# Let's Talk Annotations **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Created:** [March 9, 2019, 1:43am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627 "2019-03-09T01:43:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 48
**Author:** ![dkaposi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/dkaposi/32/1451_2.png) [@dkaposi](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/dkaposi)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2019, 12:10pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/48 "2019-04-22T12:10:54Z")
> [@tiwane](#): > > - We want to restrict annotations to _qualitative_ values, so annotations with numerical values will not be added. Values should not be arbitrary, either. I encourage you to reconsider this point in light of the fact that the iNat team has elected to leave the “chaos of the Fields” alone: > [@Standardize and Clean Up Observation Fields](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/standardize-and-clean-up-observation-fields/363/15): > > we talked it over and Observation Fields were designed to be a place that iNaturalist doesn’t exert much influence over. It’s user-controlled and we’re not going to step in here as far as organizing and standardizing things. There are many overlapping fields as pointed out on other threads, but some are useful and a standardized annotation may be a solution. I’m thinking specifically of a quant measure of the number of organisms. The “Count” field is my preferred example. It seems to be widely used and is simply, and clearly, named. A benefit to this is that it would provide a single annotation/field that could also be exported to GBIF. There is a DWC field **“individualCount”** that seems like a natural home for a quantitative value like a count of organisms in an observation. Which leads to the related question: are annotations going to be exportable, either by users, or to platforms like GBIF? please see this thread on the topic: [https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/downloading-annotations/2200](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/downloading-annotations/2200) The Life Stage annotation is another example of something that can be mapped to the DWC field **“lifeStage”**. --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627)._