URL parameter for absence of a field

[Tim. Reichard]

Is there a URL parameter I can use to search observations at
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations
or show a taxon list at
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/taxa
that includes only observations lacking a particular field?

One example is to search for a set of insect observations lacking the Insect Life Stage field so that those can be filled in.

Tim

[Ken-ichi]

No, there isn't. Searching for absence of data is generally a lot
slower than searching for presence, so we rarely make filters like
that. At present I suspect the only way to do this would be to
download an archive of observations with that field or use our API to
retrieve such a list, then compare that against IDs of all insect
observations.

-ken-ichi

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[Carrie Seltzer]

Throwing my vote in for this one. Sometimes I want to search for observations WITHOUT photos. For example, there were a few hundred people who submitted observations during the global snapshot but never submitted any with photos. I found that odd. I never figured out what was up with that. Seems like you could use something like has_photos=TRUE rather than only has[]=photos.

I've also thought about that case Tim mentioned for wanting to fill in data fields that are missing.

Carrie