I see some of post are specimen, is it suitable to upload to iNaturalist? It seems like copyright infringement, and not the actually observation from the author, it has already move by another people.
as long as the uploaded photo was taken by that user, there is no copyright infringement. If you encounter observations depicting some kind of stuffed animal or museum specimen, just mark the DQA at the bottom of the observation (like you already did on your example) and it will become casual
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This is wrong, as long as the location and date are accurate for where it was originally collected it is still RG
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the situation posted by the OP (before I removed the link) was of a stuffed bird, with the location set to be the museum, and the date was the date of photography. In this case, the record gets marked as not wild and thus becomes casual. I’m not talking about a pinned insect or pressed plant where the date/location reflect where the collection was actually made
re the current iNat guidelines
Since this tends to be kind of a gray area, here are some concrete examples:
Captive / cultivated (planted)
- zebra in a zoo
- poppy in a garden
- tree planted 1, 10, or 100 years ago by humans
- butterfly mounted in a display case and not appropriately marked with date and location of original collection
- your pet such as a dog or cat
- plants that grew from seeds that were planted in the ground or scattered
please refer to the fourth option; that was the example presented by OP (but of a bird)
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Museum specimens are okay as long as they have permission from the museum and the date and location are accurate, you can ask the person if they have permission or check their bio and see if they work there.
Ohhhh ok sorry, without the context I got confused, my bad
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Also, in general, observations of museum specimens that the observer did not collect are not encouraged. iNat is about recording interactions between an observer and an organism. If the observer was the original collector and prepared the specimen and they are uploading photos taken later after the specimen was prepared, uploading it as alive at the time of capture is fine.
However, if the observer was not the original collector, then their interaction with the organism is as a dead specimen in a museum - not alive at the time of capture. A rare observation like this isn’t a big deal, but making a lot of observations of specimens like this shouldn’t be done.
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That’s say, if we know the original date and location for the specimen when they collect, then we can upload, the date and the location that upload should be the original date and location, it’s still able as Research Grade. If we don’t know, it’s better set as casual, it’s no necessary to ban. Is it right?
Additional, for the example that I gave, one of photos by this author removed due to copyright infringement. Also not sure rest of this type of observation are copyright infringement or not.
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If someone is encountering the organism as a specimen in a museum and they did not observe the organism when alive, they shouldn’t make an observation with the time/location of the original collection as that is not when they interacted with the organism.
They should just observe the organism and downvote “No Recent Evidence of Organism” or “Wild” so it won’t be RG.
If a photo is not attributed correctly to its creator, it should be flagged for copyright infringement.
The prerequisite is that the specimen must be collected by the author of the photo.
If not the collector upload the specimen from a museum, it should be steal other’s results.
I still don’t agree to upload any specimen from museum, it would confuse our species records.
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