. At least one of your observations was uploaded via your iphone (it says this at the end of the iphone observation).
Different interfaces have different ways as to how the observation is uploaded as @Pisum stated. I would agree that it is not so important that your first upload is combined with your second.
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There are tips for combing your observations here: How to turn multiple observations into a single observation.
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Pisum, thanks. I’ll relax about it and just hope to do better in future.
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whitneybrook, that should be doable. I’ll have a try.
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bobmcd, thanks for the welcome. I feel sure I’ll get my head around things gradually.
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swampster, I’ve bookmarked that link and I’m going to read it now.
On this particular observation, its not super important that you merge the observations, although I would still suggest that you do so. However, in some cases, multiple observations of the same individual can be detrimental to the dataset collected, particularly for rarer/vagrant/unusual records for species. I would encourage people to accurately record data to the best of their ability.
I realise that especially on a website with newer users like iNaturalist, duplicate observations will happen, but its still a good idea to go back and fix them when you figure out how.
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Do you really suggest a person to leave duplicates and “do better next time”? We have to fight against duplicates each day, don’t just leave them when you know they’re there. Of course it matters as much with first or 100th observation, there’s nothing hard for a new user to delete one observation and add that photo to a second.
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I am guilty of leaving ‘please combine’ comments.
If the flower.
And the leaf.
And the wide view - tree - shrub - tiny tiny
Are on 3 separate obs, identifiers spend more time battling to identify three separate plants - when together in one obs it might have been obvious at once.
Same difference for a zoology example - did it have two toes, green stripe on its shoulders, a crest … scattered across 3 separate obs?
Observers and identifiers work together to get to an ID.
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You are correct. I was focused on being welcoming and taking a shortcut by not finding the answer @swampster gave.
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