There’s already something that helps a little with this, but it’s far from obvious. At the bottom of the page, there’s a link to everything the observer has so far uploaded for the same day. So if they’ve already created some duplicates, this makes it relatively easy to find them. When identifying, I always try to check this link whenever I discover multiple subjects in an observation. Quite often, I find that other users will post comments, add disagreeing IDs, make DQA votes, etc, without (apparently) doing this kind of preliminary check - so this is definitely an aspect of the user-interface that needs improvement.
It would be very convenient if the date shown in the Identify Dialog was also one of the above-mentioned links (and perhaps also the observed/submitted dates on the observation page). Of course, having a dedicated feature that allowed explicit associations to be made between observations would have much more potential - but it would also be much harder to implement than adding a few simple links. And even if such a feature was added, many users may never choose to use it, whereas the date-links would always be there.
PS: it seems a similar feature request has been made already, but that was almost a year ago. Please add your votes if you think it’s worthy
I’m sure it’s technically feasible. It’s just not something that staff will implement as it gives some control of a record to another iNatter who did not submit the record.
I can understand why full duplication by another user is not being considered: while technically feasible, it’s considered too invasive to another user’s account. I don’t believe I’ve heard any reasoning why a feature to suggest or start a duplication won’t be considered. This seems not too invasive and, if properly implemented, could save a lot of identifier time. You stated in a comment on the related feature request: “I think a better solution would be for iNat to build a duplication tool in iNaturalist Next (the one on the web works fine), rather than engineering a special tool for making a request.” I don’t see how this addresses all the issues we currently face when requesting a duplication. The duplication itself is easy. Here are the issues that could be solved by a more formal duplicate request:
The requestor won’t have to go back to the observation at a later time to add their ID
The requestor won’t get notification of activity on original observation
The amount of work the owner will have to do will be reduced (they would just have to “Agree”)
The owner won’t have to tag the requestor in the duplicated observation.
The owner won’t have to either make an ID they’re not competent to make or copy the request message from the original observation.
Likely other issues
All this takes time that would be better spent on other things
As I point out every six months or so, strategies like this only work if the user is still checking iNat, which eventually ends no matter what: we’re all going to die sooner or later, which means we’ll stop responding to requests however legitimate they are or however engaged we had been. So under the current paradigm there’s a clock ticking for making duplication requests, and the social media mission of iNat once again trumps the science mission of iNat. iNat is not a museum collection, even though their data get treated like one. And I’ll go tromp off to my grumpy corner again…
I guess I don’t see this inability to duplicate someone else’s record as such a big problem. I’ve duplicated my own records on a couple of occasions when an identifier pointed out that a second organism in my photo warranted its own record. I’ve also pointed out to other inatters when there was one or more other organisms in their pic that they could submit separately (don’t know if they did). But neither is a common occurrence for me. Is it happening a lot for others and do the observers often decline or simply not get around to duplicating their records? Are we really missing out on a lot of information through failure to duplicate?
Yes, in your case it’s not a big deal, but for someone like me who wants to extract hundreds of bycatch cricket/katydid calls from other sound observations, it’s a big deal. Most nighttime recordings have Orthopterans audible. I’m not doing this for just me. All of these observations, many of which are from rarely observed species, will contribute to the eventual AI sound model of organisms. Making this process easier contributes to this goal.
That’s a worthy goal and I can see why it would be frustrating. Unfortunately, relying on freely-given citizen science data can be a messy business because the citizens don’t always cooperate in meeting the user’s needs.
So be it. If the owner doesn’t choose to engage any further with their observations, then, from their point of view, nothing will be lost. Data generation isn’t the be all and end all. Duplication requests should be strictly fire and forget. If they eventually result in useful additional observations, that’s great - but otherwise, there’s little point in agonising about it. Mining observations for additional data is only beneficial if the owner fully engages with it. If they aren’t there or aren’t interested, just let it go and move on.
I can certainly understand wanting to duplicate other people’s observations! However, I think we really can’t do this. It would infringe on the observer’s ability to control their own observations.
Probably the best you can do as you go through the audio observations is keep a spreadsheet of ones that include orthopterans, or make a traditional project you add them to and encourage others to add them to.
One more option comes to mind: Add a comment to the observation.
You would be able to find your annotations again, especially if you use a recurring pattern of wording. A piece of software like TypeIt4Me (for Mac) might be helpful – just type your defined shortcut for the text to be inserted, adding the name of the organism you detected at the end.
A while ago an iNatter observed that in the background of one of my bird audios there was another bird’s call. I didn’t duplicate the observation at the time (which is incidentally easily achieved in the Android app, while I was never able to find the corresponding command when using the website), but at a later stage added other audio observations specifically for that second bird.
There’s a blue Edit button at the upper right of your observation, with a down arrow next to it. Clicking the down arrow will bring up the options “edit,” “duplicate,” “edit license” and “delete”.
