I personally don’t see the value in not allowing annotations for humans. I’m not making this a feature request because maybe there is a reason I’m not aware of. I’ve tried searching for an explanation, but I can’t find any.

We’re not going to add annotations for observations of humans, for the many reasons people have brought up here. I agree there might be some utility for adding an “artifact” one or something, but even that could be used for abuse and might confuse people and make them think it’s OK to post photos of…

Well, because no researcher or interested party is going to iNaturalist for human-centered data. No part of their mission statement includes observing humans.

Maybe because Humans aren’t valid observations?

[image] cyanfox: I personally don’t see the value in not allowing annotations for humans what would be the value in allowing them?

There’s no value of adding observations of humans in the first place.

Observations of humans already have the potential for abuse, particularly if the observer has not gotten permission from the person depicted to post the photo on iNat. I see some big problems with annotations like “sex” and “life stage” if they were applied to observations of humans – sex is not ge…

[image] spiphany: I see some big problems with annotations like “sex” and “life stage” if they were applied to observations of humans – sex is not gender, gender presentation can be complicated, and it is nobody’s business to be making judgements about the sex or gender of strangers which is …

The one annotation I wished we had for humans is type of evidence. As it is, every sign of human activity - museum/trail signage, toy animals, artificial flowers, litter in the woods, graffiti carved into tree bark, stacked rocks, tire tracks in mud etc. gets marked as “human” along with observation…

Agreed. We know how many of us there are (8 billion+) and we know where we are (nearly everywhere.) Of course, the same could be said for dandelions: we know how many there are (8 billion+ ?) and where they are (nearly everywhere) and yet we keep observing those…

I’ve actually always thought it’d be nice to have the “evidence of presence” annotation for “human” since this can sometimes be relevant when marking something initially mistakenly thought to be non-human in origin as human. Or even just for intentionally uploading things to be ID’d as “human” (I so…

So - you could add the useful human annotations to the list https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627 Sculpture, trash and artefacts are mentioned in comments.

Why don't humans have annotations?

General

Topic		Replies	Views
Why do we have observations of "Human"? General	56	5331	September 9, 2020
Would there ever be a situation where an observation labeled as "Human" would be anything other than "Casual"? General	26	387	April 23, 2026
Lack of Annotations? General	29	1759	September 25, 2023
Can I Post Garbage/Lost Belongings as an Observation of Homo Sapiens General question	11	397	September 26, 2024
Adding annotations - does anyone use them? General	91	2186	March 25, 2026

Why don't humans have annotations?

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