No I just meant that if the original owner waived copyright by making it CC0 then, literally, there is no copyright to infringe on. But it should still be flagged as ‘copyright infringement’ for inat purposes.
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Turns out there is an open feature request for obscuring locations on all human observations https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/automatically-obscure-observations-marked-as-human/501
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What threads are you referring to? I am not aware of other long threads related to this
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It sounds like the flags themselves need an overhaul, because to me, there’s no reason why flags should just sit unresolved. That’s so much clutter and probably taking up a lot of space.
I really like the idea of having a flag to immediately remove photos that could be interpreted as bullying, but I agree making more clutter for staff and curators is not the answer. I wonder if something could be done where the curator/staff member “confirms” the flag as a resolution option, like “Yes, this should be hidden,” which could be the resolution. I think it would be best that another curator or staff member could reverse the decision if it was made in error, because I agree that the ability to hide photos permanently is very powerful and shouldn’t be given lightly.
I have seen joke IDs of children as Neanderthals and other rude observations of kids in school, so I do think this is necessary.
I do not agree with auto-hiding images in human observations. I don’t think that is necessary, even if the observations are usually clutter. Plus relying on description and comment notes or reputation of posting certain kinds of organisms instead of images to reverse false IDs is not going to be very effective. Most of my observations don’t have any notes or comments because I post more than a few observations at a time. How could I prove that the image is not a human, without relying on my reputation, which is not something I’m even claiming to have?
I hope I’ve made some sense but here are my thoughts.
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About bullying and moderation of
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lgbtqia-and-inaturalist/23565
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I think there is such a large gray area when it comes to what might be considered harassment or bullying, or non-consentual photography, that you’d probably end up with more debates than is necessary. IMO, hiding photos with a Community ID of human gets rid of that ambiguity and that bottleneck of curation, and since iNaturalist is not for making observations of humans, it sends that message. It also takes care of some other issues, such as photos of kids being up for public view indefinitely. They may not understand the potential consequences of that at their age.
You could also just mark it as “no” for “Evidence of organism” in the Data Quality Assessment.
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I agree entirely
I woudl like to clarify that the threads you refer to are not really about this topic
The first one is a general thread for LGBTQIA+ naturalists to discuss their experiences, and wasn’t about cyberbullying, but some posts in that thread caused offense, leading to a very contentious argument over forum conduct and moderator and staff actions, the staff split the second thread off from this, and have since closed that and asked that the original thread end the controversy and return to its original purpose, I just don’t want people thinking that that thread is about the same topic as this one
But it also removes photos of human sign or impacts that may be relevant, so I think bluebellprince’s suggestion may be better
Which photos of human sign or impact are relevant to iNaturalist?
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In other threads some users have said they use inat for documenting human impacts on the environment
There are also certain fungi that resemble spray foam, and a certain spray foam used on trees is sometimes mistaken for this fungus, so the uploads of spray foam on trees are correctly IDed as human but are still useful to tell the difference between spray foam and this fungus
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The corresponding flag reads: “Violates copyright law or was created by someone other than the observer and lacks attribution.” So if the CC0 image was created by someone other than the observer, that still qualifies for flagging.
I sometimes take pictures of vandalism (e.g. fresh carvings in tree bark) or careless damage (e.g. endangered plants on a rock outcrop trampled by the selfie crowd) to share with park rangers. Those are of concern (and thus interest) for conservation and education/crowd management purposes. I think I’ve occasionally posted some on iNat to document damage done. I know of at least one spot with a view where there used to be a population of endangered plants, but now one can only find boot prints in bare dirt.
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People have also used iNaturalist to document things like their meals, litter, restaurants in New York City, or survey areas, or rocks, but that doesn’t mean it’s a proper use of iNat. iNat’s not made for any of that. It’s for sharing and discussing observations of extant wild organisms. That’s why observations of humans and non-wild organisms are casual grade and not shown by default. See https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/what+is+it
There are other platforms, like Litterati or Marine Debris Tracker, that can be used for reporting detritus, and Rockd, which can be used to document geological finds, or Anecdata, which can be used for just about any kind of bespoke data collection project. See https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#nonorganisms iNat can’t be a place for reporting all things affecting nature.
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One thing I thought it would be interesting to check would be if there are any now-RG non-human observations that ever would have incorrectly had a CID of human. As far as I can tell, there is just one:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/425872
I could have missed some, and I can only search by observations that still have at least one ID of human, so there could be more where all the human IDs have been withdrawn. A lot of the most controversial ones are ones where the evidence is drawings, which a subset of users don’t like. There are also a number of crust fungi vs spray paint IDs which are sort of close calls.
