Is it ok to upload pictures of shells if I don't know where they're from?

Edited for clarity: Why have any casual observations if they’re a waste of iNaturalist’s time? Why take photos of buildings or cars and label them as “human”? Or pets? I don’t want to participate in the hurtful language of stating that some observations aren’t a good use of resources. I have enough insecurity over the quality of my own.

Pets shouldn’t be labeled as Human.

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You don’t need to pick on me because I worded it oddly.

But a casual observation is still an encounter with an organism in time and space. Why have projects dedicated to organisms found at markets, then? Why have any casual observations at all?

Well, I’m sure it wasn’t a pick as that’s exactly what you wrote and how we read it, it’s great that you didn’t mean it. But there’s nothing hurtful in stating that casual observations are much less needed than verifiable, if it’s for some reason offends you, it wasn’t an intention of any posts here.
Casual observations are here because we can’t delete them, only observer can, not anybody else.

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iNat’s first purpose is to encourage more people to see nature. That often means … my cat, dog, pet, at the zoo, or the aquarium, in my garden, street trees. Those are all welcomed as a first step to learning to iNat. I regret and resist that iNat lumps together casual obs that are lacking data (date, location, whatever) with Not Wild. Casual is judgemental versus Research Grade!!

If shells are the focus of interest - here is a freshly hatched project
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/world-oceans-week-2022

Say more about that? I’m just not aware of such or the reasons why people would .

There’re valid reasons to do that in less developed countries, as I remember some fish species were described from fish markets. https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversity-in-food-markets-of-the-world

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It doesn’t offend me, but I think it’s hypocritical that users that use the site like Facebook and posting buildings and cars and humans are stating that casual grade observations of actual organisms are somehow not of any use.

Who in this topic posts cars or buildings on iNat? And how using Facebook is linked to any that? Shell expert here already said that shells need to be geolocated to id the species unless they’e very unique, OP said there’re shells that can be from oll over the world, and really who doesn’t have a collection of shells? I have a huge pile of them and have no idea which are bought and which I or my family collected, so I don’t post them.

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Thanks, I checked out a few of the observations in that project. And I noticed quite a number of them are marked as Not Wild, but not all of them. So, the DQA seems to be inconsistently applied In such records.

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I will send you a PM on the site to show you who.

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