I am new to iNat (four week), and still trying to learn. I am not very good at seeing the difference on plants, so sometimes might submit several observations of the same plant in the same general location (Different plant, same area).
I am just wondering what the best practice is for these kinds of observations? Is it best to delete the extra observations, or merge them together, or is it better to leave them (helpful for research)?
If the photos are of the same individual plant on the same day, then the photos should all be in one observation. But if you are taking photos of different individuals, whether in the same area or not, or same day or not, then each individual gets its own observation.
That way, it’s easy to document variations in, say, blooming dates or petal color or whatever.
Thanks. That answers my question perfectly.
It’s also fine to duplicate an observation that has multiple individuals present and ask for an ID on each separately. This seems like duplication, but a bird eating a snake can have observations for bird and snake from the same photo, but not the same observation. Likewise, two animals mating can have observations for male and female separately. A horsefly biting a lizards’ snout can be identified just as the lizard can.
Thank you for the reply. I have a follow-up question about this very subject.
In the scenario where you are using the same photo for two different organisms that appear in the photo, how do you make it clear to potential IDers which organism you are asking the ID for?
For example. I posted a picture of a fish with a cropped view of some sort of parasites embedded in the skin. I used the placeholder of “Parasite” to indicate to potential IDers that I was asking for an ID for the parasites, not the fish. However, IDers are IDing the fish, not the parasites, and so now the observation has been changed from my original placeholder of Parasites, to the name of the fish, so new IDers, will now not know what the intention was for the observation.
I try leaving notes and comments!
Sometimes more than one
Then it was identified.
I didn’t post it as a separate observation until asked, due to low quality and cropping issues.
The best way to head this off is to lead with the cropped photo (do not put a photo that obviously shows a fish first), mention it in the comments, and add some kind of identification, even if it must be very high level.
A placeholder accomplishes very little, because you have to be paying very close attention to even notice placeholders. People mostly are not paying quite that much attention. (I guess I get why they are still allowed, but they are so often ignored that it seems pointless to me to even use one. Never put anything that you want other people to see in a placeholder. It might as well be the “put stuff you want people to ignore here” slot. The first ID will override it in any case. Upon reflection, no, I do not at all get why this is still a thing.)
If you do all this and someone still identifies the wrong thing, you can tag them in a polite comment and see if they are willing to change or withdraw their ID. If they don’t respond, sometimes it’s simpler to just delete the observation and start over with a new one (with the photo cropped even closer to the thing you want, if you can manage it).
Exactly just make a note of it when submitting the observation. I also sometimes will crop the photo to show the subject for ID better in each. For example, I added this dead mouse this summer with this and this beetle eating on it and asked for ID of all three. I like to leave a link to the observation of the other one as well to make it easier to find,
this is why we made
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/placeholder-backup.
Agree on the cropped photo first. Then notes.
And comments if the first 2 failed.
