I recent ran across two users who seem to have been going through a garden together, photographing the same plants as observations. There are a few things going slightly awry here – the emphasis on cultivated specimens, the duplication of observations – but it also seems to pit the ‘encourage intera…

There is at least one other topic addressing it - short answer is that this is not a problem or discouraged. Both observers are welcome to document the same organisms, and this is a common practice on iNat.

As long as they are not posting identical photos (as in they shared them, because someone was too lazy to take their own), that’s not really an iNaturalist violation.

When I notice observations of what appear to be the same organism by different individuals, I try to link the observations together using the “associated observation” field.

[image] schizoform: Folks might want to log that they’ve seen creatures (and expand their life list), but the duplication would seem to undercut research intentions. On iNat, “An observation records an encounter with an individual organism at a particular time and location.” So iNaturalist da…

Sounds like the right answer is “don’t sweat it, and be glad they’re participating”. Thanks, everyone!

[image] tiwane: So iNaturalist data is great for determining abundance because we record encounters between organisms and humans. Please, a clarification of abundance types. iNat data records the abundance of humans who are interacting with nature; that does not necessarily equal abundance o…

I don’t think this is explicitly an iNat issue, is it? I see the same photo for multiple observers all the time.

Same observation, multiple observers

General

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Same observation, multiple observers

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