Maybe this is something that can’t be implemented, but it would be good if there is a period of time (days? weeks?) in which the account is not actually deleted but placed in suspension before it actually disappears. A cooling-off period, perhaps. If the user has second thoughts or realizes they did something they didn’t intend to do, they can then reactivate the account.
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OK, so what about replacing all previous comments and identifications with a note indicating “comment/ID deleted by inactive user” instead of deleting them without a trace? This would allow users to see that something has been deleted, but not what the ID or the content of the comment was. I would consider this an improvement over the current situation, and once this structure is in place it could presumably be adapted to allow for anonymized IDs if desired at a later point.
I realize that the question of anonymizing IDs presents a number of complexities, but given that the topic came up in 2019, has any progress been made towards making the relevant decisions on this matter? (My vote would be for treating anonymized IDs like withdrawn IDs – i.e., not counting towards community taxon).
Would a “cool-down period” after account deletion be worthwhile considering? (I know there are some websites/forums that do this, so I imagine it would be technically feasible.)
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It has been submitted and “accepted” before, so it’s seemingly something that’ll just happen when the staff get around to it. I would advise urgency though…
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It seems to me that there is a certain conflict between the two legal concepts here. On the one hand, there is the concept of “Right to be forgotten,” or even “Right to vanish”. On the other hand, there is the concept of “Freedom of Information”. I can’t say for sure how this conflict should be resolved in the context of the content posted here. As for me personally, I hold rather conservative beliefs. According to which, nothing I have done or said can be “just forgotten”. So, I deliberately try to make such “forgetting” impossible. But I also respect other beliefs. The only question is what is most important in each case. For example, if the national law in the user’s country of residence supports a “right to be forgotten,” but the user has deliberately agreed to use their content under a free license that makes such “forgetting” legally impossible – what is the more significant source of the right in that case – the law or the user’s will?
So, I’m not sure that reposting “vanished” content can always be legal. I would like to hear a more professional opinion on this.
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GDPR and similar privacy legislation focus on personally identifiable information (PII - anything that can identify you such as name, email, phone, address, etc). If you separate the PII from the behavioural data (things such as observations, identifications, comments etc) then you have essentially removed the data from the ambit of GDPR and you have legally forgotten the person who created it. To achieve this, anonymisation of all the PII associated wit the user record is considered an appropriate measure e.g. change name “Russellclarke” to “12345” etc.
Currently deletion of entire data records is actively damaging the integrity and quality of the data here.
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GDPR also takes into account that balancing act between legitimate interests of the data collector and the rights of the user. I’m not 100% certain an argument couldn’t be made regarding observations’ time and place metadata and privacy rights in the case of a “simple” anonymisation (ie. the person that obviously lives at this address during that period was home at these times), but in the spirit of GDPR the harm potential vs. impairment of legitimate interests seems to me in favour of not taking extra measures.
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In a way, it is also like an extinction. How do I know that the Carolina parakeet was ever real? Audubon could have painted from his imagination; the museum skins (which I have never seen in real life, just photos) could be hoaxes like the Feejee Mermaid. And what of extinct species with even less hard evidence – the white dodo, which may or may not have really been an ibis?
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True, the observation location metadata poses some different challenges. Identifications are probably a bit simpler (no location of the identifier, only the observation), but again it’s a trivial exercise to decrease the accuracy of identification coordinates to the point where it’s impossible to associate them with a specific address.
I was only addressing real, tangible people who have left and the holes left behind. There is a considerable difference between something/someone who was and is no more and something/someone who never existed. I don’t need physical evidence of these people to know they exist.
I can think of many people who have affected me of whom I retain no photos or other detritus of our time together: neighbors, teachers, clients, people I knew at university, childhood friends. (I daresay this is likely true of almost everyone.) They are still real. I feel how they shaped me and my life. But the more impactful each was, the greater the sense of loss when they disappeared.
