I wonder why there is no comprehensive database cleaning in INaturalist? For example, if we calculate each one from 100 kb; 4,812,133 observations have no photos or sounds. Approximately 450 gb of empty rows data. Lets guess; at least 10,000 observations have no content due to copyright. 1 gb If…

[image] salix-babylonica: I mean, they are appearing in the searches. Especially copyrighted ones, they also appears in the projects. It seems to me that the main problem is not so much that these observations exist, but that they are appearing in and cluttering up searches. I myself have no…

I see, most of you are right. But, there is no option to hide “Copyright” or “hidden” photos (ironically). There is a project in Turkiye, https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/asu-tur-say Which is messed up because of that observations. There are a lot of projects with full of empty obs, copyrigh…

Automated detection and cleanup of (exact) duplicate observations? (Thinking of “repeat uploads” of the exact same photo and info; possibly caused by a bug, connectivity glitch, whatever – sometimes 8 in a row within seconds) Few bytes saved, maybe tricky to design and implement safely…

This is also another problem, a lot of dublicate observations. And there is no option to flag them as dublicate.

If I recall correctly, for the duplicate observations the staff decided that the cost of just continuing to host them was less than the cost of doing anything about them. They used to let them be flagged, but they stopped having us flag them; there are still over 5,000 unresolved duplicate observati…

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/duplicate-prevention-notify-observers-if-their-image-checksums-match-others-on-the-site/258/53 95 votes [image] Duplicate prevention: Notify observers if their image checksums match others on the site. We’ve written a spec for the team to review and see if this i…

Now that must be some thorough review.

[image] sedgequeen: not to mention the Giant Fly of Obrien I don’t know if there is an iNaturalist observation, but having grown up in Rhode Island, I have to love the Big Blue bug.

[image] salix-babylonica: hey are appearing in the searches. Especially copyrighted ones i’m guessing this is probably intentional. some portion of the observations with images hidden / removed for copyright reasons includes cases where people make valid observations of organisms at a partic…

Why there is No Comprehensive Database Cleaning

General

DianaStuder December 16, 2024, 9:28pm 23

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/duplicate-prevention-notify-observers-if-their-image-checksums-match-others-on-the-site/258/53
95 votes

That was March 2019 …

Topic		Replies	Views
"No need to delete" - really? Curators	31	2267	April 28, 2021
Disable DQA for observations identified as Homo sapiens Feature Requests	24	1034	August 29, 2025
Provide a list of things researcher should think about when downloading iNaturalist data Feature Requests	62	775	January 15, 2026
How do you handle / hide low-quality observations? General	27	841	March 7, 2026
Records on iNat that are of "no value" because they're not identifiable General	59	6849	September 6, 2019

Why there is No Comprehensive Database Cleaning

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