Periodically I get notifications that say “[Project name] curators added some of your observations.”
Something I always wondered about: I am not a “curator” of any projects, but I have joined a few, and I can add other people’s observations to those. I always wondered whether doing that would trigger a notification to that observer about “[Project] curators.”
That question is now answered. In the most recent of such notifications, I took note of the line that says, " Observations added by [username]." Then I clicked through to the project and looked at the members. This project has “no curators set,” and the username who added my observation is not a manager or admin.
So, yes, in at least cases like this, someone adding my observation to a project is considered a “project curator” for the purpose of email notifications. Is this also true if a project does have curators set? If I add someone’s observation to a project, will they get an email naming me as a “[Project] curator”?
Yes, I believe the wording is the same no matter what. I’ve noticed this in the past and always thought it was weird to use the word “curator”. I think it’s meant in the more casual sense of the word, but it’s confusing because it’s a term with an already clearly defined role on iNat.
Without knowing the specific project I can’t say for sure, but some old traditional projects still have use of the “aggregator”, which automatically adds observations that meet the projects requirements and I believe that generates the “Project curators added” notification.
I have also seen this happen from both ends. it would probably be best to correct the wording (from the staff/developer end) to a more generic notification such as “Your observations were added to [project name]” since, as noted, it is hugely misleading to use the word “curator” in most of these cases of regular users/members doing the adding.
As an aside, I wish there was a way that I could see how many observations I added to a project. I have several that I toss things into as I find them, I wish I could see a list.