Mass "wilding" of clearly cultivated plants

[spinescence]

I’ve experienced the second user now, no face no name account made 3 days ago, going through and mass marking tons of very obviously cultivated plants as wild. It’s not even like, on the fence type of observations; it’s straight up neatly trimmed rhododendrons in front of houses and the like. I don’t get any response when I @ them. I’ve messaged them and I’m waiting for a response. Is there any way to report a user? I have no interest in going through and disputing hundreds of observations.

[egordon88]

please email Support at help@inaturalist.org

[spinescence]

will do, thank you!

[Vireya]

I don’t know if it is the same person, but I’ve just come across one who seems to be marking all the Japanese Maples in North America as wild.

Actually probably not the same account, as only joined today, but possibly the same person. I will email Support as well.

[tiwane]

Did some quick looking into it and there are a few really suspicious accounts doing this. We’ll have to do a more thorough investigation tomorrow but if you see any more accounts doing it please email help@inaturalist.org. And if you get any responses to the messages you sent, please let us know there as well.

[tiwane]

I suspended several accounts, they were using disposable email address domains and didn’t reply to any of my messages. Will need to gather more details next week but again, let us know if you see any other accounts doing this.

[pisum]

@tiwane

I suspended several accounts

even after suspension, the effect of these users’ actions will still remain, right? the 2 users i noticed (now suspended) appear to have made identifications, along with wild DQA votes, on over 1000 observations, mostly in the Seattle area. so assuming most of those have incorrect DQA votes, someone will still need to go through and fix all those observations, right?

[tiwane]

We can remove them if we deem they were made in bad faith (and it certainly seems like they are), but that might not happen until the work week starts.

[tiwane]

Removed all of the IDs and DQA votes made by all of the accounts that people emailed us about and those which I could find in my investigation. If anyone sees more of them, or sees it happening again, please email help@inaturalist.org. This was clearly done in bad faith.