The vanishing of a fellow iNatter

[jeanphilippeb]

@cthawley

This is an interesting idea, but I think there’s an open question of whether or not it should be applied to observations that don’t have CC licenses or not. If the observation is published as all rights reserved, this type of dataharvesting and storage may not be appropriate/allowed.

It’s worth asking the question but I think there is no issue at all even if someone uses such software for helping other users by backing up the IDs and comments pushed to the pages of the observations of these other users. Backing up IDs and comments is not backing up any original content from the observer.

The only data backed up from the observation (from the observer) is:

"ID": 143572698,
"CreatedAt": "2022-12-03T17:44:51+01:00",
"UserLogin": "jeanphilippeb",

Only the login is actually something from the observer, the ID and timestamp are from the iNat server. Storing the login is only for knowing who to contact, for sending them the lost identifications.

There is nothing here for applying the terms of any license, whatever the license is.

The CC licence (or other licences) applies to the photos and to the sound records.

---

Backing up IDs and comments from observations of other users (other than the person running the sofware and making the backup) was not my initial intention, but could be very useful. Many users will not care about data loss and backups before they lose many data, and likely not even after.

[dkaposi]

just saw that aguilita has over one million IDs, imagine the impact of him deleting his account…

@ellen5

I haven’t found a blog post or forum topic honoring individuals who have achieved 1,000,000 identifications. So I’m posting this to honor one such noble person: Roberto Calderon, aka aguilita
https://www.inaturalist.org/people/115129
Superhuman!

@Alanhorstmann is also over a million and @johnascher is a few thousand short of that figure

[anon93074988]

@dkaposi

imagine the impact of him deleting his account…

Quite. That would be a mess too big to recover from.

[cthawley]

The initial post does reference creating

@jeanphilippeb

a full backup of all observations of the user

and refers to doing this for a set of users (implying to me that this would be implemented for users other than the person doing the downloading).

I see now that the software does not create a full backup of an observation but only a few datafields per observation, lessening potential concerns.

It is worth emphasizing though that observations themselves do have licenses separate from photos/sounds. This is what determines whether or not data are shareable with GBIF or other data repositories, so these observation licenses are relevant. Some posters choose to apply all rights reserved licenses to their observations (apart from the media), and prevent datasharing.

[jeanphilippeb]

Indeed, I ought not to say “full” backup. I meant a backup of “all” observations, not a backup of all contents.

To take into account your concern (that may be more tricky than what I am aware of), I will limit this software to backing up IDs and comments from observations of the user running the software. Everyone would have to run the software on behalf of him/herself to create a backup of the IDs and comments on his/her observations, without any option to do more.

(The only inconvenience is that no one will be able to help anyone else, and everyone will have to trust the software (not fearing that I could have put a virus in it) in order to secure the IDs and comments that their own observations have received).

[jasonhernandez74]

I wonder if other options short of account deletion are feasible? I am on one platform where I can opt to “inactivate” my account. While my account is inactivated, my profile cannot be viewed, it cannot send or recieve messages, but content I have previously posted in forums remains visible. When I am ready to cease using that platform – which I will be one day – my plan is to “inactivate” my account so that my existing content remains but no further activity (or contact with other users) is possible.

[sunguramy]

I like this idea.

[rcavasin]

I’m not sure I understand how withdrawing contributions is “destroying the body of knowledge”. Does it not simply restore the body of knowledge to the state it was in before the contribution was made?

I say this as someone who has contributed thousands of IDs, as well as countless explanatory comments. I also say it as someone who has contemplated deleting their account several times. My cursor was hovering over that final “delete” button on at least one occasion. Why? Because of disputes with other contributors/curators - one of whom recently posted to this thread lamenting that the feature to preserve IDs/comments from deleted accounts hasn’t been implemented yet. What was the nature of these disputes? I think almost all the disputes I have had here on iNat and in similar contexts boil down to people who make little or no contribution to actually doing the real work having the strange notion that they should have a say in how the ship is run.

I don’t have the same warm/fuzzy feelings about iNat that some other contributors to this thread have voiced. I acknowledge that it is a very powerful tool, and performs its function very well. But it doesn’t make me feel closer to nature. It does the exact opposite. You know what would make me feel closer to nature? Not spending several hours per day sitting in front of the computer correcting other peoples’ mistakes. Why do I do it? I’m not going to pretend that it is some high minded altruistic endeavor. To some extent, circumstances have contrived to leave me little choice. Data from iNat feeds into a database that I manage, and if I don’t vet the data at the source, I end up with bad data. So while all the stuff about contributing to our knowledge base and teaching people is all fine and well, at the end of the day, I’m here because I have no choice. Sure, I could quit everything completely, but then that database would quickly go to hell in a hand basket, and THAT would be a shame. So maybe there’s some indirect altruism there. I can easily imagine someone who does not feel similarly constrained getting fed up with various frustrations and saying “I don’t need this” and deleting their accounts. I imagine this could be especially true of actual experts who have a “life” outside of iNat. I think that’s the heart of the problem. The folks that iNat needs the most are the folks who have the least need of iNat (or rather, the frustrations that go along with participating in iNat).

