Hello! I’ve been doing a lot of ID-ing in the last month, and some observations I keep seeing are listed as Unknown and have no photos/sounds or notes, leaving people no way to possibly tell what the organism was. Can anyone tell me why people are making these observations and what I should do about them?
These usually happen as bugs in the app upload process I think. Sometimes if the upload is interrupted the observations get split and the photo goes in one observation while some of the metadata goes to a separate observation.
Частенько такое наблюдаю. Просто пишу “нечего определять” и отмечаю проверенным.
Бывает, человек возвращается и загружает фото.
I too think it’s usually a mistake. If very recent, they could also be an intentional part of someone’s workflow (like they are saving the time and location, planning to add a photo later.) I doubt anyone creates them just as a personal reminder of that thing they saw, didn’t get a photo of, and couldn’t even ID to kingdom, but who knows 
As for what to do about them, there are a few options.
If you have the time and patience, leave a polite comment asking whether there was meant to be a photo that maybe failed to upload. Hopefully the observer will see the notification, and either delete the observation or add photo/sound to it. I think this is the best option because it will save the next identifier to come along from having to look through as many as you did, but it certainly isn’t obligatory.
You could just ignore them. Mark reviewed so you don’t personally see them again, and move on. Maybe the next person will be in the mood to nudge the observer.
If you don’t want to see them, you could avoid looking at casual observations, as any without photos or sounds should be in casual. (Of course, that also excludes everything that’s casual for other reasons. . .)
Thanks for helping with identifying! We need more identifiers, so whatever approach you choose, just don’t let it steal the fun out of identifying.
I have a copypasta, but seldom get a response. Mark as Reviewed. Without media it is already Casual.
No picture.
Please sync to upload your photos.
Or if this is an error, then please delete it.
Someone once explained to me – we are allowed to upload obs without media. But then I at least expect notes or a story. And we cannot ID ‘nothing to see here, keep moving along !’
Often the photos don’t sync right away from the app. I know I’ve had uploads occuring on my phone and also had the site up on my laptop, and I’ve seen medialess observations with no ID show up in my own observations temporarily as the syncing is happening. I also know they show up for others, because I’ve had people post their “this has no photo” copypasta comments on my observations even though they very much do have media, because they happened to see them while the upload was in progress and didn’t see the photos yet.
I imagine if the upload gets interrupted for some reason, the “blank” observation might stay there in perpetuity.
I produce them from time to time when trying to upload an observation from an area with poor or intermittent internet access. They always resolve themselves once I retry the upload when access improves.
I usually put something like “I think your photo failed to upload”
In addition, if you do want to look at casuals you can also just filter for “has photo” or “has sound”.
I don’t think observations without any kind of evidence are worth spending too much time on. If you do want to add a copypasta like some of the other folks mentioned I would recommend filtering for observations that were added more than a week ago (upload date not observed date) so that you don’t waste your time on those that were just slow to sync or ones where the poster’s device died halfway through making an observation.
Thanks, everyone. That clears up the issue. I was worried it was some kind of prank on id-ers! 
One caution if you spot another observation from the same time and place: nearby observations can be of different organisms, so let the observer confirm before assuming a photo belongs with the blank record.