New Hiding Content Functionality Added

[tiwane]

Today we’ve added new hiding content functionality for iNat site curators. In addition to comments on observation pages, curators are now able to hide the following from public view:

• comments on other pages like journals and flags
• observation photos and sounds
• identifications

It’s still the case that only staff members can unhide content, so please closely follow the guidelines for hiding, and if you’re unsure try to get a second opinion from another curator or staff member. The hiding content policies are in the Curator Guide. These are all provisional and may have to be changed depending on how things go.

This functionality is for situations not covered by the Spam and Copyright Infringment flags - those should still be used where appropriate.

Here’s a breakdown of how it works.

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Hiding Images

Curators will now see a “hide” icon at the bottom of each image:

To hide an image, click on that icon and you’ll see a pop-up that requires you to enter an explanation. Once you hide the image, iNat users will see “Content Hidden”.

They’re able to click on the “Content Hidden” text to see who hid the image and their stated reason for hiding it, so the reason entered there should be clear and based on the policies in the Curator Guide.

Once an image is hidden, only curators, staff members, and the account that posted the image will be able to see a link to it. When the link is clicked on, iNat generates a URL for the image that will only be viewable for one minute. Therefore, even if the link is shared it will expire quickly.

Any observation with hidden media becomes casual grade.

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Hiding Identifications

Identifications should only be hidden if they are clearly intentionally inaccurate, not just because they’re incorrect.

To hide an identification, click on the options menu (down arrow) on the ID. You’ll see a “Hide Content” flag.

If you select it, you’ll see pop-up that requires you to enter an explanation. Once you hide the identification, iNat users will see “Content Hidden”.

They’re able to click on the “Content Hidden” text to see who hid the identification and their stated reason for hiding it, so the reason entered there should be clear and based on the policies in the Curator Guide. Once an identification is hidden, only curators, iNaturalist staff, and the account that added the identification will be able to see it.

Hidden identifications will not contribute to the observation’s Community Taxon.

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Hiding Comments

Hiding comments on observations works the same way it did before, with a small change: if the comment is attached to an identification, the identification will no longer contribute to the observation’s Community Taxon.

What’s new is that comments on other pages, like flags and journal posts, can now be hidden by Curators.

To hide a comment on one of those other pages, mouseover the “Posted by” line below the comment and you’ll see the “Hide” option:

If you select it, you’ll see a pop-up that requires you to enter an explanation. Once you hide the comment, iNat users will see “Content Hidden”.

They’re able to click on the “Content Hidden” text to see who hid the comment and their stated reason for hiding it, so the reason entered there should be clear and based on the policies in the Curator Guide. Once an identification is hidden, only curators, iNaturalist staff, and the account that added the comment will be able to see it.

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Hiding Sounds

Curators will now see a “hide” icon at the bottom of each sound:

To hide a sound, click on that icon and you’ll see pop-up that requires you to enter an explanation. Once you hide the sound, iNat users will see “Content Hidden”.

They’re able to click on the “Content Hidden” text to see who hid the sound and their stated reason for hiding it, so the reason entered there should be clear and based on the policies in the Curator Guide.

Once a sound is hidden, only curators, staff members, and the account that posted the sound will be able to access it via a link. When the link is clicked on, iNat generates a URL for the sound that will only be viewable for one minute. Therefore, even if the link is shared it will expire quickly.

Any observation with hidden media becomes casual grade.

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I want to reiterate that the policies and functionality are provisional and we’ll have to see if they need tweaking or changing. If you’re unsure about whether to hide something, consult with another curator on a flag. If you notice any bugs, please make a post in Bug Reports.

[nschwab]

Thanks! It will be very useful.

[zdanko]

@tiwane

Hidden identifications will not contribute to the observation’s Community Taxon.

Cheers!

[schoenitz]

oh boy, this is big

[charlie]

Any movement on separating out taxonomic curation from moderation? I have concerns with curators getting ever increasing power when it’s a huge group of people and many are there/were chosen to curate taxonomy not to be moderators on a social level.

[zdanko]

@charlie

many are there/were chosen to curate taxonomy not to be moderators on a social level

Good point. This is particularly notable for the curators designated by friends before the application form existed.

