Hello! I’m the Park Interpreter at Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, NV, USA. In preparation for a BioBlitz we’re holding next month, I was reaching out to people to ask for permission to use their photos and asking how they’d like to be credited if we use them in some social media posts on the park’s official social media pages.
Because I was copying and pasting a template (only changing the links to which observations I wanted to inquire about), the site flagged me as a ‘spammer’ and suspended my account.
Tangential, but if the photos are already listed as CC-BY (or CC-BY-NC and you’re not selling anything), you don’t need to ask for permission, by them selecting that license you already have permission as long as you credit them.
Yeah, looking back I should have done it that way and then perhaps just left a comment on the post stating it would be used. Thought the users might like a heads up and might like to know that they’re being featured somewhere. :)
I don’t recall the exact requirements, but I think if you are also posting observations and such, it’ll prevent any spam flags from happening in future.
The account has been flagged as a non-spammer and reinstated.
Yes, any curator could reinstate it but the flags were all on messages, which curators can’t read. So they wouldn’t know if the messages were indeed legitimate.
iNat’s spam filter analyzes content posted by accounts with fewer than 4 research grade observations.