I’ve tried doing it, as an observation I made doesn’t seem to have it’s ID confirmed, so I took down the original reuploaded it. It was a bit confusing since every single observation of that one species globally is considered research grade except mine. I once did it with an observation that had no ID’s showing said specimen in temporary captivity but when I reuploaded it without the picture in the enclosure even though it’s quality was better and almost immediately i got ID’s on it. I was asking is it alright to do it until I get the desired goal since I worry it could be considered “spam?”
Ironically I’ve reuploaded this because it seems I posted in the Spanish version of the forum
I would say to not do this. If all you want is identifications, you can tag a top identifier on your observation and see if they confirm or refute the ID.
In your case, it might have not gotten IDs because someone had marked it as Captive/Cultivated (just a guess), which means that the observation wouldn’t have shown up unless someone searched specifically for Casual observations.
So for that, you should just mark it as wild (if it is wild). Some newer users skew the meaning of Captive/Cultivated to mean anything which doesn’t have free rein, but really, insects are never Captive/Cultivated unless they were reared by a human. Temporarily captive organisms are wild.
Yes, check out the Data Quality Assessment (DQA). It looks like someone has also clicked a “Thumbs down” next to evidence of organism on your observations (I guess they feel that the organism isn’t evident, but I don’t know). If you click on the number next to the thumbs down, it will give you the name of the person who marked it and you can maybe address it with them, or you can just click the “Thumbs up” and it will cancel it out and that should take away the “casual” tag.
You may not get input if the photo quality is too poor for someone else to verify it, and uploading the same photo twice will not help this, it will just take up twice as much space on the servers.
People identifying rarely look at stuff marked as “casual.” I use it to mark my garden plants so that I’m not asking our identification volunteers to re-identify my plants in every stage of growth, and there are lots of other reasons people might use it. So if there’s a casual tag on your observations, it helps to look to the right of the DQA and there will be a list of reasons why it is casual.
It’s ok once in a while and not spam, but you can also just tag an expert, so they see your observation. And be sure to check if it’s casual and vote against it.
I would advise against doing this regularly and would recommend asking for help by tagging somebody instead. Though, it’s not a form of spam, but it is relatively unorthodox.
Just a side note too, instead of re-uploading observations you can try editing your observations to make them more favorable to receiving confirmed IDs (e.g. switching out a picture to one that’s a bit clearer or adding more pictures of the organism). Patience is key; the majority of my observations that don’t get IDs for months eventually fall into the lap of someone who is knowledgable enough to confidently ID some of my shoddier images.
Just noting that iNat has a specific definition of spam, and this would not meet that definition. I agree with the other replies, though, it’s best to not re-upload observations.