I’m wondering what to do regarding a user who is uploading a lot of accidental photos (of maps, random patches of a yard, photos of people, etc) and who is uploading many photos of a single organism across many observations. There are dozens and dozens at this point. I’ve tried adding comments (with and without tags), politely asking her to remove accidental photos and to consolidate photos when they are of one organism. No responses. My sense is not that she is avoiding the comments. Instead she is likely new to iNat and is probably completely unaware that she is accidentally doing what she is doing. My sense is also that she’s not even aware that she is receiving comments in her observations. It wouldn’t be a problem if she were not continuing to upload problem observations. She’s around 428 observations at this point, and the vast majority are duplicates or other problem images. Thoughts?
Did you try messaging? I don’t know what the precedent is, but this could perhaps warrant suspension.
Good suggestion. I’ll try a direct message and see if she notices that. I’ve been assuming that if she’s not noticing the comments that she wouldn’t notice a direct message–but who knows!
As far as I know, the iNaturalist app does not pop notifications for IDs and comments, not by default. I do not even see how to turn on push notifications from the app, although there appears to be a couple options to do this from the web site. If one pays no attention to the items on the ≡ menu, which is easy enough to do, then one will have no idea that there is anyone else out there reacting to one’s observations. I know because in my first foray into iNaturalist was via the app and I had no idea that there was a vast and vibrant community engaged with iNaturalist. If the user is using the app, they may be wholly unaware of the comments coming in, the guidance that they are receiving.
If they are on the app (no notifications)
but still active on iNat
my last resort is a comment on one of ‘today’s’ uploads.
Presuming that they are interested, but have no idea that they are not getting notifications.
I agree with other suggestions above to send a PM. You can see how they are adding observations whether it is the app or even potentially Seek - Seek users won’t get notifications or PMs on Seek. If the issue continues, you can ping help@inaturalist.org.
If the user is on the current iOS app, there is isn’t a an obvious way to see comments on observations. I don’t think there’s an obvious way to see PMs either, if one exclusively uses the iOS app. If that’s so, perhaps asking for an assist in reaching out is appropriate? @tiwane? help@inaturalist.com
Thanks for the thoughts everyone! I sent out the PM to the user two days ago and she has posted another 40 or so problem observations since. I’ve also been posting notices on the user’s newest observations. She is definitely using the iPhone App, so I suspect she has no idea that she’s receiving messages at all. I’ll reach out to the help email address.
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