I occasionally run across observations where there is no photo of flowers or fruit, but in the notes it says “ripe fruit”. Do you think that this is enough information to mark it as “fruiting”
I believe annotations should only be based on what is visible in the photo.
https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000191830-what-are-the-definitions-of-inaturalist-annotations-
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That would be for the observer to annotate. We have no visible evidence to use.
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In my opinion, this is similar to the “dead/alive” annotation, which sometimes cannot be determined. I wouldn’t disagree or downvote if an observer marked an organism as alive, even without proof of movement (e.g., an insect sitting motionless on the ground).
I understand annotations as a way to add information to observations rather than simply repeat the obvious. For example, I don’t think omitting the fact that a plant was fruiting—just because it’s not visible in the picture—makes sense. As an IDer, I would annotate “no fruit” when I don’t see one, but I would ID fruit, if it was specified in the notes (and makes sense for time and place)
In a perferct world, everything would be visible in the images, but sometimes it’s just not there. Example: A bee in a bush. Now the observer splits the observation for the bush, and not the bee. Maybe the observer has no additional photos of the tree, but has seen it’s fruits. No reason to not ID flower and fruit imo.
It’s rather about the correct use of Notes and documentation in general.
From the link that @thomaseverest shared:
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It’s true you don’t need to have the observation annotated “fruits” if you can see the fruits, but that’s not the point. The annotations are used for sorting observations or finding observations of a certain kind, or for graphing phenology. For those purposes, the annotation needs to be there.
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Exactly. If you annotate as fruit = then you either - see the fruit in the pictures, or you were there and actually saw fruit.
states that “Annotations should be based on the evidence provided in the observation.”
Aren’t the notes part of the observation.
If you mark it as “no flowers or fruit” then you are saying that the observer is wrong.
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https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000191830-what-are-the-definitions-of-inaturalist-annotations states that “Annotations should be based on the evidence provided in the observation.” It does not say the evidence must be in the photo.
Evidence just refers to the photo.
https://youtu.be/57teTK5V5t0?si=EZy0IIZ8-Uid2zQK&t=38m42s
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“Evidence just refers to the photo.”
In this case you have only a photo, no notes, so you can only go by evidence in the photo. She doesn’t address the issue of notes.
She said to only go off of what is in the photo, but maybe @carrieseltzer would like to clarify.
I would note that you don’t have to annotate anything. There are observations where I know there are green leaves present - I have no doubt of this at all, even though I haven’t seen the plant myself - but no leaves are visible in the slightest and the observer has made no mention. It pains me, but I annotate flowers and leave green leaves blank. A hint of green and I’ll annotate leaves, but there is no hint of the green.
In cases where there may be fruit or flowers, but none are visible, I opt to leave it blank. In cases where it seems extremely unlikely there are fruits or flowers, or in cases where I can see there are definitely no flowers, fruits, or buds, I mark “no flowers or fruits” (such as a sapling, or a clear observation of a full plant, or an observation of a species I know well enough to be certain it should not have fruit/flowers/buds at this time of year and indeed none is visible).
If the observer has stated they’re present and its a species where I believe they’re unlikely to be mistaken (eg. apple tree, idk) I’m inclined to mark fruits for phenology’s sake, but I would understand leaving it blank or disagreeing with the annotation. I tend to take the observer’s word on such things as the animal subject being alive, for instance, even if the animal is sleeping and thus it’s a bit hard for me to tell for certain.
(I may have gone against this previously and should clean up those old annotations…)
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