Is it alright to upload an unoriginal picture (a friend’s, family or colleague’s), with consent of course, as an observation?
Yes. (Just a few - otherwise they do need to make their own profile). And a note to explain.
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It’s very important to make sure the location is correctly set to where the photo was taken, and please leave a note/comment that you did not take the photo yourself. I see a lot of observations where someone took a screenshot of a facebook/instagram post, then posted it to iNat with their home location - even though the original photo was taken far away. This causes a lot of confusion with identifiers, especially when it’s not obvious the photo was taken from somewhere else.
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To clarify what others have suggested, the 2nd-hand or alt-source image should preferably represent something you encountered, even though you did not get an image of your own. Posting 2nd-hand images of other peoples encounters (which you did not see) is not appropriate for your iNat observations as a general rule.
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It’s OK if the photo is of the same individual organism(s) you saw, taken when and where you saw it. Or it’s OK occasionally posting somebody else’s observation on your account, saying that somebody else was the observer.
It’s not at all OK if you post that you saw species X at location Y on date Z and illustrate the observation with somebody else’s photo of species X taken at location A on date B. That creates a false observation because we use the photos to evaluate the accuracy of your report that species X was at location Y on date Z.
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Thank you for your responses everyone! Maybe I’ll upload one - off observations with unoriginal pictures, making sure I clearly state that I am not the owner of the pictures.
Vinay, since nobody shared Tony’s FAQ yet:
See the bottom line, that I highlighted in blue? Where it says, “you encounter”? You can read that as “YOU encounter”. The emphasis is on YOU and on YOUR interactions with nature.
So you CAN post other people’s photos — with a big explanation of the circumstances, why you are doing this, clearly documented time and location, etc. — but it is not the intended use of the platform.
https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000169927-what-is-an-observation-
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