One of the most interesting parts about iNaturalist is finding unique natural history observations. I’m particularly interested in nesting phenology of birds in my area, where the nesting season for many species can potentially include every month of the year.
However, about half the time that I find an “out of season” observation of a species nesting, it’s a situation where it appears the user either selected the wrong date, or automatically used the date the observation was uploaded, instead of the date the organism was actually observed. I always leave a comment asking the user to confirm the date, but often get no response. Sometimes the date mismatch is obvious by the clues in the photo (vegetation phenology also out of sync with the reported date, or a migratory species supposedly nesting at a time of year when it isn’t present in the country), but other times it’s not as obvious.
I’m curious to know how others approach this subject. This is obviously a subjective issue, so I don’t think there is one correct answer. For instance, a species that’s never been documented nesting in the winter before, but is present year round in a Mediterranean climate could conceivable be correct, even if it’s unlikely. Would you mark an observation as having the wrong date if you were fairly sure it’s an error, but not 100% confident?
The cases where I mark date is inaccurate are mostly those where it is obvious that date and location are for where the picture was uploaded (e.g. summer flowers in a meadow but date and location is in the middle of winter inside a house) or the picture is of a picture on a screen and not the original. Typically when the date seems off, the location seems off, too. In other cases, I like to check with the observer first. Some spring bloomers can indeed be observed flowering again in fall, for example. It’s nice to get confirmation if that is the case. However, as you note, often there is no reply but for the most part I’ve moved on and don’t return to do anything about it. I’m hoping the next identifier following after me might see my unanswered question and act accordingly.
I personally err on the side of caution, and only downvote if I’m really certain. For example, I mostly identify moths, and lots of people post specimens of pinned moths. These can be RG if they reflect the location and date of original capture. Sometimes I see a series of specimen photos taken by the same observer on a school campus on one date, and I know some identifiers would make the assumption that they’re not using the date and location they caught them, but I don’t think that’s a fair assumption to make. Unless they’re posting specimens in that situation that are all very clearly out-of-range and out-of-season, I give them the benefit of the doubt and operate under the assumption that they caught them on campus on the day they specified- even though I may strongly suspect personally that they’re just posting a bunch of stuff from multiple dates and locations with the wrong data. Same with “pictures of pictures”, the classic back-of-the-camera cell phone shot. An observer can easily make the date correctly match the original photo’s date, so I wouldn’t assume the date is wrong just based on the picture being of another picture they took.
I would only downvote if it seems really obvious that there’s something off- like snow in the background in the wrong season or something like that. I’ve even considered upvoting “date is correct” in cases where I think another identifier was overzealous in their downvoting. I wonder if there’s a policy on this- if an observer has not responded one way or the other to questions, the observation looks a little “fishy”, but there’s not really any way to be 100% sure if the date is right or wrong, and one identifier downvotes the DQA, can I come along, with no further information, and upvote it because I have a different philosophy on how much to take the observer’s word?
One issue that still plagues no small number of uploads is an erroneous date from metadata, either from a wrong camera setting or from a metadata glitch (or incompatibility?) that happened some years ago with certain phone camera operating systems. One can search for obvious digital images which have a date such as “December 31, 1969” or “January 1, 1970”, long before digital technology was developed, to see some examples. Those types of observations deserve a question to the OP and a downvote on the DQA immediately, until/unless the date is corrected.
If you think the date is not accurate, downvote it in the DQA. After all, yours is only one vote and easily overturned if the observer, or the next identifier disagree.
I completely agree with leaving a downvote, ideally with leaving a comment—if the observed is active, he can upvote, cancelling out your vote. I think these time and location errors are harder to catch than species misidentification. Yet, they still reach research grade and impact the data quality of iNaturalist, so if you have any doubts, please raise them!
In such cases, I go with the saying, “Exceptional observations require exceptional documentation.”
Identifiers should always leave a comment if they vote in the DQA, particularly if that vote makes the observation Casual. Even if the observer is active, they’d have to be paying a lot of attention to catch something like that without getting a notification.