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That obs - for poverty weed - would be better with a first image cropped to the plant, and the existing image as a second broader habitat shot.
The very few ‘human’ obs that have Engaging with Nature value can be highlighted with a note or comment for context. To avoid the - who what where are we looking at here?
@tiwane I have used No evidence of organism on That Picture.
Which makes it Casual, but as Homo sapiens it is already Casual.
Only the Copyrght flag hides the image.
I’m sure there are plenty, like this one (BioBlitz observation, but apparently a bunch of folks felt strongly that it should be ID’d as human for the cars in the parking lot I guess - there aren’t even any people in the picture).
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I find this to still be a valid reason to keep human observations easily accessible. I disagree with the first half (about litter) because as it was said, there’s a place for that already. I think that the process of figuring out what something is is such a huge part of iNaturalist and it’s an organic process that takes time and effort from those involved. If something is unclear whether it be a wild organism or some type of manmade material, that process of IDing it still has to happen. What if it’s a type of fungus that two people decide is most likely spray foam, but in time a third person who is more familiar with the fungus comes across it and is comfortable saying it is not spray foam?
I know that sounds really specific but I’ve encountered multiple observations where people are on the fence and the community ID rocks back and forth between human and something else. I don’t like the fact that some observations could be “lost” or hidden (or sent to purgatory) because then this process wouldn’t be able to happen.
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I think the photos of realistic-looking decoys are helpful to us as observers. I had no idea there are Sandhill Crane decoys, or Tapir decoys! And I have spent a long time staring at some owls set up to scare birds before deciding that they were not real (but photoing them anyway). Such owls can sometimes be found out in the country ( https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/116792880 ).
I also like photos of interesting outdoors statuary (e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/109729048 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/136230695 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/38453080 ), which can stimulate interesting comment threads. I think sharing them can qualify as community building if nothing else.
I have to admit that the more I run into iNaturalist photos of actual humans, the more I dislike them. Not the humans – I don’t even know them – but the photos. I react differently to human faces than to photos of other things, and in this iNaturalist context, that different reaction is not welcome (to me).
NOTE: Although this comment is intended largely for fun and partly to show that there are some human observations we might want to keep, I agree most should be removed, for reasons articulated in earlier posts here. Plus aesthetics.
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Yes there are definitely more in needs-ID that could eventually be research grade but once had a CID of human. I just made a more restricted search because it was easier. Also there are almost certainly observations that still incorrectly have a CID of human, because they are casual and hard to search for.
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wouldn’t this kind of workflow be easily abused? i just need a few coordinated accounts to label any given observation human, even if its subject is not human, and if observations of humans get sent to some sort of void, then nobody else will be able to correct the situation, right?
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Just a thought what if you restricted it to taking down observations if they are CID’d as human and annotated ‘evidence of presence: organism’? This could reduce the indisputedly legitimate and potentially highly educational issues like ‘is this a crust fungi or spray paint’ and ‘is this a moon snail egg collar or a discarded plumbing boot’. It also preserves the ones of ‘human sign or impact’ that maybe aren’t the sites mission per se but also aren’t specifically problematic when done in moderation. I’m sure the kinds of IDers who ID lots of observations of humans would not object to adding this flag, especially if it is an easy hotkey in the identify modal.
This could still be a problem and, at least extrapolating from my current glance at human observations, the most immediately likely area for this to crop up as an issue is for sketches. A pro of adding something like an annotation requirement is that it would make it more obvious that it was a coordinated attempt to hide a legitimate observation as opposed to an honest confusion about the site’s policy on allowing sketches (a sketch is either evidence of a non-human organism or it is non-organism evidence for a human, it can’t be both). Then at least it would make it more apparent what level of chastisement/sanctions might be appropriate.
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Just got out of a meeting where we discussed this (yesterday was a US holiday).
Since functionality that allows curators to hide media is needed anyway, we’re going to work on that approach and see how it works for cases of bullying/potential bullying. So in that case, someone could flag a photo, sound, or observation as inappropriate and a curator could hide it like they can currently do with comments. This could be used for other situations like maybe a hateful image that’s not of a human. We’ll also look into solutions that make the media more inaccessible as well. This will take some thoughtful policies and guidelines.
If you find anything that’s needs to be hidden right away, it’s OK to use the copyright violation flag, but please use it for clear-cut cases. If you think something should be deleted, please email help@inaturalist.org and we’ll take a look.
Thanks for the construcive conversation, everyone.
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