I’m just curious, what is the point of having casual observations on the site? I can understand about the research-grade observations for wild animals/plants, but aside from helping the computer system (for the Seek app), learn more…? I’m not trying to be rude, but I am just wondering. Ty!

In some cases a casual observation might be from someone spotting something that they weren’t able to photograph or where they don’t recall the precise date or location in able for it to count as Needs ID/Research Grade. I’ve taken some photos of plants that I thought might be wild but have had oth…

I use casual observations in a couple different ways: To record phenology of cultivated plants. For example, I like records of when daffodils begin to bloom in my area and my time is better served doing things other than looking for ‘wild’ ones outside a garden. I have recorded specimens I’ve exam…

Cultivated life often still interacts with wild creatures – bees will pollinate planted garden plants, a pet dog outdoors will scare the squirrels, and invasive plants will spread to wild areas. And it’s still useful data to track, even on its own – tree and plants react to changes in weather and cl…

i sometimes make observations with no media just to record that i saw it and where, and on long highway trips it makes it less awful as i just look out the window and record what i see (and i can document a lot of roadkill but no time for pics, its already gone) but i also have some other reasons fo…

I agree with a lot of the comments - particularly the value to training the algorithm and simply to contributing to helping others potentially recognize something they don’t realize is a cultivated species. As an additional comment, the two highest impact factor scientific publications from 2019 usi…

I just want to see my grandma’s tomatoes. -0- https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/36598988 I also post those that I couldn’t photograph, e.g. I see Rooks in Moscow, where they’re not common, but always from the car, so I just make casual obs. I haven’t posted species that are not on my officia…

I‘ve posted several cultivated plants in exotic countries without a good knowledge that they were cultivated - just a mistake that was corrected, but I did not erase these OBs. Now I post cultivated plants or domestic animals (or wild ones but not in their original locality) purposefully for …

I don’t really care for the term “casual” and it almost seems to go against iNat’s objective. iNat’s goal is to get people to observe nature, but seems to treat anything cultivated as second class citizens of the natural world. I would consider myself a gardener first who happens to enjoy plants and…

Some of us old-school types have kept hand-written field notes for many years. I have field note books that go back to the 1970s. Lots of observations buried in there that are not easy to relocate. Although I don’t do it much, I’ll occasionally post a Casual record without photo on iNat to mark an o…

What is the point of Casual Observations?

General

ahospers January 5, 2020, 11:41am 13

As far as i know many sites use observations without photos. You can validate those observatios with alogrithmes. And if 10 other people did observe the same organism in the same area it could be valid as well.

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What makes a sighting casual and other related questions? General	52	8526	July 19, 2019
Useful casual observations being hidden by other low-grade casual observations General question , projects	35	1822	November 14, 2022
Make captive/cultivated not automatically "no ID needed" Feature Requests	228	14263	August 28, 2026
What incentive is there for users to mark their observations as captive / cultivated? General question	89	4198	September 18, 2023
Is a wild collected plant with a known origin, cultivated in a Botanical Garden, only hobby quality or of scientific interest? General cultivated	37	2075	March 22, 2023

What is the point of Casual Observations?

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