I understand there is a slippery-slope argument to be made… I think phobias are getting into a different topic worthy of its own discussion.
2 Likes
I think this is a real problem, and I’d like to see it solved. Not sure how, though. I agree that the biggest problem involves dead vertebrates, and any solution could be applied there first. Perhaps an optional extension to photos of spiders or snakes could be made available.
Problem: People often don’t mark dead animals as dead.
In the mean time, I think we as observers should mask much of the first photo or otherwise minimize the distress to people who see our photos. That’s just being responsible, kind, community members.
9 Likes
Another thing is that the types of images at issue here (e.g., a close-up of a pocket gopher with its intestines spread across a sidewalk, a rotting raccoon with maggots crawling out of its eye sockets, a road-killed desert tortoise with it’s shell cracked in two) would get a NSFW/NSFL tag on any other site (like Reddit) or even removed entirely. *for reference: NSFW/NSFL = not safe for work/not safe for life.
This is a nature site, but one of our main goals is outreach. If say, 75% of the public doesn’t want to see these gory images by default, and iNaturalist’s goal is to encourage a love of nature among those people (people new to nature), why would we not implement something to make the community more welcoming to them?
12 Likes
But no data are being lost, @raymie. What’s being proposed throughout this thread is just a change to the way a few images are displayed by default. If anything, it would probably lead to an increase in data like those since people would feel better about posting them. It would presumably be easy to opt out of, and wouldn’t rise to the level of “minor inconvenience” to the users who want to see that stuff by default. No big deal, imo.
If we tell people who don’t want to see gore, which is a big portion of the public, that they shouldn’t be in our community, well… I don’t think it’s up to us to decide the way new users should and shouldn’t be. Because when we start deciding that, that’s when the community stops growing :)
9 Likes
I was specifically referring to you saying these observations should be removed.
No one suggested that. I was referring to what might happen on instagram or something
3 Likes
75% of naturalists don’t want to see some intestines? Come on, who wouldn’t like to? That’s what nature sites for, to not have same standarts of what is normal and what is weird or “disgusting”.
7 Likes
Not too long ago I would have been (actually I have been) against something like this, but as I’ve become more aware and accepting of my own phobias and issues, and how many others are affected by these images, I’ve definitely softened.
No system would be perfect, and photos of dead animals would slip through, but I’d be for giving people an easy option to have photos of dead vertebrates covered by warning (might be easier, technically, than blurring photos). Devil’s in the details, though, as to how and where to implement it and whether it should be opt in or opt out by default.
This is something we’re exploring. Will take time to build out once we decide on a structure or platform.
11 Likes
75% of the general public is what I said (not dedicated iNaturalist users) – a guess sure, but definitely lots of people, the exact number doesn’t matter.
I might also have advocated against this in the past. Devil’s in the details of implementation, indeed!
3 Likes
No, I certainly don’t want to see intestines sometimes. I don’t consider myself a squeamish person at all either. Usually I’m the person poking the dead thing to get a better look while everyone else turns away. Let’s not gatekeep what is and isn’t being a naturalist.
16 Likes
No, I don’t say somebody isn’t a naturalist cause they don’t want to, I say percentage is not real in my opinion. And comparing iNat to Instagram as if the second had it right?
6 Likes
Opposed. I thought the site was to help people engage with the natural world. The world isn’t a kids’ cartoon. There’s danger, death, slime, lots of legs, and, sometimes, no legs at all.
8 Likes
You are certainly welcome to oppose. I would like to emphasize that no one is suggesting that iNat isn’t a place for this kind of content, or that it isn’t part of our natural world… Perhaps engagement with the natural world means experiencing all the down-and-dirty to you. But surely, it’s not unreasonable for someone to enjoy nature, and specifically the resources of iNaturalist, with less death and gore on their screen.
As a reminder my original suggestion explicitly stated that a user could opt out.
(Which may be better implemented as an opt-in)
13 Likes
I personally think this is a rather silly idea. Especially if there’s already a similar opt-out setting. I’ve posted several observations of half-eaten rodents (courtesy of my cat) and don’t intend to stop. I don’t mind this function as long as it’s extremely clear how to turn it off, because it sounds annoying. I do see how roadkill, etc, pictures could bother some people, and they even bother me sometimes, but I just ignore it and click to the next observation. Keep in mind this is coming from a 13-year-old girl, which is the group who are supposed to be most averse to dead animals!
8 Likes
Although I do have a strong opinion about this, I also want to acknowledge real quick that this isn’t the most consequential problem in the world right now. A couple hopefully final thoughts. First, there isn’t an easy way to avoid gore right now, especially for new users who aren’t familiar with all the settings (filtering out “dead” is the closest thing).
A couple things have been repeated in this thread by different folks (paraphrasing):
“I don’t have a problem with gore.” Just because you don’t have a problem with gore doesn’t mean others don’t. I think we should have some empathy for those who do.
“Others shouldn’t have a problem with gore.” This attitude of telling people what they should and shouldn’t like pushes people away. Here, we all care about the natural world and would agree that conservation of nature depends on growing the conservation movement. To bring more people in, we need to be inclusive and aware of the way society is right now.
