Questions around deleted accounts

[David K]

It looks like a former member of a project that I admin recently deleted their account.  I have learned the hard way that their observations and IDs also get deleted at the same time. This generated a few questions:

- Why are a user's IDs deleted?  this has the effect of reverting Research Grade observations to Casual when the deleted user is the only one providing an identification. Its one thing to make it easy for people to change their mind about sharing their own observation data, but once they have contributed to a conversation about an ID, erasing that contribution later seems arbitrary and unfair to other iNat users that are relying on the deleted individual's assistance/knowledge. 

- What happens to the GBIF/GloBi entries that relate to the deleted user's observations?

- What happens to the GBIF/GloBi entries of other users' observations that have reverted back to Casual status now that the confirming ID has been wiped?

Thanks,

David

[Scott Loarie]

Hi David,

Thats too bad. There's a balance here between the user's 'right to be forgotten' and the communities right to not have data they've worked on collaboratively go away.

Maybe some way of not-deleting but rather anonymizing the data of someone who deleted their account would be a better solution. Curious to hear what people think.

But at the moment, if you delete your account all records associated with your account are deleted, this includes IDs which (as you say) impact the community ID of other people's observations. As for 'why' I guess the only answer is that the current system requires that IDs are associated with users so an ID without a user doesn't make sense

I'm not sure what happens to GBIF/GLoBi entries. It depends on their respective protocols for updating data. Are there any GBIF or GloBi folks here who can explain what happens?

> - Why are a user's IDs deleted?  this has the effect of reverting Research
> Grade observations to Casual when the deleted user is the only one providing
> an identification. Its one thing to make it easy for people to change their
> mind about sharing their own observation data, but once they have
> contributed to a conversation about an ID, erasing that contribution later
> seems arbitrary and unfair to other iNat users that are relying on the
> deleted individual's assistance/knowledge.
> - What happens to the GBIF/GloBi entries that relate to the deleted user's
> observations?
> - What happens to the GBIF/GloBi entries of other users' observations that
> have reverted back to Casual status now that the confirming ID has been
> wiped?
>
> Thanks,
> David
>

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[meu...@landcareresearch.co.nz]

I totally agree there needs to be some means of the community IP not being lost when someone decides for whatever reason to delete their account (and all the observations and IDs and comments along with it). This has happened to us at NatureWatch NZ both on purpose and by mistake. I appreciate it is a delicate ethical issue around the absolute ownership of records by the recorder, but of course once someone has published something it is out in the public domain. I'd urge some quick solution to this because it will also be an impediment to the community if they can't be guaranteed that all their hours of work on someone's records could suddenly vanish. your interim suggestion of anonymising records could work (and even obscuring locations altho I wouldn't personally want to see that). c 

[Alex Shepard]

> of course once someone has published something it is out in the public domain.

In the United States, placing a work in the public domain is a very specific legal abdication of copyright. Many (most?) users of iNat choose to retain some form of copyright over the photos and observations that they upload.

[David K]

Hi Scott - I am a big advocate of personal privacy, but I’m not sure that the spirit of the ‘right to be forgotten’ is the right one here.  The origins of that argument are for people to be able to suppress information about them that is created or indexed by others.   That is a far distance from someone deliberately participating in an online nature discussion and then changing their mind about their involvement.  Joining iNat, adding observations and contributing in any way to another user’s observation are all active choices made by the individual.  And every step is done on the internet.  Where is the expectation of privacy in that process? Letting them bail out and remove their IDs and comments (and frankly, their observations) just goes against the concept of open, communal citizen science.

 

I saw a github discussion where this issue was raised in the context of a minor who was disclosing too much information, and it makes sense to erase a user in that circumstance.  But the example of an adult that provides IDs hundreds (or thousands) of observations and then changes their mind about their continued involvement is completely different.   By that point other people, and likely institutions, have used or gathered some of the data that the individual touched.  Let’s face it, because of iNat’s open structure, the data may already be in some other database (in addition to GBIF and GloBi) and there is little likelihood that it will disappear from those secondary databases as they obtained it when it was publicly available.

 

Think about it another way, what if Greg Lasley, Mark Rosenstein or any other major contributor deleted their accounts – even by accident?  How many observations would flip back to Casual?  How many observations would just evaporate?    

I'm not sure which direction Alex is going with the reference to copyright as I'm not familiar with US law.  But I am focused on the observation details and comments, not the media (as I believe that copyright applies to the media, not to the other information.)

