Description of need:
Identifiers waste countless hours IDing bogus observations from suspended users as there is no indication on observation pages or the identify interface that the user is suspended.
Feature request details:
Wherever a suspended user is shown in the iNaturalist interface, it should indicate that they are suspended. This could be done with a label, an icon, or just crossing-though their username (as is done on Wikipedia).
It could also be indicated
greyed out like Opted Out of CID
If you go thru this list of winners[link removed by moderator] by sp. And if removed by ābe kind to the suspendedā it is for [removed by moderator].
The winner (1.6K obs) is suspended, as are the 3rd (1.6K obs) and 4th (2.9K obs). The overview for the project, and each obs, are presented as obs in good standing - which identifiers are tricked into engaging with.
At least - warn us before we waste our time on a polite comment - user is suspended and will not, cannot, see the comment. Or respond to it.
Why are obs with (joke or) frankly malicious IDs not hidden. Better yet deleted. Also obs which have been flagged for copyright violation. What value do they have.
I have looked in the new Help for info about Suspended users.
And was about to go thru Forum posts.
This user will always be presented on iNat as the one who observed most sp. Suspended should be punished by disqualification, and hidden from the list. Adding insult to injury, since they are suspended - altho the obs and IDs live forever, the profile withholds all info from us. Why not display the Suspended Profile, and hide the broken obs and IDs.
I agree about there being good observations, the observations and IDs of a suspended user can be of value (have in mind, we may be struggling with this specific CNC stuff, but other suspended users can be proper observers/identifiers that were suspended due to situations that donāt compromise the value of their previous contributions), though this also steps on the toes of the user having power over their content (if I am suspended but my observations remain, am I unable to remove my content from the platform?)
However, being able to easily see that the user cannot provide clarifications, further pictures or corrections would be extremely useful to take the most benefitting action when IDing, such as marking observations as ācannot be improvedā when clarifications are needed, and especially not leaving extensive messages asking for the user to take an action that they cannot possibly take.
In addition: it is currently not possible to filter observations made from a suspended user. This makes it quite hard to navigate situations where a lot of observations are made by those, as we are unable to take those out of the way separately. If this feature request is not possible for some reason, it would be useful as an alternative to allow using suspended user IDs in the Identify filters
My understanding is that suspending a user can include removing/hiding their content or that content may be left, depending on the situation.
So this raises the question for me of why the people doing the suspending are not choosing the former option in the case of users who have repeatedly and knowingly violated copyright/uploaded faked observations or entered bad IDs. This still leaves the community with the burden of cleaning up the mess such users left behind, one observation and ID at a time, and it is harder to do so once the user has been suspended (e.g., I cannot simply visit their profile and go through all their observations at once).
Suspending can be reversed ā I think sometimes it is a temporary measure meant to stop problematic behavior until more discussion can take place. I donāt know if there is a mechanism for reviewing suspended accounts after a certain amount of time and deciding whether the content should be removed at that point even if it was not removed at the time of the initial suspension.
On the question of having control over oneās content: I agree that it feels like there is a contradiction in suspending a user while not removing their content. While I donāt know for sure what the story is, I strongly suspect one prominent account deletion by a prolific and generally quite knowledgeable IDer was a response to having been suspended (presumably for behavioral reasons, not questionable IDs). I can understand the sentiment that would motivate such a move ā if I have been suspended, why should iNat continue to benefit from the content and IDs I have been providing.
I havenāt voted for a feature request in a long time, but I voted for this one. As my stats show, I have an order of magnitude more IDs than observations, and when doing IDs, I would like to know whether comments and such will be of any use.
I voted for it as well. I canāt say that my ID-to-observation ratio is in the orders of magnitude more*, but I would also like to have some warning that any efforts that I make would be better directed towards someone who hasnāt been smacked with a banhammer. (MjĆølnir, maybe?)
*(right now, Iām running at two to one, with a margin of +/- 400)
deal with a variety of circumstances that might result in suspension, including false positive assessment of spamming. It would be helpful to have also a clearly labelled overview of suspension summarizing
criteria, including the nature of curatorsā discretion
effects on the user and on any data they may have contributed to the system, such as observations and IDs
Iāll just reiterate that account suspension on iNaturalist is rarely permanent, usually short-term, and occasionally erroneous.
Without having a way to generate solid numbers, I would wager good money that there are orders of magnitude fewer permanently suspended users (with observations) than there are users who have āvoluntarilyā come and gone for whatever reasons, and are no longer interacting on the site.
So Iām not sure implementing this request is going to make much of a dent in the concern about wasted hours.
I would also push back on the assumption that observations become ābogusā when a user is suspended. Suspension may have been for many reasons not related to the quality or value of their observations.
Our links have been deleted - but this was mostly around CNC25 which burnt out identifiers like graysquirrel. So much deliberate cheating - and the broken obs and IDs will stay āinnocentlyā on iNat forever. Gleefully irritating identifiers who are still trudging along.
This was not about
It was about HUGE volumes. graysquirrel was checking for copyright violations.
