So I did hear from the teacher of these students. They created a summer assignment and part of it was to use iNat and come up with a research question based on what they observed
In terms of the forums, I suggested that if they had a question about their research, they might be able to use the forum to resolve that question. I did not expect any student to ask another person in the forum to create a question for that student and answer any questions that should have been answered with their data or individual research.
I’ve told the teacher that the iNat Forum isn’t the best place for school assignments like this so it shouldn’t be part of any future assignments, but in terms of this specific assignment it’s probably too late to get that message out to the students. I suspect this’ll pass in the next few days.
Please treat the students kindly, and please don’t make complaints about the teacher or the assignment here. These kind of posts have never been in a significant issue in the past so there was no explicit policy addressing school assignments and the forum. Ergo, this topic.
If the question is one they should have been able to answer using their own research, let the moderators know and we can unlist it as that would not fit their assignment. Myself and the moderators are still working on a specific policy going forward. Please assume others mean well, of course.