It’s not about the remove of the IDs, it’s about the fact that this person is explicitly doing so only to punish me for not complying with their demands to not upload observations that they approve of.
The problem is that this has probably happened to more people than me, and no one else has spoken up about it because staff don’t seem to care.
Again, I must ask: How many other people have gotten messages like this and been bullied into deleting perfectly good observations, or into leaving the site entirely? Edit: Why isn’t this considered a big deal? More people should be concerned about the idea of someone bullying people like this, especially if it happened to new users who are just learning how to use the site.
I also can see this as not wanting to get involved with a user due to personal beliefs. So remiving past interactions (IDs).
Either way, people are never going to be forced to keep their IDs. If somebody no longer feels comfortable, or just wishes to remove their IDs. There is no issue.
Because what is the alternative? Even if you fully call this bullying, are you going to force that user to keep their IDs? Thats not right either. Are we going to include justification for every ID removed now? What happens if somebody romoves their account?
the solution is that this person is told by someone in authority that sending messages like the one I got, to pressure people into removing observations, is not okay.
It’s literally fine for them to remove the IDs. What’s not okay is explicitly going out of the way to tell me they’re removing them to punish me for uploading observations they don’t like.
I don’t disagree, but the power to remove your own IDs is not really that much leverage unless you happen to only be on iNat to get IDs on their taxon of interest and they’re the only expert with knowledge on that taxon.
Edit: based on more information below, their behaviour sounds more reasonable although still a bit odd.
If there was a pattern of this then I suspect the response would be different.
That gets into legal territory, see e.g. this discussion and links to it.
I agree it’s not a significant amount of leverage, but I feel that doesn’t change that it’s an attempt to get OP to change their (completely fine) observing behaviour.
I looked at the message text you sent us again. I don’t see any demands, they stated why they were doing what they were doing but there’s no “or else” and there’s no pressure to remove observations. Would it have been better to not send a message? Maybe. But now you know why some of the IDs were removed and you won’t have to wonder. Whether that’s better or not it’s difficult to say and I don’t think there’s a right answer.
I try to change completely fine observing behavior all the time.
“Chironomids are difficult, for better IDs, photo the genitalia.”
This is also trying to change behavior just in a kind way. Whether we admit or not, we as identifers try and change the behavoir of observers all the time. I have even recommended not uploading super blurry images of Chironomids as they would be impossible to ID. Just did it in a kinder way.
I see lots of Araucaria observations without photos of the growth habit or close-ups of the leaves and I’ll leave comments saying I’d like to have such-and-such information for a better ID, but I won’t withdraw an ID on a cook pine where the tree is clearly identifiable just from growth habit + location because I don’t like that the observer posted a different observation that was blurry.
Perhaps? The point im making is, its not actually a violation to try and persuade observer behavior. Many people comment all the time about the quality of images and reccomending not uploading them. Sometimes comments like that get hidden becuase they are rude. Sometimes not becuase they are written as just a suggestion.