Is there a way to flag the user entirely? Bc I saw a person join iNat, upload 9 or 10 copyright images (all of which got removed), dip out of the platform….but the user is still on the platform and the faulty observations still are there. also, I realize that iNat can’t remove observations, but are observations removed if a person is banned?
Currently iNaturalist only supports flagging users directly, as spam which is a narrow use case.
I’ll just add that the spam flag often gets mis-used for wider use-cases beyond content that is clearly intended to make money (the narrow iNat definition). For more information check out the iNat help topic for spam.
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Ugh. Seems like repeated copyright infringement would be a proper expansion of the flag. I don’t know if iNat holds any responsibility for that kind of thing if it occurs on the platform, but if so, repeated violations by a user should, to me, merit a user flag.
Maybe worth a Feature Request to do something like how 3 spam flags currently result in automatic account suspension. In the case of copyright violations, though, maybe the threshold needs to be a little higher, since in those cases it’s more often “innocent” new users playing around. If they don’t learn after seeing several “Copyrighted Material Removed” notices on their observations, though, then more drastic action could be warranted.
My only reservation is that sometimes the owners of images already posted elsewhere on the Internet, using a different name or pseudonym (or sometimes stolen by other copyright violators), also post their images here. For that reason I try to be really certain before I flag something for copyright. More cavalier flagging could result in unwarranted suspensions and loss of valuable new users.
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