Hey, it would be useful to allow date ranges for observations. It could be useful to prevent people from guessing a date if they are not sure, and in cases when you can’t choose one date, for example because you obtained the specimen from a trap which has been operating for weeks. Greetings, Jako…

It’s been to my knowledge that an observation in iNat is also when you choose it to be, ie. maybe you found a beetle in your trap on monday, but you decide to make an observation on tuesday. I think that is still valid because you are recording the existence of that specimen at a certain time and lo…

I would appreciate a range. I have many photos saved and organised on my computer by month, but I don’t do the extra typing to record the day. Generally don’t upload old finds unless I can estimate within a week. But being able to say “August” would help me get more up. edit: this won’t be an issue…

Welcome to the forum! I would like that. Don’t forget to vote for your own request! (Seen other people say that, so I figured I’d tell you.) :-)

This would also greatly help with observations of the same individual organism over a period of time. This way, we don’t have to make multiple observations, but we can just add additional photos to a single observation and note the date range

I’m not a fan of that idea… if the “individual observations” have accuracy in place and/or time, it seems destructive to be “merging them” and losing that detail. It would be like taking a photo at 20MP and in colour, and then turning it to greyscale and chopping the resolution down to 4MP. Notwiths…

Might the date be coded into the metadata of the photo? Most cameras and phones will do this - as long as your date is set correctly on the camera. Do you know how to check? (sorry, I just reread your post and you did suggest your old photos don’t have the date on them)

isn’t this ultimately a trivial distinction? User input: date range Internal interpretation: middle of date range ± distance to ends of range User input: date ± accuracy Internal interpretation: middle of date range ± distance to ends of range People might prefer one input over the other. I thi…

I think it matters… If you enter two dates, you don’t perceive how “large” the accuracy is (and let’s just use the term accuracy, for simplicity). Mar 1 to Sep 30 at a “casual glance” looks similar in accuracy to Mar 30 - Sep 1… is it twice as accurate? three times? or is it less accurate? For loca…

Exports to GBIF use Darwin Core standards. Darwin Core in turn uses ISO standards for date/time . ISO allows for date/time to be represented by fine or coarse information – e.g. “2007-04-05T12:30” is a valid date/time, but “1981-04” (April 1981) is also valid. Many museum datasets in GBIF use vagu…

Select a date range when creating observations

Feature Requests

kiwifergus April 11, 2020, 9:38pm 4

I’m in favour of “date accuracy values” similar to what we have with location… Eg a specific date/time with a +/- value to indicate the range.

Topic		Replies	Views
Filter observations by time of day Feature Requests implemented	19	638	January 12, 2025
An observation with multiple photos taken on multiple dates General question	39	1540	March 31, 2023
Use only year as date for observations General	9	207	March 12, 2026
Date submitted before date observed Bug Reports web	28	4409	February 9, 2020
How to monitor and maintain the quality of your iNat contributions Tutorials	44	3216	August 21, 2025

Select a date range when creating observations

Related topics