How do I set permissions so that other people can edit one of my sightings?
I created some sightings of ash trees in a project for the Groton Invasive Species Committee. This data was meant to be the starting baseline. Now two years later, others have taken additional pictures, diameter measurements, and the like. How do they add the new data to the existing sightings? I don’t want them to have to give the data for me to enter it. That would be a pain for me, and create a bottleneck in any case.
Welcome to the Forum! I believe is not possible for others to edit data. If you want to include these observations, you may need to start a project. Others will know more than me, however.
To be pedantic
should be phrased ‘these data are’. It’s a thing that bugs me, for some reason!!
It depends what you hope they can do. Unless they have your password, only you can add photos to an observation, or edit details such as date, locations etc.
Other things like the diameter you mention would be covered by observation fields, which so long as you have not blocked it from happening, any user can update on your records. You just have to find the right one(s) and communicate/agree which you will use.
A single observation should only be from one time. If there is additional new information, that should go in a new observation (which can be posted by someone else). You can link the two observations in a few different ways. The simplest is just to put a link to the other observation in the description, but some people use observations fields, see here for more info.
As others have noted, single iNat observations really aren’t designed to represent multiple observations of one individual over different times. Each observation should generally be of a specific interaction with an organism (ie, not separated by years). Observation fields are editable by other users, but otherwise, you’d have to give your account login credentials to others to have them logon and change any info (never a great practice).
I would argue that the way you’re proposing to use iNat really isn’t a great choice for what you’re trying to do (long term monitoring), but good be a piece of that. A simple other solution could just be to have a shared Google Sheets (or any other shared spreadsheet you like) that all users can edit. You could create an ID field (column) with codes for each individual ash tree and then add rows for each observation of each tree. These rows could include links to relevant iNat observations as well as other info (date, time, diameter, etc). This would let you work with the data and calculate relevant measurements easily. I’m sure there are other solutions as well.
I think that everybody should post their own observations, one per individual and date. In the text or in a comment, add the observation number of other posts of the same individual. Thus people can go from one to another if they wish.
If you are going back to the same individual tree, each date should be a different observation. You can link them together using the observation field called similar observation set. If each tree has an ID number you can use that in the text field. In general if people don’t have a project where they don’t already have an ID number, you can use the observation number of the first observation in the text field.
Whomever is making these new observations 2 years later can set up their own iNat account and put their observations into your project and put the ID number in the observation field.
As I have mentioned on other threads, people like @cmcheatle are far more competent than me to address these types of issues! You might also try ‘Help’ for an answer as well.