I can see why some users chose to opt out of the community id, but what if the person passes away? I think such optings should become void since the user can no longer respond how they feel about a certain suggestion, especially if the correction occurred after their death. The best we can do is set the community id straight, but if we select that community id is as good as it can be, the observation will get demoted to casual grade.
5 Likes
I think the policy is users should have ownership of their data, and this is how iNaturalist is required to comply with some regional laws as well? This has come up before and I think the conclusion was iNaturalist cannot act on behalf of a deceased user to âforceâ opt-in.
The best that could be done is an option somewhere where a user could select âchange to opt-in after inactivityâ, which probably wouldnât be used much, but might help in some cases.
9 Likes
Do you mean ownership of the user settings, including the choice for opting out?
Otherwise, I donât see the point (the observer does not âownâ IDs from others, Community Taxon, Observation Taxon).
Except if this option âchangeâ is enabled by default.
6 Likes
An opt-in after inactivity would help for users who go inactive for any reason (passing or otherwise).
2 Likes
In the event of my death, my wishes are that my iNaturalist data can be changed, manipulated, or destroyed as the iNat community sees fit, preferably to be determined by endless, circular forum threads that focus on edge cases
46 Likes
Is this supposed to be in âiNaturalist Next Discussionâ?
As to determining if a user is deceased, this seems to be a crazy ask of iNaturalist to me. How would iNat ever know if users are deceased? This would presumably require a team of investigators worldwide to try to track whether users are living or dead. It doesnât seem a good use of iNat resources to me.
6 Likes
moved to general
If you CAN figure out if users are deceased, I think this is a potentially good idea, but in most cases I donât think thatâs going to happen.
One could infer a userâs death or at least inability to log in anymore if they were already 90+ years old and havenât logged in in 5 years, but most of the users (and the site) are too young for that to really come up often
1 Like
There is an earlier post.
iNat will not mark an observer as deceased.
They have no ID info beyond an email address.
This was a very public passing.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/rip-stephen-thorpe/54728
5 Likes
I donât personally want to render judgment on the topic itself, but that, good sir, was an amazing response. Best laugh of the week. Magnificent structure, excellent timing, concisely got your point across; whatever oneâs perspective is on this matter, thatâŚwas well done. 
5 Likes
Greg Lasley too.
I think iNaturalist is going to continue to respect the observerâs decision to opt out of community ID, even if the observer is dead. If the observation is stuck at a wrong ID, we can mark the observation âNo, it canât be improved.â That will make it Casual and get it out of our way. (Goes to Casual because thereâs only one ID.) This is a loss of potentially useful data, but I donât think thereâs anything better we can do about it.
7 Likes
Iâm picturing a funeral with a stranger approaching the family: âTerribly sorry about the loss of your father, but he has a moth observation which is way out of range . . . â Sketch comedy skit
19 Likes
There are several well-known users on iNaturalist that have since passed, with public announcements being made, and adjustments were made in their profiles to entail such news. The issue here is, there is one user that I know of that automatically opted-out of community id, and it doesnât seem right that their observations go straight to causal grade because they physically cannot reassess their reports.
2 Likes
Science is always evolving. We are always wrong, but our goal is to be less wrong over time. Museum specimens are constantly being updated with new information: genetics, etc. Hundreds of years after the original collector is dead. Why should iNat be any different? Doesnât the ID emoji represent a museum tag?
2 Likes
Reasonable time of inactivity should trigger the release of opt-out of community id. Technically feasible and preserves the valuable data for posteriority. Anyone who has not âlogged inâ for say 12 months, most likely may not worry about what ids are doing to their life list.
11 Likes
I wish there was a way to filter observations with opt-out from the Identify UI. Its not fun to do some sleuthing just to find out the user doesnât care.
7 Likes
Not logged in - but may still be reading without engaging.
@brnhn I would like Opted Out displayed alongside RG or Needs ID or Casual. And a way to ânot seeâ observers who have opted out for all their obs.
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/user-has-opted-out-of-community-taxon-observation
1 Like
Actually, they do - to the extent that that they can simply delete their own observation, taking all the associated data with it. Identifiers can also delete their own IDs, but itâs not an entirely reciprocal relationship. The observation owner always has ultimate control.
1 Like
I would be interested to see a law that defines ownership like this.
(I donât claim you are wrong).