Or a button to let us duplicate the same observation so many times (for example if I had an observation of 1083 Snow Geese I could have the same observation duplicated 1083 times to represent each individual).
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This option has always been available in iNat. There is an observation field called āCount ā How many individuals did you observe?ā This can be added to any record.
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Observation is for 1 specimen only, so other than annotation thereās no need to add numbers, you can add as many geese from one spot as you want as long as you have their photo, people do that with flocks if they have the intention to document numbers, but iNat goal is not to document those, at least thatās the staff view on the question.
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Iāll take the opposite point of view. The current implementation of flowering phenology is rough around the edges, and the user interface is still clunky in places, but every time I invest the effort to annotate a taxon, I learn something new. In the process of annotating, I inevitably find some bugs in the data (such as a plant claiming to be flowering in January), which of course leads to a better data set. In general, annotations are a win-win feature of the system.
I look forward to the day when I can annotate via a voice interface :-)
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Last year we had plants flowering in December and January, itād cool to be able to make phenology graphs by decades, thereād be so many differences!
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Sounds like a great feature request to me! :-)
Could you share a link to that staff view?
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You can search for topics about 1 observation = 1 specimen, I hardly remember exact names of those and remember it was in long topics about AI and attributes, but you can ask staff directly @tiwane could you please clarify that view.
ā An observation records an encounter with an individual organism at a particular time and locationā
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Yeah I think a decision just has to be made, but as long as you are reasonable it should be fine. There really isnāt much motivation to add multiple geese, pigeons, ants etc as separate observations. And inat data should not be used for determining abundance/population size in anything but the vaguest sense for a lot of reasons.
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For research purposes, I think iNaturalist does best in the cases where the relevant data can be easily verified from the photographs, notes taken, or other material uploaded. It is good for āpositiveā reports, reporting the presence of something or occurrence of something.
For example, with species that are distinctive and easy to identify from a photograph, it is very useful for things like tracking range expansions.
It is not very useful for ānegativeā distribution information because there is no way to report the absence of a species (unlike eBird, which does track this, and quite effectively.)
It is also not very useful for difficult-to-identify species, such as when the typical photos or other materials are insufficient to make a reliable ID.
It also requires considerable manual review because it is user-submitted data and the standards for āresearch gradeā are pretty low, to where there are many āresearch gradeā records that are misidentifications and/or captive/cultivated organisms.
I think the biggest strengths of iNaturalist though arenāt the direct use for science, but rather, the community, its use as an educational tool (i.e. for the users to become more knowledgeable), and the ability to use it to jump-start or guide more serious research. The repository of open-licensed images is also super useful for people who want images of organisms in an easy-to-search way, i.e. theyāre searchable both by taxon and by geography and by license, a huge strength. Also, the images themselves, even copyrighted ones, are useful as a learning tool, pouring over them to get a sense of how to ID species. I use it a lot for this purpose, especially with species that are uncommon or not present in my area.
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Iām aware of that, @cmcheatle, and as Iāve mentioned here, this definition is far from satisfactory in my opinion. While iNat is certainly a collection of highly biased data, there would be nothing wrong with introducing a standard ācountā field that would refer to the number of individuals seen at a given location and point in time.
I guess I have to start a new topic proposing a new definition what an iNat observation isā¦
Iām not disagreeing either, I too wish a standard way to capture abundance were offered. I was simply responding to the request to provide the documentation of the site view on the issue.
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I think duplicating observations is just annoying, especially for IDers. I only duplicate an observation if I have a picture with two species in it and I want to do one for each. But when Iām identifying I donāt want to see
and have to click āAgreeā 1083 times. That would massively slow down my identification of other observations.
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Iāve been doing a lot of review of my state, which I find fun, but I was blocked by a user a while back for identifying their observations, so now outliers of species that arenāt present in my state are there on the list, taunting me- and I canāt do anything about it. They also continue to incorrectly identify their observations ala the CV. While I think the CV is amazing, the non-critical observers may pose a problem.
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You can pass the details on to iNat Help.
Deliberate wrong IDs, are wrong.
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I have written to them. I donāt know how it turned out because I didnāt hear back from iNaturalist nor was I unblocked.
I donāt want to say itās deliberate or malicious, but itās ignorant. They did delete observations and upload them with the same (wrong) identifications before blocking me, which definitely is malicious and deliberate, but I donāt want to say that since then they have been with these more recent observations and identifications.
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Did you email help@inaturalist.org
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Yes. āI have written to themā meant I composed and sent an email to iNaturalist help. I did get a reply back about looking into it but absolutely nothing since.
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