Why do some people get bent-out-of-shape about duplicates?

General
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When I first began, I had little idea about what I was “supposed to be doing”. It’s cryptic out in iNat-landia. No surprise, it wasn’t long before I got the “Those are duplicate photos”. And my reaction (to myself) was “yes, of course they are. So what? Isn’t that the point?”. Apparently not. But I had to go asking around, to find this out, and then how to fix these (there were a few but only a few; maybe 3 instances).

I work more than full time; I volunteer for two groups; I mentor teenagers doing natural history stuff and even train them in field techniques; I cook/clean etc. I don’t look back. I barely have time to upload most of my photos. So I don’t look back. I did, however, fix one of the duplicates but by the time I did I’d long lost track of the other 2. And, anyway, the fix was cumbersome. Maybe it’s better now, easier. Maybe not.

Surely there’s a way to create an algorithm to cut these off at the upload. With so much identifiable info in a submission, I would think you could create a “barrier to uploading duplicates”…

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A notification would be a great idea I think. But a complete barrier would be problematic, because sometimes a single photo shows more than one organism, and therefore needs to be used in more than one observation to get each organism identified separately.

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63

Then peopel would use theduplicate button (both in uploader and on observation page, so photos will always be linked). It’d be hard to make website to recognize the photos, but maybe the same file name+date could trigger the system?

64

Yes, and for Flickr imports this already exists. Here’s what happens if I try to import an image that I’ve already imported previously:

DuplicateNoticeFlickr

It would be nice to see something similar when trying to upload a picture that is already on iNaturalist.

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There’s an open feature request for this here - https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/duplicate-prevention-notify-observers-if-their-image-checksums-match-others-on-the-site/258

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I am a fairly new iNat user, finding my way around, and so have offended some people & protocols. So I have some responses to some of the ideas in the above thread.

that’s not what iNat is intended to be used for
I’ve never really been able to work out what iNat is intended to be used for. There are some general motherhood statements, but I’ve wondered if it’s to:

  1. define presence vs absence
  2. to discover unusual or new species (clearly not, because only my ‘well known species’ pix get ID’ed, the difficult ones don’t)
  3. raise consciousness with the public by giving them the thrill of contributing to citizen science with their millionth pic of a sparrow in Melbourne.
  4. similar, give a bunch of schoolkids practice in sending pix to iNat.
  5. other

duplicates.
I tend to take lots of pix of the same bush - one in environment, one to show general shape, then a few closeups of leaves, fruit, flowers, bark, etc (!!use a ballpoint pen or somethig for scale!!) for ID. From camera to desktop I’ve learned how to group them as one observation, but with my phone they always come out as 6 separate observations. I haven’t found a way to fix this, so as somebody has said, it’s clumsy and reduces value. Somebody did send me a comment about duplicates, but not what to do about it, so I re-commented asking for help, and somebody else actually helped me.

I have fixed some of the phone duplicates, but jeez, it’s a fiddly process. And plus, most of my interest is away from cities, where good internet (ie, if internet exists, can you watch a you-tube with out buffering), and a month later when I’m home, I’ve got other things to do.

“barrier to uploading duplicates
Actual duplicate pix - easy photo recognition via reverse image search, using the API. But 50 pix of the same sparrow - Hmmm…

Overall, I’ve found iNat to be bloody complicated, such that even the admins of projects I’m in don’t understand it.
eg one asked for pix of ‘the kind of environment where you think you might find bandicoots’ which elicited lots of different plant ID’s and much iNat technical discussion.
eg one had me contributing but my observations never showed up, because they were using two different lists for two different parts of the operation. eg, etc etc,

As Swampster suggests, a bunch of stock copy’n’past messages held by experienced users, kind of push FAQ’s is good.
For my records, https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-turn-multiple-observations-into-a-single-observation/9838

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67

The like I sent you was for these lines specifically – a delightfully snarky phrasing of iNat’s actual mission statement. Or at least, what I think is the actual mission statement; when I look at the Community Guidelines, I find the definition:

iNaturalist is a global community of people who record observations of other organisms and share them with each other so all of us can learn more about the natural world.

That is rather general, so I went to the FAQ, where – guess what? – the first question is “What is iNaturalist?” And the answer is:

iNaturalist provides a place to record and organize nature findings, meet other nature enthusiasts, and learn about the natural world. It encourages the participation of a wide variety of nature enthusiasts, including, but not exclusive to, hikers, hunters, birders, beach combers, mushroom foragers, park rangers, ecologists, and fishermen. Through connecting these different perceptions and expertise of the natural world, iNaturalist hopes to create extensive community awareness of local biodiversity and promote further exploration of local environments.

So, yes, that does seem to encompass raising consciousness with the public by giving them the thrill of contributing to citizen science with their millionth pic of a sparrow in Melbourne. Except that it doesn’t actually use the term “citizen science,” or even mention scientists other than ecologists in the (not exclusive) list of target users.

And yet when we get curt or abrasive replies, they are usually from people who object to our not being seriously scientific about it. I don’t see hikers, hunters, birders, beach combers, mushroom foragers, park rangers, and fishermen upbraiding observers who post occasional duplicates.

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Generally, you need to tag experts or do the research yourself when you find something new/interesting/unique. One argument against duplicates (which I’m probably restating from above) is that those observations take up the time that might otherwise go towards helping identify difficult or unusual species.

As usual, we probably spend more time discussing duplicates than it takes to ignore them.

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69

If you try IDing, you will discover new and unusual species. Makes it worth working thru the familiar stuff. When I was IDing for our city bioblitz, I found a Table Mountain strawberry. That spider is still undescribed.

https://www.capetownetc.com/cape-town/new-spider-species-discovered-on-table-mountain-national-park/

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First, unusual and new are subjective terms. A budding naturalist may have a much broader definition than a seasoned naturalist. Second, they do often get IDed, if at a slower rate.

From my own observations, I can think of two examples:
Brachymelecta californica, that got IDed despite my initial misidentification and the fact that it was well outside its typical range.
Paramaevia hobbsae, that got IDed despite being a newly described species with very few photo references and it was only the second iNat observation (and the first IDed to species).

iNat is complicated, especially to new users. But it is a continual work in progress. Most of the complexity has a reason; it allows for all kinds of features that are useful in so many different ways. And, feature requests and other iNat forum discussions are continuously generating creative ideas on how to simultaneously make the site more user friendly and add useful features that aid in both the personal and scientific aspects of the site.

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