a few, but im going to offer the reverse: i know someone from school that apparently has an inaturalist account. i was pretty sure we were both posting at the same time on a field trip. he keeps talking about inaturalist. but i absolutely cant find his account? i asked for his username and he told me and i figured by the time i got home i must have misremembered it or something but i cant find any observations from our trips or anything either. i found the account of his friend by chance one day just because i follow local observations, but that didnt connect to him at all. im mystified. so i know hes a real human, but im left thinking, is his inat account even real?
does he use the forum? i dont know - so umm if youre reading this and know its about you, hi…
I don’t think this can be the future of a Web 2.0 project, especially if CC licenses are used. Anyone using CC licenses agrees that the data can be disseminated. It doesn’t matter if he changes his mind later. One is to use a project according to the rules, the other is to cause harm by arbitrariness. Anyone who puts data in a database with their name or pseudonym knows what they are doing.
Could we keep the IDs visible (for the logic of subsequent IDs) but withdrawn so they don’t ‘count’. And obviously with the user name deleted.
So what remains is simply someone, said, it was, this species
That would also avoid issues around, taxonomy changes, and please delete or change your ID.
And if withdrawn IDs from deleted profiles could be filtered / searched, then less traumatic for those who can, to do the ‘cleanup on aisle 3, send reinforcements please!’
Actually, Creative Commons licenses interpret authorship very broadly:
the individual, individuals, entity or entities who created the Work or if no individual or entity can be identified, the publisher
Technically, this avoids conflict with GDPR. But I’m not sure that anonymization is not a license violation if the author has explicitly identified themselves as a certain individual at the time of publication. If so, then complying with the license requirements also imposes the need to comply with personal data protection laws, regardless of the author’s will. It is in such cases that it seems to me a possible conflict, in which the free use of content is subject to restrictions not provided for in the license.
I apologize for the nerdiness :-). Perhaps this is just a spurious issue. But I am not sure.
Honestly, just notifications would do a lot, like, x id was deleted from your observation here.
I’m getting ids on my gull observations from 2 years old throughout this week, clearly somebody deleted their profile, I have no idea who and didn’t even know it.
Given how many people are reporting recently lost IDs that can only be explained by multiple account deletions, are there statistics on deletions over time – i.e. number of deleted accounts per month/year, number of IDs per account, etc.? I suppose any such statistics would need to be interpreted relative to growth during the same period, but it might help provide a sense of whether what we’re seeing at the moment is unusual or a part of a regular pattern.
Does iNat solicit any sort of feedback upon account deletion – i.e., a voluntary survey or comment form regarding why the user chose to delete their account? If I were running a website and there was a wave of account deletions by highly active users in good standing, I would be very concerned and want to know why so that I could try to resolve whatever is causing it. (Please note that I don’t expect specifics to be shared with users; what I am interested in is whether staff feel that such deletions are just “normal” attrition and or something to be concerned about, and if the latter, whether there are efforts underway to figure out what can be changed to improve the situation.)
GDPR is not the “Right to be forgotten” and doesn’t say you are not allowed to collect and use personal data. It says that you are allowed to do it only with the person’s agreement and only when it is necessary. I think that fulfilling the requirements of the CC license chosen by the observer, and taking advantage of this licence even after the user departure, justifies to attach a name to the observations.
Do we need an explicit “Right to be forgotten” option when deleting an account (for keeping or deleting the observations under the terms of CC)?
iNaturalist will always allow users to entirely delete their content (even when iNat has the right to go on publishing their content, or part of it, depending on which license applies to which content).
I am afraid that few persons took this decision that impacts many many users (present or future). Is there a regulation for such important decision-making?
Why other users must suffer all the consequences of iNat renouncing to do what was authorized by a former user.
One way to help out with this is when using iNat data for scientific work to download from GBIF. You get a DOI to cite and a full dataset to download that you can post in a repository for perpetuity. It won’t have absolutely every piece of info on iNat, but will be pretty good.
What becomes the “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” / “No, it’s as good as it can be” when the lowest rank ID on the observation vanishes because of account removal?
(I mean : removal of the account of the identifier that put this “best” ID on the observation.
After this “best” ID vanishes, the new Community Taxon is likely not anymore “as good as it can be”).
Recently I had staff confirm that when they suspend an account, they have to choose to remove the account’s IDs and DQA votes as two different additional steps after the initial step of just “suspension.” So they could suspend a user, suspend them and remove their IDs, or do all three: suspension, remove IDs, remove DQA votes. I thought that was curious. I am not sure if this could relate to voluntary account deletion, but it does show it’s at least possible for an account no longer fully functioning to have active IDs or DQA votes.
I never knew the user’s real name (or don’t remember it, if he ever displayed it). I want to respect his privacy (especially if he left iNat for uncomfortable reasons), but you are welcome to message me privately if you’d like to commiserate about the loss. I’m sure you’ve also noticed the gap left in beetle IDs.
I think that making a deleted user’s activity ‘not count’ any more causes as much chaos as deleting the data - it just gives us more visibility of what has happened. The point about DQA activity - especially ‘CID is as good as it can be’ is a good point. I understand that it becomes a bit more difficult to move an ID if a user is not responding, but this is no different to if someone has simply stopped using their account.
I really struggle to see why all their activity should not simply be attributed to ‘Deleted user’ and still count. Better still, give them the option of anonymising or not.
Neither do I really see why they should be able to remove all of their contributed content. It is essentially published material, and there is no right to unpublish things as far as I’m aware. GDPR does not seem very relevant to me either as this is not PID.
If the option is really necessary I’d be more inclined to say, ‘if you want any of the following to be deleted in their entirety: IDs, comments etc, please email help@ to request this.’
If they had to manually delete/withdraw all their records, IDs, and comments, that would discourage these wholesale deletions of all contributions with a single mouse click. They would still have the right to remove all their contributions but it would require some work. Not that I see this as a feature that would be implemented.
I think there is sometimes a thought is that ‘online friends’ are not ‘real friends’. Every single online person I have then met in real life has indeed been real, and far more real than people I meet first in real life. I think the wall of anonymity helps people be more themselves, and I have had FAR fewer surprises with “online friends” I later know in person, than friends met first in person.
People say “you wouldn’t say it to a stranger why would you write it online!?”…but honestly all of my experience says they want to say it in person, but socially they cannot in person so it is kept to themselves and not verbally spoken in person. Online when they write it where there is ‘no consequence’ - they are showing their inner self. I’ve never been surprised meeting someone in person that I first ‘met online’. I have been surprised many times by people I met in person and then found online when they ‘friend request’!
All of my long term friendships (10+ years) to this day started as “online friendships”, including my partner. Some are over the 20 year mark now.
So while I answered the question of ‘how many iNatters do you know are real - defined as having met face to face’…I also find it…lacking in any pertinent info in regards to the overall topic to be honest.
To me, I wouldn’t delineate online vs in person as only the later being real.
Sorry, I forgot he generally kept his name private. And yes, there has been a large rise in unidentified carabids that used to have IDs, I’m helping where I can.
Not to get too deep into it, but I’d devided real relationships online when you know the name of the person and something about their life. On iNat from most users you know what they write in their profiles and what they can write you in private messages, where personal talks are rarer than in a regular social media.
I don’t see having a thread or project is really adding anything to being real, you can say who is who without them saying that. But they can have two shelves of skeletons in a closet that you have no means to dig out with little info that you see on iNat (as an example). You don’t know who they are as people from what they say about themselves.