advertising

[M. Eiterer]

What to do in the case of advertising?
Both in profile and in photos and in name. All!

https://www.inaturalist.org/people/hoteltinamu
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4602095
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4602096
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4602098
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4602104
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4602105

Marinês

[Star Donovan]

I'll be interested in the response. 
They aren't violating the TOS, that I can see, and they are adding to the knowledge store of iNaturalist (provided the observations' time/location are accurate).
On the other hand, targeted advertising of the wildlife viewing possibilities at your business could be argued to fall outside the intended use of iNat.
One could easily imagine some travel agencies or camera companies using similar tactics and justifications.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as "spam", per se.

[Chris Cheatle]

I dont think there is anything in the Terms and Conditions of the site that forbid it (it does state you can not imitate a different company). I dont know where you would draw the line, is a tour company or eco-lodge appropriate, how about a national park, or a conservation body ?

I dont think you can block URL's in the Description, many people use it to show links to other sites where they also reported it. If you did, they would just move it to the Comments, or format it in a way that resembled natural non URL text.

It does feel kind of sketchy to see, but it is far from the worst thing on the site.

[Chris Cheatle]

Technically this clause is in the TOC "the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites.". I'm not sure how you define unwanted though, again it seems to require some kind of value judgement. If Yellowstone National Park creates an account and adds "come learn more about Yellowstone at this website" on each observation, is that wrong or inappropriate ?

[tony rebelo]

I have no problem with this at all.  In fact, I would encourage every nature reserve and guest lodge and nature-based accommodation to do this.  

Similarly, if I had an ecology-related  business I would set up a Project and invite all my guests to contribute to it.  I would put regular journal updates, and offer monthly prizes (a free weekend for two off-season) for the best contributions to the project.  

Alas, sadly, most businesses will likely use Facebook instead and all that useful data will go down the tubes ...

[Star Donovan]

I've seen hotels that posted pics of their room interiors.
That was a clear SPAM violation.

I also would have no problem with eco-tourism
Honestly, I wouldn't even have a  problem with camera advertising (as long asthe content was reported accurately in terms of time and location, wild vs captive, etc), but I can understand why others might.

[M. Eiterer]

Very good to know several opinions. I ask, because those photos do not have an ID and I like to look at photos without IDs, to strip them of their anonymity.
About tourism or ecotourism, I do not have good references here. So my opinion is not fully formed, on the subject. I want to understand what can be disclosed in iNat and what can not.

[tony rebelo]

"I've seen hotels that posted pics of their room interiors."  - at last, a good use of the ID = "Life"!!

Seriously, what did they ID the observations as?

[James Bailey]

Obvious advertising spam accounts are usually blocked, for instance showing links to ebay, sales websites, or otherwise (often including virus or malware content). I believe this case though would be perfectly acceptable...

[Charlie Hohn]

i agree with most of the others here, this seems fine. There's a line that exists somewhere, but so long as the observations are valid and taken by them this hasn't crossed it in my mind. They have a small logo on their photos, but many people use watermarks. A lot of non profits 'advertise' their organization on here, and I don't see why an ecotourism resort can't post observations with some links within the content as long as they aren't the main emphasis. Hey, they are generating data for us anyhow.

In the case of the hotel room photos I'd have it backfire on them by tagging it as 'bedbugs'  :)

[Colin Purrington]

Slightly off-topic, but how does one inform a user (this hotel) that some of their observations should be combined into a single observation? E.g., from time stamp it seems they are just posting multiple frames of the same bird:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4602103

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4602104

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4602105

[Chris Cheatle]

Normally just add a comment to one observation requesting it be done, given the account here has not added anything since late 2016, I suspect this one is a lost cause though.

[Star Donovan]

I don't remember if they put an ID or left it as "Something".  :)
I just marked those as SPAM, and the entire account was later deleted by admins.

[Star Donovan]

That's ingenious! :)

[tony rebelo]

"I just marked those as SPAM, and the entire account was later deleted by admins."

Is that ethical?

[bouteloua]

To my understanding, spam accounts, observations, journal posts, etc. don't get deleted. They just get hidden from normal users.

e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/users/727642 or https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9447580

If someone's looking for a website that proliferates maps of the interior of hotel rooms, provides links to purchasing watches or weightloss programs or pre-written college essays, they've come to the wrong place...

Again, Terms of Service includes: "the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites"

I'm not seeing anything unethical about hiding content that violates the clearly-outlined Terms of Service.

c

[Ian Toal]

I had noticed that this morning. The part that bothers me is that they have links to booking information, facebook etc. right at the top of the observation. I have no problem with places like that posting photos (or from people who are at the place), but it seems to cross some sort of a line. Perhaps just the hotel name would be enough. People who want to go there could track it down. The observations are also from a year ago. 

Ian

[Colin Purrington]

I took the liberty of adding two comments to one of the hotel's observations. The first relates to duplicates, the second to advertising.

Could I suggest that you delete the other observations of this same individual? You can, if you want, re-upload those other photographs onto the single observation. That way you can feature different angles.

By the way, your facebook, twitter, and instagram links are broken. You might consider moving hotel info and links to your profile ... that's where most people display such details. Two reasons for that: (1) It's much easier for identifiers to help you out if there isn't extraneous information in the details about an observation. (2) When you have a change in URL, you just need to make the edit a single time in Profile instead of in multiple posts. Just a thought.

I also sent them an email just in case they didn't get regular updates from iNaturalist.

Hope the above was OK. Happy to modify or delete if not. 

[Star Donovan]

If you are asking if it was ethical for admins to hide the account (as Cassi says they aren't deleted): The help page specifically says "when a user makes three records on the site that get flagged as spam, they will be automatically suspended", and the account had made at least 3 observations that fit the definition of SPAM.

If you are asking if it was ethical to flag pictures of a room with beds, furniture, windows, etc (but zero plants or animals or evidence of organisms)* with a description that was only a link to the hotel bookings as SPAM: I don't see why it wouldn't be.
I thought it fit the definition of SPAM pretty well ("Our definition of spam is anything that is clearly intended to make money").
If there is another category I should have used, please advise.

*I've seen pics of man-made objects (cars, signage that has no reference to organisms, , etc) and no organisms** posted before as observations; I don't flag those as SPAM. This case was not like that.  The ones I flagged were clearly ads.  I wish I'd taken screenshots (redacting the account name of course.  No need to shame them) to illustrate it.

**of course, we could assume there are always organisms: dust mites, bacteria, etc that are present but not visible in the pic, but IDing on that assumption seems ill-advised.

[Star Donovan]

To clarify, I am NOT talking about the observations M.Eiterere linked.
The observations I flagged were a completely different scenario.

[Tony Iwane]

Technically, it does violate the letter of our TOS: "You agree not to use the Website or the iNaturalist Service for commercial purpose without prior authorization.."

Personally I'm OK with a place like this putting links to their website/social media in their profile, but I wouldn't want to see all that on observation pages. Also, they haven't logged onto iNat in nearly a year, so I'm not sure any change would happen.

Tony