Thank you for explaining. I was wondering about that myself, having seen several photos of camera viewfinders.
As you are doing, but state so in the description. Then there is no need for others to mark the DQA and it is clear to everyone what you have done! I would make specific mention that the date and place are accurate, as that will be the main reasons for using the DQA on it.
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Linking to external video is awesome… and a frame in the observation done as a screenshot is a good preview… Can’t fault how you are doing them at all! Oh, yes I can… MAKE MORE OF THEM!
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And then I usually mark the location and date as incorrect in the Data Quality Assessment.
Hmmm… Do audio files come with that built-in data (I did not think audio had meta data, but I really don’t know)? If it doesn’t, do you assume there may be similar DQA issues when we submit audio-only obs?
Ditto for sketches?
Are sketch / audio file obs automatically marked casual (I never noticed or thought to look)?
I guess I don’t quite understand why screenshots are DQA problematic if audio and sketches are not.
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No, audio files usually have no data at all, unless you created them with app. Audio and sketches are not marked casual and surely audio and sketches are on the different level completely, audio is not different from photo.
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Okay, that helps.
I update my prior post to try to clarify my thoughts better.
I guess I just don’t see why audio and sketches do not arouse suspicion of wrong date and location, etc. the way screenshots seem to arouse suspicion.
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A few people upload those, so I believe it already means % of “wrong” records is pretty low comparing to screenshots that are mostly used by new users (probably can be proved statistically), also you have to make more effort to upload those. I agree some could cheat, but same could happen with other mediafiles.
I see your point about audio, since the metadata is lost during the conversion. Personally, I meticulously copy the date and time from the original video file, so that it is just as accurate as a photo observation. But others may not try as hard.
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with audio, there is no meta data for location or date, so file creation date would become the tie up for it. Audio typically is either directly uploaded at time of observation, or subject to a degree of audio processing if uploaded at a later time, and that very process, whether it implies cleaning up the audio or not, suggests a degree of skill and deliberateness to do, which in turn suggests there would be more likelihood of thought in the uploading as an observation and consequently the date/pin location accuracy.
The problem with photos, is that ANYONE can take a camera and photograph the LCD screen with a phone/app, and there is a high probability of the photos originally not having been taken on the day of upload. However, the photo taken by the phone/app would receive a metadata stamp of creation which would be auto picked up by the observation uploader. Couple that with the high chances of it being a new iNatter that hasn’t discovered better and easier ways of uploading such observations, and it then leads to a very high chance of these type of observations being date/place inaccurate.
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I think we have multiple definitions of “screenshot” here. I personally do not recommend using a phone-camera photograph of a computer monitor or a digital camera’s LCD as the final, long-term photo for your observation.
The quality of these images is simply too low for identifying. If you’re doing it temporarily, until you have time to upload the original, I guess I can suffer that… But I may hit reviewed and/or alter the DQA before you update the image.
If you have a video playing on your phone or computer, and you use the actual screenshot function to produce a still image from it, that’s completely different. The quality of those images is decent (assuming the video quality is decent to begin with.)
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with regards to quality, remember that there are some species that you can get to easily from such images, and then there are taxa that are impossible with the best camera gear (needing micro dissection etc). But as a generalisation, I agree they are not ideal.
We also need to keep in mind people have differing access to equipment and skills, and it can even come down to a workflow that (all things considered) is deemed to be best fit for the situation. We might not agree with it from our perspectives, but we don’t know the full story with respect to their decision process…
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I try my best to get the actual subject of my photos but sometimes the app doesn’t help. I got to google image search instead typically. Then if I find it there I’d take a photo and crop out the pictures off of google and use mine but it may not be perfectly cropped but if the app doesn’t work well I try to come up with certain fixes
I will say wrong dates are an issue for me. I was using seeker app before and it wouldn’t let me change date so now I have fixed my dates. So dates can be a indication of either screenshot or noobs like me
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