When looking at the observation view, it is fairly easy to determine what photo and observation licences the observer has applied. In the Identify thumbnails page and the Identify modal there is no easy way to determine these, apart from clicking “view” and going to the observation view for each.
There is an ability to add a filter for one specific license type at a time for photos, but not for observation licences… and there doesn’t seem to be an option to filter for multiple photo licences either (I’ve tried editing the url), or to filter for full copyright, or to exclude a license or combination of…
Ideally I would like to be able to see the copyright license for the image, as well as for the observation, from the Identify thumbnail page and modal, and also to be able to filter more effectively for it.
I think this is a quality of life request; personally, I use other’s images in my dichotomous keys, and it would save me a few seconds to see if the image has a usable license in the identify modal when I’m identifying rather than going to the page. Not a huge deal though.
There are several reasons someone might want this:
I would use it (assuming the part where the licenses are shown on the image and obs in the identify modal) to spot new users that have their licenses set to full copyright, and I would take the opportunity to ask them if they have considered making their licenses more open.
I know some identifiers that don’t want to identify for observers that have full copyright, and from discussion with them they take the view that it’s a give and take thing. Some even held the view that there was an “unwritten contract of faith” between scientists giving free identifications and observers giving free (or at least easy) access to images and data. I totally get this with respect to the data, and I’m understanding of it over images, but I can see both sides to the issue. One identifier in particular, is only interested in identifying for those observers that have an open observation license (open enough to share with GBIF, for instance), but their only filtering options available is to filter on specific CC licences for images. They therefore miss the chance to identify a LOT of observations, and it is up to us to tag them in on many of those other observations. It would be easier if they could filter for ALL creative commons licenses, and to do so for observation rather than images…
And @zdanko, I can’t vote if it hasn’t been accepted yet (at time of posting)… but thanks, I’ve voted now :)