Observations sometimes retain "has photo" status even though photo was removed for copyright

Bug Reports
1

I was going through some casual observations with the “has photo” criteria selected, and noticed that there are a fair few observations still showing up with “has photo” status even though the photos have already been removed for copyright issues.

The copyright flags are often many years old, so I don’t think it’s an issue of just needing time to update.

Examples:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41396726
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41396087
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41308423

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/19688469
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41395324
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7451191

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18545300
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/27242595

2

The photo is still technically there, it has just been hidden by the site. Curators can still find the images. This is unlike observations which had photos that were removed or never had photos to begin with.

But still perhaps misleading/counterintuitive.

2 Likes
3

Normally, a copyright flag prevents it from showing up in search if you select “has photos” - these particular observations are defying that normal behavior.

I don’t want to call out any particular users but I’m not sure how to demonstrate what I mean without linking…

As an example compare this search, which has eight observations to the same search but with “has photos” box checked. Number of observations goes down to just 1, which indeed has a visible photo.

Now this is the same circumstance but with some of the bugged observations:
120 casual observations in the search, and selecting “has photos” takes it down to 83, most of which do not have visible photos.

4 Likes