I’m brand new to iNat and I was wondering what the consensus is around timeliness of observations. I have a bunch of photos of mushrooms from over the past few months, but I don’t want to clog up the feed with old ones. Is there a general rule about how long ago the observations can be?

To my understanding, as long as the location and time data are accurate you can post any retrospective observations. There are even observations from years before INat existed that have been uploaded.

I think the general rule is if you observed the organism yourself in the wild, go for it! If you observed the organism in a museum collection, then probably not; even if you did you should mark it as “captive.” For example, no fossils, please.

I’ve posted scanned slide images of organisms from 40 years ago and there are pics from others older than that such as from the 1960s.

You can upload older observations from whenever, nobody reasonable should give you any grief about that. However, if you’re expecting other people to ID them in anything resembling a reasonably timely manner, it may be better to wait until (1) a slower time of the year and (2) upload them in smaller batches to avoid deluging your local mushroom identifiers.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-is-your-oldest-observation/27766/34 https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/oldest-observation-date/19063 Two earlier threads

Possible record holder: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/47768061

[image] onyxrat: If you observed the organism in a museum collection, then probably not; even if you did you should mark it as “captive.” For example, no fossils, please. Non sequitur: not all of us who see fossils do so in museums.

I have not submitted this to iNat because there is no photographic documentation, but I reported to eBird an historical record of sighting and hearing numerous European Starlings (Vulgaris vulgaris, I believe) in Huntsville, Alabama in 1952 that I noted as an 11 year old birder. Don’t believe I can go back any further in accurate memories! (I go back to 1941)

I’ve submitted some scanned slide pics from the 1980s but others I haven’t because I wasn’t always consistent in writing the date and location on them. No EXIF data of course. I did keep good field notes back then but finding those data and associating them with individual slides has been an effort in frustration.

Posting etiquette for older observations

General

DianaStuder August 6, 2025, 10:13pm 14

We haven’t got any eighties votes yet (1 vote there which doesn’t show as 1%)

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/poll-how-old-are-you-your-vote-is-not-public/60869

Topic		Replies	Views
Flashbacks: How far back should I go? General	12	776	June 28, 2022
Must posted observations be recent? General	5	516	September 10, 2019
Can I upload older photos as observations? General	12	3806	June 26, 2019
Old observations - still useful? General question	28	1917	May 20, 2021
Oldest Observation Date General	7	1038	December 28, 2020

Posting etiquette for older observations

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