Observation not showing?

Morning all,

sorry if this is a basic question but I am new to the iNaturalist and want to make sure I am not doing something wrong.

I uploaded an observation yesterday through my phone of a plant I have that I dont know what it is. No one has commented or suggested yet. Am i being impatient? If so sorry.

However I did some checking around. I can see the observation in my observations but cant find it in explore

help.

thanks

Guy

Welcome to the forum :)

Can you share the link to your observation; I can check why it might not be showing up

2 Likes

thank you

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/48236507

Guy

2 Likes

So your observation is currently set as ‘casual grade’ because you’ve marked it as captive/cultivated. This was definitely the right thing to do given it’s a a pot plant, but the consequence is that it won’t show up in the Explore page using the default set of filters, as they only show verifiable observations (to be verifiable an observation must have a date and location, have a photo/sound and be of a wild organism).

People can still find it, but only by explicitly searching for casual observations/turning off the verifiable filter.

One possible way to get around this is to initially leave the captive/cultivated box unchecked until you get an ID, and then check it afterwards, although I know some users aren’t keen on this. Alternatively, if you have a rough idea of what it is, e.g. the family, you can search for who the top identifiers are for that group and tag them in the observation. Also keep in mind that when uploading anything, it’s always more useful to put the best ID you can. So even if you only know it’s a plant, putting an ID of ‘plant’ is helpful because anyone specifically searching for plants will find it.

6 Likes

thank you for taking the time to reply. I really appreciate your help and comments

3 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.