Title says it all, at face value it seems at least in part contrary to the spirit of iNat.
If you do allow your observations to be added to projects, what reasons could you imagine for those preferences, or if you don’t allow your observations to be added to projects, why?
Is it a privacy concern, a data property thing, avoiding spam? Help me and others to understand.
Generally when a user does not permit it and an observation could be useful for a project, I ask for permission, and in some cases the user allows it.
I allow folks to add my observations to traditional projects. However, regarding the “observation fields” part of your question: I use iNat for work, and I use specific observation fields that I created to track things like point ID, quadrat number, etc. I use observation fields instead of observation notes because they are more searchable/filterable. I don’t want anyone to be able to edit any of the text in those observation fields because they are referencing something that only I (and other coworkers that use our iNat project) know about. If I could allow people to add observation fields without allowing them to edit my existing ones, I would; however, that isn’t possible.
Is this a common problem? Other people editing observation fields that were entered for the observer’s particular purposes?
I will occasionally add observation fields to other people’s observations, particularly if the fields are needed/relevant for a particular project. I can only think of a handful of times where I have edited the value someone entered in an observation field for their own observation – as a rule, I have only done this in cases of generic fields (sex of organism, plant visited, etc.) where the value they had entered was obviously wrong.
Beyond that, I tend to assume that when people add observation fields to their observation, they have a reason for doing so and it is part of their record-keeping, so it would be completely inappropriate for me to edit such fields willy-nilly, particularly if I don’t understand what the fields refer to. My impression is that most other users also seem to follow this general principle. So it would surprise me if you have found that it is necessary to restrict observation fields this way because of widespread meddling.
No, probably not. I have never allowed people to edit/add observation fields to my submissions, so I have of course never experienced another user editing one of my fields. This was a preemptive measure, because if someone decided to edit one of these fields, it could really screw my data up. Additionally, as far as I know, iNat does not send you a notification if someone edits one of your observation fields (?). Even a slight risk isn’t worth the reward to me, and I’ll happily add a relevant observation field if someone requests it in a comment or PM.
e.g. someone was marking many of my observations as containing “one organism” (which was often incorrect) and I was tired of both receiving the notifications and fixing or deleting the observations fields.
Certain projects are used in very specific ways and to collect very specific information, so the owners have stringent data requirements and curate entries carefully to avoid issues.
Or projects aimed at collecting data concerning a specific polyphyletic group in a specific area, say just lichens but not other fungi, or mangroves, or moths but not other lepidoptera, or lianans, etc. As there is no easy way to automatically adsorb these observations and allowing people to add observations to the project on their own leads to a lot of incorrect additions, it’s sometimes easier for a project owner to retain sole control over what observations are added.
(Just in case it isn’t clear, please note that my purpose here and my previous post is to establish context – I don’t think you need to justify your decision, and I’m not trying to challenge it or argue that you ought to allow others to add observation fields.)
The original poster’s question was about observers who do not allow others to add their observations to projects, not about project owners who restrict who can add observations to their project.
I believe you do get a notification if someone alters a field that you added to an observation, though (weirdly) it says that you (the person who added the field) are the one who edited it. I think that’s cropped up in another forum discussion.
I personally find it frustrating when users won’t allow others to add fields for a different research-related reason: I need to add certain fields to certain observations so that I can add them to particular datasets or find them in filtered searches, and if I can’t add the field, I can’t use that observation. Granted, that user is under no obligation to provide observations for me, so if that’s their preference, I just shrug and move on.