I feel that part of the deal when I signed up to iNat is that I own my contributions. I WANT to keep the nuclear option. If iNat is going to take that away from me, then iNat is changing the rules in the middle of the game. Before doing so, iNat should give everyone the option of deleting their accounts BEFORE the new rules go into effect. Something along the lines of “continuing to use this website means you agree that henceforth, you will not be allowed to delete your IDs/comments. If you disagree, click here to delete your account”.

If I did delete my account, then yeah, 1000’s of IDs would disappear, but there are plenty of people who parrot IDs, so not all the affected observations would drop back to “Needs ID”. And even if they did, well, somebody else will just have to roll up their sleeves. In my case, I think the “knowledge” resides in what I’ve taught folks about making better IDs as much as the IDs I’ve contributed. Even if all my IDs/Comments vanished tomorrow, I think overall, I will have still made a contribution. There would still be a trace.

All kinds of stuff happens that creates work for me. I spend a lot of time marshalling other knowledgeable people to help me overturn the incorrect IDs submitted (and parroted) by inexpert users. But I don’t argue that we should limit the ability of non-experts to submit IDs, nor do I argue that IDs submitted by those with greater expertise should carry more weight (at least, not out loud). I’m constantly frustrated by folks who obscure their observations, making them largely pointless. But I accept that folks have the right to obscure their observations, even if I think it is rarely justified. I accept that iNat is an imperfect system, but for all its faults, it works surprisingly well. I suspect that’s because there’s a small number of people who do a disproportionate amount of the ‘grunt’ work. You are right to be concerned about the number of major contributors who have chosen to jump ship. But it sounds to me like most of you are arguing that the solution is to chain them to their oars. I will concede that this approach does have longstanding historical precedent.

[rupertclayton]

@sopacexplorer

I’m on the fence considering whether to contribute substantial time posting observations of undescribed taxa, those that would expand the known ranges of hundreds of taxa, from places where no white man has been before, etc. So I have a concern: will I expend all that time and energy only to discover a critically negative factor in iNat that drives me to depart? If so, would I regret having put my time into more field work, or publications?

iNat has become hugely popular, but people have complex lives and a small share of observations and IDs are therefore attributable to inactive users. This is to be expected. Most of the people who leave iNat just happen to stop logging in, but a small proportion make a conscious decision to leave. Of that small number, a smaller subset decide that they want to delete their previous contributions. Mostly we don’t (and can’t) know why, but they’re a very small proportion compared with the total user community or even with the group of significant contributors.

It seems you’re concerned that some hidden factor might drive you to leave iNat, delete your contributions, and have wasted the time you put into adding them. It’s not impossible, but pretty unlikely I think.

You can kind of insulate yourself from this worry from the start by mentally separating the value you get from engaging with other iNat users from the value you provide by sharing little-known observation data globally. Just tell yourself that even if you later happened to decide you no longer want to engage with iNat, you do want the knowledge that you’re adding to continue to be available. Hypothetically, you might become frustrated engaging with particular iNat users or just decide you have better ways to use your time. Your response could be to leave your data for the benefit of future researchers (whom you don’t have to engage with) and decline to spend more time on the engagement that isn’t rewarding for you. To do this you might remove identifying details from your profile but decline to delete the content you contributed.

Your concern that uploading iNat observations may compete for time with field work and publication is fair. As others have said, there are ways to balance this and quite a few users leave bulk uploads and ID work for the field work off season. If you accept the principle that the value of your data is independent from the value you get from iNat interactions, then you might choose to prioritize uploading those observations of undescribed taxa and unexpected range expansions on the grounds that those would provide the most value for the lowest outlay of effort. You probably already know that observations of rare taxa and little-visited locations are likely to attract limited attention right away, but more often than not there’s some specialist or ardent amateur who will find them in time and add to that value you created with the initial upload.

[yayemaster]

I have not been on the forum in a substantial amount of time, but I do have two thoughts about this:

1. It is sad that anyone would delete their iNaturalist account where over 100 million photos and audio recordings are stored safely. To my knowledge there has never been a hacker that has deliberately deleted observations on Inat, and I hope it stays that way. The amount of valuable data that everyone contributes is critical, especially in a rapidly changing world. I would like to thank every observer and identifier for making all of Inat’s observations and identifications visible to any nature-lover in the world. To see “high-profile” accounts deleted is in my opinion worse than leaving the account inactive. That way data is preserved, not added but also not subtracted.
2. I don’t know what I would ever do without Inat. It is such an amazing website and app, but more importantly, a community of people sharing similar interests that friends of mine have discredited. I delete all of my photos from my phone afterwards, so if my account ever got deleted, it would destroy nearly three years worth of memories, over a thousand miles of walking, forty-thousands clicks of a phone camera button, and thousands of dollars spent on gas, vacations, and equipment.

