Is it spammy to repost the same thing

I may enjoy taking and uploading new pictures of things I have already posted and had identified. But is it considered bad etiquette/spammy to do so?

And I’ll tag on a supplementary question… Does the community take a dim view of garden furniture, bird tables and so on appearing?

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What do you mean? If it’s one species, you can observe as many as you wish, if one specimen, then it’s one observation a day as best, any human object can be presented on photo of course. Reposting the same photo with same species being ided shouldn’t be done.

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Sometimes reposting the same observation isn’t spammy. For example, if you’re trying to capture the whole life cycle of a plant and take photos of the same specimen weeks/months/years apart.

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There’s still the unsolved problem of muliple onservations of same taxon by multiple people in a group. It’s hard to say whether it’s 1 observation or 10.

Maybe some kind of GPS blur-feature could be used to consider all observations within 25m of each other to be 1 observation, but not sure how to handle these cases.

Related: Same observation, multiple observers

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It’s not an actual problem, as observation is what one person met, if ten people did it, then it’s ten observations, this is a different topic though.
Making observations of one plant week apart is not a reposting of an observation, it is a new observation each time.

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It might be too much to post 1 of the same specimen everyday all the time - that would be within the guidelines, but might frustrate users. But most people don’t take it this far, so as long as you stick to one a day, I think it’s probably fine.

It might be nice to refer to a previous observation in your description, especially if it’s something that is hard to ID, as that could prevent IDers wasting time trying to figure out a difficult specimen.

I don’t see any problem with garden furniture/things as long as they don’t prevent the main subject from being IDed.

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I wanted to amplify the point about linking observations. This can be done a variety of ways, but it dramatically increases the usefulness of repeat observations of the same individual – and dramatically reduces the burden on IDers.

I’m trying to get better about this with nearby plants: maybe save a series of pictures of the same plant, wait until it’s identity is clear, then post that one to get a confirmatory ID – and only then post the earlier observations (referencing that later ID) so we can get a better sense of how the seedlings differentiate themselves over time.

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Just as long as you don’t combine pictures of several species into one observation. That’s what irritates a lot of IDers.

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I do that a lot for various reasons, mostly related to documenting plant phenology. Sometimes I go back to a spot and take another series of images after learning more about the species and what features distinguish it from others. If you do this, it may be helpful and add value to link the observations together, e.g. as a similar observation set. That also helps with getting them all ID’d, including observations that by themselves may not have enough evidence included to put a definitive ID on them.

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@fffffffff put it succinctly. As long as it is not the exact same picture posted many times, then iNat is what you make of it. I’ve got lots of pictures of Downy, Hairy and Pileated woodpeckers, White Breasted Nuthatches, and Black Capped Chickadees. For several reasons: I like them; during our winters there is not much else to photograph; somehow I hope that it is a record of them over time. As @cthawley says, the same species daily might be too much, but basically it is your page. If your images have other ‘stuff’ in them but the specimen is clear, that’s all that counts. As for what the community thinks, that’s their problem frankly! I identify lots of moths, and have seen them against all kinds of background. Makes no difference to me - if I can’t identify them, I just move on. I try not to make judgements about picture composition.

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Thankfully this is no problem, I upload a lot of birds, and a portion of my observations have my ugly patio walls and fence as the backdrop, it’s all part of the environment the creatures are existing in.

Most of my Sparkling Violeteer observations are accompanied by domestic plants… if I didn’t have my patio covered in planters I probably wouldn’t see a fraction of the hummers that visit us daily :]

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I can verify that the avian visitors to our yard take a very focused view of outdoor furniture, decking, and parked vehicles.

We ended up just not putting any outdoor furniture out, for the most part. And everytime we see a flyer or ad showing beautiful models enjoying spotless looking outdoor lounges, sofas, tables, etc. we chuckle and wonder what those shots would look like if taken in our backyard (without Photoshop).

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