[tiwane]

Let’s stay on topic, please. If it looks like anyone’s abusing this functionality, we’ll take a look.

@charlie

Any movement on separating out taxonomic curation from moderation?

Still in discussion.

[charlie]

it seemed on topic to me.

[cthawley]

Is there any recommended approach for hiding text in the Notes/Description field of an observation? Maybe I’m missing it?

[tiwane]

Sorry, I meant to address that in the original post. That functionality isn’t possible yet, but is planned. It’s a bit different than hiding the other content so it’ll need a different approach.

Currently staff can remove the text if necessary, and for now any curator can hide photos of humans the observation note is insulting, if that’s the case.

[antrozousamelia]

Just to clarify on what to do with human photos:

The new addition to the guide states " August 29, 2023: Because observations of humans are tolerated on iNaturalist but are not important to the site, flagged photos depicting humans should be hidden. We will re-evaluate this policy moving forward, if it results in abuse of the flagging/hiding system or becomes overwhelming for curators.

If the photo appears to depict violence, pornography, or child abuse, please hide it and email help@inaturalist.org right away."

However, the old verbiage still exists and states " Please keep in mind that pictures of pets, humans, obvious test observations, and drawings that depict the organism observed are appropriate, unless someone repeatedly posts such content. These kinds of observations are educational opportunities, so inform the person that iNat is primarily for sharing observations of wild organisms from nature by leaving a polite comment or private message. If 25% or more of a user’s observations are of pets, humans, abiotic phenomena, or other off-topic subjects, or if they persist in this kind of behavior despite being warned, that constitutes abuse and you should contact the site staff at help@inaturalist.org, who will give the user 24 hours to remove the off- topic content, after which they will simply remove it for them. All that being said, a few off-topic observations here and there are ok."

Should this be interpreted as “If you come across a silly human photo, don’t hide it unless it is clearly violating guidelines, but if someone else flags a photo of a human, even if it is an innocuous test observation of their hand, then please hide it”?

Not trying to be obtuse here… Maybe I’m missing something?

[murphyslab]

@tiwane

Once an image is hidden, only curators, staff members, and the account that posted the image will be able to see a link to it. When the link is clicked on, iNat generates a URL for the image that will only be viewable for one minute. Therefore, even if the link is shared it will expire quickly.

One point which is not clear, but which causes me to feel concern, is that you do not make clear whether there will be any indication to the comment’s author that any action has been taken against their content. In other words, is iNaturalist introducing a form of secret “shadow moderation”?

What do I mean by shadow moderation? That is when your comment gets removed or demoted and it still appears to you as if no intervention occurred. Most people commenting on the internet do not discover when this happens. As a result, it happens all the time.

In my experience elsewhere, “shadow moderation” has unhealthy effects for online communities and builds distrust among users, both in the systems as well as in the moderators themselves. Once it becomes discovered that a user was subject to these hidden actions and not directly informed, it begins to sow distrust.

You added that,

@tiwane

If it looks like anyone’s abusing this functionality, we’ll take a look.

But again, it’s unclear whether people using iNaturalist will be able to see if there is a pattern of action being taken against their content. So will there be a notification?

I’d like to see iNaturalist remain a healthy and vibrant digital community. So would you please clarify whether the current functionality will ensure that users receive a notification that their content has been hidden along with the curator-supplied reason for doing so? And if it is not currently implemented, is there a plan to do so?

[tiwane]

@antrozousamelia

Should this be interpreted as “If you come across a silly human photo, don’t hide it unless it is clearly violating guidelines, but if someone else flags a photo of a human, even if it is an innocuous test observation of their hand, then please hide it”?

You’re definitley not being obtuse! This is hard to define and discuss.

I think the human hand test example wouldn’t need to be hidden, nor would a silly photo, necessarily. But if there is genuine concern about the dignity or well-being of the human subject, or of the photo’s apporpriateness for iNat (like a hand used as an insult), erring on the side of hiding the photo is fine because iNat’s not about observations of humans. If the poster feels strongly that their photo should not be hidden, they can flag the photo or email help@inat and appeal.