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Yes, I quite understand the concept of privacy protection under GDPR and similar laws. The question is how it relates to the concept of free will and freedom of information in Creative commons agreements. For example, I understand “attribution” precisely as the ability to unambiguously relate a work to my identity. Which essentially contradicts the GDPR and the “Right to be forgotten”. But no, I would rather not be “forgotten”. And what’s more, I don’t participate on Wikipedia first because of the anonymity adopted there. How can there be a compromise between “privacy protection” and “personal responsibility”?
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This is indeed a real issue and a contradiction with regard to observations (photos), but not with regard to IDs and comments, provided they are not eligible to copyright. What is not eligible to copyright is out of the scope, it has no obligation of attribution, and without attribution it is in not in conflict with the “Right to be forgotten”.
Just my understanding. To check.
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There’s nothing contradicting in making ids attributed to a nameless user. Their real name will be forgotten, they can be sure in that.
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Better completely remove the user name (not replacing it by a placeholder name), so that there is no more direct evidence that observations 143572698 and 143572463 are from the same user. Remove also the previous/next buttons for browsing observations of the same user (not a feature, but a mere direct technical consequence of the fact that observations are not anymore linked to an account). This in combination with the proposal above to decrease the accuracy of coordinates should be enough to make it almost impossible to identify the former user.
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Honestly, this discussion reminds me a little of the discussions at Twitter, where people are trying to find ways to maintain their contacts even as they believe Twitter may no longer exist. I assume very few people there actually know many of their contacts in person. (I know a grand total of 3 in person on Twitter and really no one on here.) It’s odd, isn’t it, that an online presence can be felt in your own life as valuable and worthwhile? And, yet, people on this site feel “real” to me, and I do wonder when someone chooses to disappear what has happened that caused the loss. It is, of course, none of my business, but in so far as I enjoyed their presence on the site, I miss them when they go.
I will say that as to IDs, there was a person identifying mayflies (about which I know next to nothing), and I was thrilled to get some specific ideas and some “tips” from the expert identifier. Then they were gone. Now, I look like I added expert identifications to my own observations. I sincerely hope no one ever thinks I can help them based on my seemingly astute identifications of my own observations. ;)
Anyway, may we all have a wonderful New Year and many new iNatting adventures in 2023.
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Yes, definitely in terms of what’s available across the API and UI, but it’s realistic to assume that itit’s mandatory in the DB so the backend would need a value.
I don’t think so. Technically, we do whatever we want. There is no technical reason for a link from an observation to a user account to be mandatory. Technically, an observation can be orphan. Just make this relation non-mandatory in the database and just erase the link when the account is deleted, so that the observation remains. (This is common. I need not know more details about the database to say that).
Good to hear - should be easy then. Of course there are no technical reasons for a lot of things, but sometimes they still get implemented 
It seems that the https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/export page is not designed to export observations with their identifications.
Would you like a software that you could run from time to time (say once a month) and that would keep up to date on your local disk a readable text file containing a backup of all identifications and comments attached to your observations? The software would never erase anything, but would point out the IDs and comments that have disappeared online?
The next step with this software would be a feature for submitting, on behalf of you, the lost IDs or comments, to the same observations. This wouldn’t be in conflict with iNat rules, provided that you would have to review and confirm every information before it is pushed.
Proof of concept: check this observation and what can be retrived automatically with the API.
Observation page:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/19462130
Data from the API for this observation:
https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/observations/19462130
Personally, I don’t need such a software, as I already append the IDs I receive to the file names of my photos. But I would be glad to make this software for you, and have your feedback after your preferred identifier vanished.
Make your ownn backups and make sure you are actually able to restore data from the backups. Do not rely on anyone else, do not rely on anything you don’t manage on your own. Security of data is not a matter of confidence. I don’t mean that confidence doesn’t exist, I just mean that security has nothing to do with it.
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I wish you all an Happy New Year!
With nice findings in nature.
And with data backups (see here how to do proceed).
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12+ depending how you count the many more from Master Naturalist field days who made accounts but dont use them much. Count those too and we are over 20. And a few more if you count old formerly active accounts of folk I know in person and stumbled across on here going through backlogs. And Ive really only been iNatting for a year and have made plenty other further afield contacts and secondary connections. I only knew one prior to joining, who I heard about it from.
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