Why does Annotation: Evidence of Presence: "Scat" exists but "Vomit" does not?

[Vincent_Mia_Edie_Verheyen]

Dear iNaturalist(s),

As “Evidence of Presence” is a data field/type which (I presume) to be maintained by iNaturalist and which you find under the heading “Annotation” in an iNaturalist observation (which is different from the user-created and user-maintained fields you find under the heading “Observation Fields”), my proposal would be to add the possibility to choose “Vomit” to “Annotation: Evidence of Presence”.

My question is: why is the value “Vomit” or “Regurgitation” not there at the moment, but “Scat” is?

See also https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/vincent_mia_edie_verheyen/131191-what-kind-of-slime-is-this

Note that there have been many discussions here about “Observation Fields”, and I understand those are not maintained by iNaturalist:

• https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/duplicate-metadata-fields-example-habitat-fungi-and-fungi-habitat-metadata-field-maintenance-and-descriptions-data-cleansing/74741
• https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/merging-duplicate-observation-fields/16510
• https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/merging-host-plant-and-host-plant-id-fields/24898
• https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/are-there-redundant-observation-fields-and-if-so-should-they-be-merged/34116

But what about “Annotation” fields? They seem much more fundamental as they pop up each time you have preliminary ID’d an observation down to for example Kingdom Animals. Are they maintained by iNaturalist?

Kind regards,
Vincent Verheyen

[Vincent_Mia_Edie_Verheyen]

Considering https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/91456-new-evidence-of-presence-values-added was posted by @tiwane I think indeed “Evidence of Presence” is an iNaturalist maintained data type.

[paul_dennehy]

There has been discussion about all the “other” possible Evidences of Presence on New Annotation: Evidence of Presence:

@tiwane

What about [insert animal-related value here]?

There are certainly other values we’re considering for addition in the future, but again we wanted to start this off with the most commonly seen, useful, and least ambiguous values we could. Some commonly seen and useful values like “domicile” or “construction” seemed too complex for now (do we make different values for a burrow and a bird’s nest and a bee hive, or just use a blanket term? How does this translate to non-English languages?) and others a bit too uncommon or difficult to define for this first phase (eg bear rubs). For more niche or specific data needs, observation fields would be a better choice.

Thread like this have requested regurgitated matter be added.

The owl pellet specific request has also been brought up on Let’s Talk Annotations:

@brennafarrell

Could pellets be added to Evidence of Presence for birds?

I’d say Let’s Talk Annotations is the best place to weigh in on requesting new additions to Evidence of Presence. They’re always weighing the pros and cons of having additional values added here.

[Vincent_Mia_Edie_Verheyen]

OK! Thanks a lot! I have voiced my support for the same in “Let’s Talk Annotations” following your comment: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/989?u=vincent_mia_edie_verheyen