Those are website rules and nothing about posting the same specimens goes against citizen science, there’s no such thing as useful observation and not useful, those words should really be forgotten in that contetx as they’re part of elite scientific view on what people should do, if something is posted within rules, it is ok. I also remember circumstances of how you deleted your account, please don’t blame website for that. If you’re against some things, you can not do them and give example to others.
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I need a break so I’m off for a while and won’t be answering (yeah, I hear the applause)
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If it’s citizen science, participating people should also learn what is useful for science and what is not. How to do things properly. Otherwise it’s not citizen science. It’s turning into social media
Sorry, but your complaint really doesn’t have anything to do with the science aspect of this. If it did, you’d be far more concerned about duplicate observations themselves, not whether or not one contained duplicated media of another. For example, if a researcher is going to use iNat to get an idea of the population density of a species based on user observations (an approach that is inherently fraught with potential problems if one does not go about it very carefully, since from the get-go it is subject to observer bias), duplicated observations (say, where multiple people observe the same organism and each separately document it with their own cameras) may give someone a false impression of the population density.
For example, take the case of the recent vagrant bat falcon (Falco rufigularis) observed in far South Texas. If one were just to go based on the many individual observations made of this species (see https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=18&subview=map&taxon_id=4664 ), they may be inclined to believe that a population of these birds inhabits a relatively small portion of the lower Rio Grande Valley within the state of Texas. However, these are all observations of a single, individual animal that crossed into the U.S. and resided in this area for a short time before (presumably) leaving. There is not a population of bat falcons in the U.S., but instead a single vagrant animal that was observed over 100 times over a period of a couple of months.
To me, issues like that that are inherent to a repository like iNat are way more of a concern scientifically than whether or not someone uses the same photo as someone else in a duplicated observation, especially when it is made clear in those observations that they are in fact duplicates. Your concern seems to have more to do with copyright issues than science, and that isn’t even an issue as long as the copyright holder gives permission for the media to be used by his/her co-observers.
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It’s fine for multiple people to post their own photos of the same organism - iNat records encounters, and each one of those is a separate encounter. Anyone using iNat data should understand its issues when it comes to abundance.
If two people encounter the same organism and only one gets a photo, letting their companion use it (with permission) is OK from time to time. It’s best to also note that you got permission to use the photo. But people really should be posting their own photos, and using a friend’s photo shouldn’t be a regular thing.
IMO this particular case sounds like something that merits an explanation and a message to the teacher about best practices.
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It’s fine for multiple people to post their own photos of the same organism - iNat records encounters, and each one of those is a separate encounter. Anyone using iNat data should understand its issues when it comes to abundance.
I hope I didn’t come across as meaning that multiple observations of the same individual organism by different people shouldn’t be allowed, I definitely appreciate and value the intended usage and goals of iNaturalist. I was stating that duplicate observations utilizing the same observational evidence (e.g. photos) are, at the very least, no more problematic from a scientific perspective than multiple people posting their observations of a single individual organism using their own observational evidence.
And thanks for clarifying the staff position on this issue. As I said in my first post, I’m well aware of how difficult it can be to implement new functions, but if I could vote on potential wish-list items, I’d say the ability to share a single observation among multiple accounts (an action that would need to be initiated by the original uploader and thus presumably the copyright holder) would be of benefit, especially for things like class projects and whatnot (and in my own case, friends who co-observe but do not record it themselves).
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You didn’t, I just wanted to make a statement about that as a staff member, it wasn’t a direct response to any particular post here.
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But iNat is social media first. It is intended to encourage NON-scientists to become aware of nature. That is its stated pupose.
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I agree that a few double-posts are not too concerning, but that this approach should be discouraged for two reasons that I haven’t seen mentioned yet.
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Double-posting effectively doubles the work of identifiers. For a few posts here and there, this isn’t a big deal. However, for 190 posts, this isn’t an insignificant amount of extra work. If a teacher/professor actually encourages this, it could be even more of an issue.
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Double-posting many times also leads to identifiers double-checking observations, leaving comments, trying to figure out whether the double-posting is ok (ie, done with permission), or a case of copyright infringement. This is also a drag on identifiers’ time.
When double-posting is done with permission infrequently, and noted with comments/descriptions about permission (as some users have advocated for above), it’s fine as has previously been said (even if it may be a little annoying to some users).
In cases of high volume double-posting, I think sending a friendly message to discourage the behavior is warranted. If it’s for a class project (the source of much grief and joy on iNat…), DMing the teacher/prof to ask them to set up their class activity differently might be helpful.
In the case above, if the teacher is allowing two students to essentially have duplicate accounts for their project, a much better solution would to be to allow the students to just make one account and say that it counts for both of them. This saves the students and iNat users all the time of unnecessarily creating and identifying duplicate observations.
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I would like to see these points in the help page on making observations. I agree with all your points, but I don’t like being in the position of telling people they can’t do something when it’s not in the help pages for making observations. At least, I could not find anything that says the photo has to be one’s own–only that it be a photo of the organism observed, and that the photo have date, location, etc. (As for the identifiers’ time, I don’t see the the difference in the number of observations uploaded when one camera is used and the photo duplicated versus when two people are taking the same organism at the same time with different cameras.)
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I don’t think that there’s anything in the Help per se, but the Terms of Service do say:
“You represent and warrant that (a) You own and control all of the rights to the Content that You post or You otherwise have the right to post such Content to the Site”
That says pretty clearly that an observer has to own the rights to any photos that they post, so you could point to that.
It’s also a pretty obscure argument, but depending on the licenses that users choose for their observations, they can have conflicting ones or the second posters could be infringing the first poster’s claimed rights.
All of that said, I don’t think going down the legal argument path is necessarily needed or the most productive route. Either posters are doing this in good or bad faith.
- If in good faith, then they are likely to respond well to a polite request that says a certain behavior is ok in limited amounts, but that there’s a better way to make observations using another user’s photo (eg, posting a note that says one has permission to use another’s pic).
- If in bad faith (ie, the user is stealing others’ photos without permission), they can just be flagged for copyright infringement.
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The way I understand this is that when the person posted the photo taken by someone else the person in effect did already state that they have the right to post it. Having said that, it’s fine with me if others want to ask again, but in my experience most users in school-related projects never answer.
I have a set of copypasta - please delete duplicate (trying for good intentions) - if it comes up in my notifications again - bump to Life and DQA good as it can be. Gone. Also Unfollow to Unsee that.
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I hadn’t thought this situatiion was considered a duplicate, since it’s a different observer, and so a different observation. If there is a duplicate, though, how do you know which observer was the one who took the photo? Do you leave the comment on both?
Yes, it is not a duplicate in a sense we usually discuss.
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I check the (date and) time the photo was taken. Newer and later one is the duplicate.
I had one today, a procession of insect larva. Two photos, almost but not quite the same. I linked to the other in a comment on each one. Now both have been identified, and I have learned that they were not caterpillars.
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If the reasoning is that the person who did not take the photo is the one who should lose their observation, why would the date the observation was posted matter? The other person took the photo, and it doesn’t seem like that person’s observation should be removed.
It is about when the photo was taken, not when it was uploaded. Those two are the information we have available to work with.
I did misquote you. My mistake. Sorry.
No worries. It is our workaround. And always better if the observer is still active on iNat and does respond, avoiding future problems, and these messy loose ends that we would like tidied up.
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