If one individual of organism is recorded by many individual, is it valid?

see these obs
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/100896122
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/100896092
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/100896081
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/100895958
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/100895944
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/100895860
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/100895831

There are more obs, I think this is the individual common mormon and looks like more than one observers were present at same time.

Yes, iNat documents interactions between individuals (humans) and nature, so each one human/nature combination is a valid interaction as long as observers are using their own photos and abiding by other rules.

It’s not-optimal for other reasons (essentially duplicate data, more work for IDers, etc.). I think most observers “grow out” of this (except for perhaps very rare/cool observations that people want on their lists). This behavior is most often seen in school classes or other groups that are being trained how to use iNat.

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I have seen moth images in which the person adds in the note - ‘also seen by x’ sometimes ‘x and y’. I presume they were on a collecting trip together. I’ve only seen this with experiences observers, though.

I’ve seen a case where it was very helpful for IDing both because the pictures captured from people standing at different angles and therefore caught different features.

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ooh thanks

Even if we were to decide it isn’t valid, there’s nothing we could do about it. There’s simply no way to flag that sort of thing.

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It is kind of funny to imagine adults playing rock paper scissors over who gets to post the inat observation of the rare plant they both saw though

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