Newb here. There seem to be two perspectives to iNaturalist - asking for help and providing help (by IDing other’s observations and providing data w/your observations). My question is when is an observation a waste of time and storage space? Should I bother uploading the following: Common spec…

Common species? Up to you! There are definitely contexts in which many observations of common species are valuable. If you want to observe them, feel free to do so. Landscape plantings? Domestic or captive animals? In general these observations are less useful. But sometimes they can be, and …

#1 - so long as it has DNA, it is valid to submit, no matter how rare or common #2 - captive/cultivated are fine, there is a flag at the bottom of the observation to mark them as not wild, please do so. Hopefully they are a relatively small piece of your records, but as long as you set the flag the…

I agree with the above. An observation of a penguin in a zoo (as long as it is properly identified as such) might give someone a hint of what the birds look like when they breed in small lots - or captive size, lifespan & etc. I have added observations of moths from the 1980’s - My region is not we…

@cmcheatle doesn’t even have to be DNA! If u can photo prions, or RNA viruses, go for it! Then we can have a fine discussion about whether they are really alive lol! The duplicates question raises a thought - how hard would it be to harness TinEye or other image reverse search engines into iNat? It…

What observations should I upload?

General

bouteloua September 11, 2019, 5:01am 6

There’s a feature request related to duplicates: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/duplicate-prevention-notify-observers-if-their-image-checksums-match-others-on-the-site/258

Topic		Replies	Views
What to observe General	5	546	April 14, 2019
Old observations - still useful? General question	28	1800	May 20, 2021
Uploading "common" species General	55	2751	February 27, 2025
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Excessive observing? General	85	7647	December 4, 2023

What observations should I upload?

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