Recently saw an ob. which was a single picture of a pathway which appeared to be perhaps in a curated setting. A few bushes along the path. No one thing in the picture to make it obvious what the observer wanted identified. It was labelled Unknown Species. When queried what they wanted identified, the answer was “No small birds”. What’s with that?
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Tick “no evidence of organism” and move on. Or, if you’re feeling friendly and have the time, assume they’re a new user and give them some information and links about what iNat observations are for and how they work.
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I would presume - they saw - small birds - but couldn’t catch a photo.
Mark as Reviewed and move on.
Or if you can see ‘birds’ add that.
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I would personally identify whatever is in the image (e.g. the bushes), but I understand the reasoning behind marking it as “no evidence of organism” too. Both approaches make sense, but I feel like making the observation serve some purpose is preferable.
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It’s hard for us to speculate what was intended since none of us are the observer. Maybe they meant “no[, I was observing] small birds [but they’re not visible in the photo]” or the opposite, 'no[, I’m documenting that I didn’t see any birds].
Personally, I would ask for clarification before taking any action. eg if they did observe birds but they’re not visible in the photo, and they’re a new user, I might let them know that photos aren’t required for observations. which is a common misunderstanding.
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But the observer decides the subject, so we need their input before IDing whatever.
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I’ve seen observations like that, with cryptic info in the details like “no bees”, or “no birds”, and just assumed they were for some school project or the like.
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There is a high school in my area that must give students an assignment to create iNat accounts and upload images. There are countless images like this (photos of a parking lots, school hallways, chain link fences, random photos of the ground with dirt and a few leaves). I am never sure how to mark these when reviewing unknowns. Sometimes I mark “no evidence of organism” or I ID the only thing possible, i.e. Oak sp. for a distant oak tree. Open to other ideas.
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I don’t suppose that the accounts are linked to a project page, are they? If they are, then reaching out to the teacher(s) responsible for this nonsense the assignment might help improve both the lesson planning and the observations.
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Sadly there are thousands of such teachers and projects, and in my experience very few of them are responsive to attempts at communication. At this point I’m just happy when the students are submitting original images of sidewalks and blurry desk chairs instead of massive numbers of falsified observations using pics off the internet.
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Nope, they aren’t linked to a project. That’s a good idea though. I really wish iNat had some data quality category for “junk” observations like these.
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A placeholder ID in case they (most likely) never respond is better than nothing IMO. 95%+ of my IDs on “unknown” observations are never responded to by their uploader.
Ican’t tick no evidence. I do it on a tablet, not a PC.
I do IDing in Identify mode on an ipad, and that option is under the data quality tab, where you can vote up or down for “evidence of organism”
Maybe it’s different for an android tablet?
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