[yayemaster]

Also, if we know of or about the deleted account, is it inappropriate to bring up there name(real or user)?

[anon93074988]

Yes, it would be inappropriate.

[vreinkymov]

It depends, see topic: If a significant Inaturalist contributor dies

If they were involved in a smaller circle that you are a part of, maybe creating a journal entry in memoriam and tagging folks who would would want to know in the comment area might also works?

[jdmore]

@yayemaster

I don’t know what I would ever do without Inat. It is such an amazing website and app, but more importantly, a community of people sharing similar interests that friends of mine have discredited. I delete all of my photos from my phone afterwards, so if my account ever got deleted, it would destroy nearly three years worth of memories, over a thousand miles of walking, forty-thousands clicks of a phone camera button, and thousands of dollars spent on gas, vacations, and equipment.

I totally share the sentiment, but yikes, that’s a lot of eggs in one basket. For things that important to you, I hope you will find ways to save “backup” copies (speaking as someone who’s been burned by hard-drive crashes in the past). I know that’s not feasible for everyone, but if you can…

Personally I’m fortunate to be able to maintain local copies of all the data and photos from which my observations were created. It would be daunting, but if something went horribly wrong with iNat or the Internet, I could in theory re-create everything. The IDs, comments, and discussions would be another matter, of course…

[anon93074988]

As I have got older, I have realised how ephemeral these things are. This has taught me to:

1. Enjoy them while they last.
2. Not be surprised when they disappear.
3. Not put all your eggs in one basket.
4. Expect something better to take its place.

You still have the memories, even if you don’t have the backups.

[spiphany]

@anon93074988

We can prevent it entirely by pushing for (and not accepting anything other than) a proper, complete solution. If that means voting with our feet, so be it.

What would such a solution look like to you?

(Note that I am focusing on IDs; it seems to me that observations are “owned” by a user in a different way and require somewhat different considerations.)

I see the following possibilities:

• deletion of IDs without a trace (status quo)

• deletion of IDs but with a note “an ID by an inactive user was deleted”

• anonymization of IDs (i.e., attributed to “inactive user” or “deleted user”); IDs displayed but treated as withdrawn/inactive

• anonymization of IDs, with IDs counting as active

• pseudonymization of IDs (i.e., deleted accounts are assigned a string of random numbers/symbols)

• account deactivated, but user name kept; IDs displayed as withdrawn, account profile/statistics not viewable

• account “frozen”; all contributions kept and treated much the same way as contributions by active accounts, but with the account marked inactive and not taggable; users might be able to reactivate a frozen account under certain circumstances

I think it is important to offer deactivation or freezing. Probably some users who delete their accounts would opt for this instead if they had the possibility of doing so. Some kind of “freezing” mechanism might also make sense as part of a “cooling off period” to prevent ill-considered account deletions.

However, there are likely to be cases where a user needs to be able to “erase” their account in a more substantial way (for example, for personal safety reasons), so I don’t think that deactivating/freezing can be the only option provided to users who decide to leave iNat. Obviously I’m not in favor of continuing to have IDs simply deleted in such cases. This leaves us with anonymization/pseudonymization and the question of whether such IDs should be treated as active.

[DianaStuder]

@rcavasin

people who make little or no contribution to actually doing the real work having the strange notion that they should have a say in how the ship is run

That applies to this ‘iNat’ forum. You do not need to be active on iNat, or to have a profile there, or to have any practical idea of how to use it.

But anyone can come here and tell us how to iNat. Weird.

[fffffffff]

I get your points, but don’t really understand why you wanted to delete your profile, why not juat log out and not come back? Why thinking on whether you need to destroy what you’ve done or not.
iNat for iders is very helpful too, and does get you closer to nature in areas where you may never be yourself, allows you to learn more, etc. In any place there’re times where sitting at computer is more preferable to going outside, and that is the time to id.

[anon93074988]

@spiphany

What would such a solution look like to you?

I’ve already made my opinions clear on other threads. Sorry but I can’t be arsed to state them again here. It’s not you, it’s me.

[spiphany]

The reason I asked is because I don’t see a solution that would a) meet the needs of all users who have compelling reasons to leave iNat and b) not result in some degree of loss of data and repercussions for other users/observations for some percentage of cases. Perhaps I overlooked it, but I haven’t seen such a solution proposed in other threads either.

Anonymizing IDs and keeping them active (which I mentioned as one option above) would come closest to this, but it seems to me this would create other problems that would have to be weighed against the problem it is meant to prevent.