Summary of this proposal as it has evolved in this discussion: an opt-in (or opt-out) to blur photos by default if they are dead vertebrates or have a “gore” tag. Clicking would remove the blur. Users could be asked if they want to opt in when they set up their account. If implemented, there would be no negative effect on any user in this thread. I think that’s worth repeating: nobody would be negatively affected. But many people could be positively affected.
*Edit: good clarifications from kiwifergus below
16 Likes
But not blurring, rather a standard graphic similar to copyright infringement one. A single repeat use image Vs on the fly blurring (processor intensive) or pre-blurred image stored on the observation (additional storage overhead). Also, not specifically gore, but “potentially objectionable content” with a short text reason, then user can use that description to judge for themselves whether they want to click the warning image and reveal the actual image. Opt-out makes more sense too…
5 Likes
I phrase it “Potentially Objectionable Content”, because there will be a huge grey area of content that people will argue over as to whether it is objectionable or not! Animals in-copula might be another plausible reason. Back when we were first discussing this, I raised the idea of the cover image with a text reason, and to make my case more generic I framed it as “objection to the colour blue”, an absurd extremity case that more directly inferred other reasons for not wanting to see something and that others might not find objectionable. That was a mistake, I think the discussion unnecessarily devolved into a discussion about what IS objectionable rather than how to give users the ability to screen for their personal objections. But what it does raise is the issue that some people would flag for reasons that others find silly, and it would cause arguments. Spiders for instance might be flagged by arachnophobes, I might be tempted to flag moths (long story, child-hood developed fear of big furry moths, which iNat has largely helped me overcome, btw!). So the text message associated with the flagging gives everyone (that is, those that are opted in) a heads up as to whether the content will be offensive to them personally.
One potential downfall of this approach, is that someone has to encounter the observation and judge it as objectionable in order for it to be flagged as such, so it doesn’t insulate all potential objectors from all potentially objectionable content. One way to improve on this would be to have the ability to flag be still available to all users, so that those of us uploading such observations, and that actually care about our fellow iNatters, could put the flag on so that they don’t have to.
Of course, we could all get too carried away with this, and have potentially objectionable content flags on everything for such a diverse range of reasons that it turns into a frustrating mess (for those that are opted in). I think there should be a balloon tip on hover-over, describing what the flag is and does, and recommending users to use sparingly and for the more extreme cases of objectionable content.
Another issue, and I mentioned it above, is that iNat is terrific at educating about the extremes of nature, and can help us de-sensitise over our phobias! We see this with food, in that there are a large chunk of the population that doesn’t know where their food comes from! They eat meat, but have never seen an animal killed and processed, they eat carrots and don’t know they grow under the ground, they eat lettuce that has perfect leaves and don’t appreciate that the leaves are perfect because toxic chemicals have been used to kill thousands to many billions of insects just so that their leaves will look perfect and unblemished… and then those same lettuce eaters will see my pinned moth in an observation and call me a murderer for having killed it! (calm down, Mark!). I think the balloon tip should also encourage users to gradually expose themselves to these “natural world things” and de-sensitise their fears/phobias. Maybe along with the text message, we could have a 1-9 scale of how extreme the potentially objectionable content is, and those that have the fears can start with baby-steps on the 1s and 2s, and gradually work up to the 9s. Maybe the opt-in on this feature would also allow you to set the level for which you want it to start taking effect (colour blue would be a 1, extreme gore an 8, moths a 9), then I could say I am fine with everything up to a 7, and only put up the placeholder graphic for me if it’s an 8 or above.
I think there were a lot of other very useful suggestions back in the old topic on it, but I can’t remember them off the top of my head
[edit] and I am putting up these as things to consider, ie for iNat staff to weigh up the pros and cons of, as there are practical limitations when it comes to implementing things like this. For example, if the 1-9 scale is built in, how is that set? by vote? by predetermined text examples to compare against? and so on…
7 Likes
One practical question I have is who would be responsible for blurring/tagging/etc. the observation? Most folks I interact with can rarely be arsed to add annotations to their observations - so will it be up to the poster, or to the iNat staff who are already hard at work?
4 Likes
The Potential Objector would decide whether the placeholder image shows by opting-in (or remaining opted in if it is opt out)… and anyone can set the flag.When I upload the moth, I could flag it as POC (potentially objectionable content) with a reason “MOTH!” and extremity level “9” (these examples for humour :) ), someone identifying observations might see one and flag it POC for “Intestines exposed, rotting flesh” level “8” even though they don’t have an issue with it themselves, or a person actually might encounter something that is personally offensive to them, and they would flag it (and give reason and level) so that others like them are shielded.
For those of us that opt out, we would NEVER see the placeholder image, always seeing the original images… we would still have the ability to flag and give reason/level (to shield our more sensitive iNatter friends), and everyone would be free to judge for themselves what they deem objectionable, without any real need to justify
2 Likes
Just mulling over the 1-9 level thing, perhaps it wouldn’t be too burdensome on the system to allow key words to be specified in the user settings, so that rather than selectively shielding based on level, actual key words in the text reason could be used to trigger the shielding. But I do like the idea that users could gradually increase their settings to gradually expose themselves to more content and de-sensitise… [edit: if they wish to, of course!]
2 Likes