Lock taxon photos of some common domesticated animals?

There’s been a troll who keeps changing the icon for “cat” (Felis catus) to roadkill. Obviously that’s part of nature, but it’s probably very off-putting for many users and especially those of us who have pets.

I’d recommend locking the icons for cat, dog, maybe some others. What do you guys think?

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I’m up to do that! Many species have really good pics as 1st ones and they still keep changing! Cats even ithout this troll had pic changed at least twice this month with no reason. I’d say it’s a good idea, to my mind these came up: feral pigeon, domestic duck, domestic goose (maybe domestic swan goose and their hybrid too), domestic muscovy duck, domestic budgerigar. There’re definitely great pics on iNat of all of them, let’s choose the best ones and make it permanent.

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In general I’m not a huge fan locking taxon photos, it sounds like Domestic Cat may have to be locked, I don’t know about the others.

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I hear you, I only would want to do this for those for which finding good photos is very easy, and trolling or unhelpful icon changing is relatively frequent.

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#feature-requests?

I think this is a good idea. Another thing would be to add logs visible to curators of who adds/removes images for each taxon.

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Thank you for mentioning this, @milodoingstuff and I were wondering what on earth was happening.

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Yes, I noticed it yesterday and pointed it out to @astra_the_dragon.

This is probably happening with more obscure taxa that aren’t looked at much as well.

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Is it possible to work out who changed it (because there are kids like me on the site, and it is a bit odd) and just silence them?

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The world is a strange place

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Staff are the only ones who have that ability.

I suggested this, maybe someone should make a feature request?

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You can flag domestic cat for curation.

This is a similar situation to Homo sapiens - where the taxon photo has been locked. Seems appropriate for pet cats and dogs too.

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I would guess that because these taxa are ones that people often have pets of, a portion of the changes are people making the iNat pics of their own pets.

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I will, but I first was curious to know whether there was a consensus. And I also want to see if staff have anything to say – Tony and Carrie look at the forum far more often than they look at taxon flags.

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I did look, but can’t see any RG roadkill photos of cats for the taxon photos.

It’s gone.:flushed:

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species I would suggest flagging are all of:

  1. most observed captive animals
  2. not too many wild populations / the wild and captive ones look the same any way
  3. popular pets

so:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47144-Canis-familiaris
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/118552-Felis-catus
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/209233-Equus-caballus
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/121578-Ovis-aries
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/123070-Capra-hircus
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/43151-Oryctolagus-cuniculus
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/58612-Carassius-auratus
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/19339-Melopsittacus-undulatus

I’ll add flags tomorrow, still waiting for more input here.

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Photos don’t have to be research grade to be used as a taxa photo.

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That sounds really messed up

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People can read, vote for, and/or comment on that proposed feature request here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/track-and-view-changes-to-taxon-photos/5630

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Perfect, thanks for linking that.