@murphyslab

One point which is not clear, but which causes me to feel concern, is that you do not make clear whether there will be any indication to the comment’s author that any action has been taken against their content. In other words, is iNaturalist introducing a form of secret “shadow moderation”?

If your content is hidden, you won’t be sent a notification, but you will see that it has been hidden and you will be able to flag it and/or reach out to iNat support. This is currently how flagging works, and how it’s worked since iNat started - you are not notified if your content has been flagged, but it’s obvious that it has been flagged (at least on the website for comments/IDs/observations). The reason we don’t provide a notification is to reduce retaliation. I’m personally somewhat on the fence about whether it’s good to send a notification to someone, which I suspect would increase retaliatory behavior, or leave it the way it is, which means someone has to look at their content and see it’s been hidden/flagged (although curators often write a comment when they take action). Both have their pros and cons. But I do think some form of more obvious transparency would be a good addition, and that’s in discussion.

Here’s an observation by my test account where I’ve hidden the photo and ID. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/180990856 You can see what it looks like to someone who’s not a curator and is not the user whose content is hidden.

Here’s what I see when I’m logged in to inatstafftestaccount. Because inatstafftestaccount’s content has been hidden, inatstafftestaccount can click on a button to show the hidden content.

I suspect the vast majority of photos, IDs, and comments that will be hidden will come from students being asked to use iNat and they couldn’t care less about their photos being hidden unless it affect their grades. This is not to invalidate your concerns, just my opinion based on most of the flagged content I’ve seen on iNat.

[tonyrebelo]

Given that there is no notification of hiding content, is there a filter for periodically checking which of ones content has been hidden?
Whereas I understand the retaliation issue, I think that the majority of users would prefer to fix any issues on their content, rather than remain ignorant that their observations have been deprecated.

[charlie]

@tiwane

If it looks like anyone’s abusing this functionality, we’ll take a look.

well, there are just so many curators and not a very functional way to moderate the curators. as we all know behavior issues with curators HAS come up at times and is not always resolved. I know this stuff is tricky but i really do think giving curators more power without better guidelines on who is a moderator-curator and why, the issue will get worse.

I can’t point out examples of toxic or rule-violating curator behavior because we aren’t allowed to do that on the forum, but yes they do exist and i think this is very much on topic, because hiding functionality is a really useful tool but if a huge number of people who were selected as taxonomists not social experts are given this tool it can lead to major problems, especially if we can’t even see if our content is being hidden! And yes i’ve absolutely seen curator retaliation on here, it is the exception rather than the rule, but some curators have been pretty awful.

[cthawley]

You can see if your content is hidden - see Tony’s post above. You just don’t get a notification, but this is also true for flags as well, so it’s nothing new.

In fact, anyone can see that some content was hidden on an observation where that happens. This is what hidden content looks like on an observation accessed when not logged into any iNat account:

[charlie]

right, but if you have 55,000 observations and someone hides one of them for an unjustified reason, how do you ever even know? I think flags are a bit different because they don’t actually remove your content. I’d like to be notified when something of mine is flagged, but i understand the retaliation issues, etc. But basically deleting my content by making it invisible to everyone seems a lot more impactful and i do think we should be able to know when that happens.

[annkatrinrose]

@cthawley

You just don’t get a notification, but this is also true for flags as well, so it’s nothing new.

You can search for flags on your content though to see if anything has been flagged. Will it be similarly possible to search for your hidden content? I wouldn’t care so much for who did the flagging/hiding but still would like to know if any of my concent was deemed inappropriate for iNat to be able to fix those observations.

[schoenitz]

I had opportunity to hide some joke identifications today and found that hidden identifications disappear from a user’s list of identifications on their profile. That doesn’t feel right to me. Wouldn’t it be better if they were shown but greyed out or otherwise marked? I don’t know how hidden comments are handled in this sense.

[anon83178471]

For hiding pictures, how do observations that contain one’s personal information, like student ID card or driver’s license, fit into this? My usual approach was to flag for copyright infringement and tell the user that I did what I did because other people can see that information publicly online and it’s a safety risk. Should they be hidden this way? I don’t want to give the impression I am punishing somebody for accidentally posting content that they didn’t know would be problematic, but I also don’t think it should be immediately visible for any period of time for their safety and privacy.