[Charlie Hohn]

I think I agree with David, at least to a point. I think there's a clear case that photos should be deleted if the user didn't release them into public domain. However, removing whole observations and especially IDs seems a bit excessive. I could see anonymizing them as something like "a deleted user observed..." and if the situation is something involving harassment, perhaps an automatic obscuring of all that user's observations. 

Though there are exceptions of course, as always

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Charlie Hohn
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[Alex Shepard]

> I'm not sure which direction Alex is going with the reference to copyright as I'm not familiar with US law. But I am focused on the observation details and comments, not the media (as I believe that copyright applies to the media, not to the other information.)

If you go to edit your profile/account on inaturalist.org and scroll down, you will see that we ask you to provide a default license for observations themselves, as well as default licenses for media. The site also allows users to change the license of their individual observations as well as the license of individual observation photo.

As to what direction I'm going, I would simply argue that peer-production projects that do not respect the license and copyrights of user created content struggle to thrive.

Imagine if upon deletion of your Facebook account, you found out that Facebook would keep all of your comments, updates and photos online because others might have commented on them, or because you were a top tier user and the site would be irredeemably lessened by your absence.

[Charlie Hohn]

That seems really different to me. iNaturalist is not Facebook, it is somewhere between Facebook and a scientific paper. Also as you all often remind us, iNat isn't for private observations - we can obscure locations but unlike facebook there is no way to add completely private observations, IDs, or comments to inat.  I think protecting license and copyright are really important but it's hard for me to see that extending to things like ID help. I'm sure one could think of exceptions, such as weird stalker issues, and those are really important. But beyond that I think it's hopefully going to be a very rare issue.

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[Colin Meurk]

Yes agree with Charlie.  It is quite a different issue to facebook which, as far as wider public is concerned, is not archiving valuable even critical scientific data with often painstaking professional content. Of course fb collects data for its own commercial purposes.  But on a personal note, I’d be hugely annoyed if hundreds of hours of my time, in assisting not only observers but the wider community to learn about nature, suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke.  It would also radically undermine community, scientific and institutional confidence in supporting iNat.  As I’ve noted before, at least here in NZ, unless we can get support from local and central govt agencies (including education from high school to universities) we will struggle to survive.  It is hard enough as it is to get conventional/employed natural scientists to contribute the vast proportion of identifications needed to maintain iNat and NatuereWatchNZ.  Why would any of them contribute at all if they thought their efforts would be ephemeral. This needs to be dealt with quickly and smoothly and the IP of the wider contributing community protected. As far as I’m aware, pretty much all the documentation of a record is essentially public domain.  Can I suggest that if someone who might consider removing their support for iNat pulls out, and their images are copyrighted at high level (this is a small minority right?), then as a compromise maybe their images could be made visible only at low resolution.

 

Colin meurk | Research associate
LANDCARE RESEARCH MANAAKI WHENUA
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[Scott Loarie]

Hi all,

Personally, I agree that iNat is a bit different than Facebook, and participants might expect less ability to withdraw their contributed content if they choose to delete their account. But I also agree with Alex, that there are copyright issues and big-brother perceptions associated with not letting people delete their stuff that might create a backlash/more problems than they solve.

I totally agree that there are members of the community (e.g. greglasley, finatic) that if god-forbid decided to delete their account would cause tremendous harm (not just for the loss of their past content but also for all the vibrancy they bring to the site each day). But surely members of the community who are that invested in iNat would be aware of this devastation that their leaving the site would cause. And with that in mind, if they still really did want to delete their accounts, couldn't you argue that its their right to do so (not discounting the huge bummer the loss of a power-user would represent)? 

I guess I'm not opposed to building something to (a) make it clearer to users who are deleting their accounts what that means in terms of deleted content and (b) having the default option on user_deletion be to leave behind anonymized comments, ids, and obs. But it seems like one could argue (a) if they really want to delete all their content, their should be an option to do so, and (b) trying to say that they are forfeiting their photo copyright and can't delete them seems like a hard sell/can of worms - backlash waiting to happen. Just my opinion.

But regardless of what we should, seems like it might be worth looking into some empirical data on how many accounts have actually been deleted to see how big of a problem this has been historically. We've been keeping track since Jan 2011 of what to my knowledge are all account-deletion-events. There are 1,840 deleted accounts out of 279,507 active accounts (0.66%). Here's a histogram by the deleted account's number of observations at the time of deletion:

There are 11 deleted accounts that had >200 observations. I researched each, and 1 is legit and 1 is possibly legit (together representing 3,029 observations). Of the remaining 9, the largest was a CSV bulk upload misfire from a bioblitz. And the remaining 8 belong to people still active in the community (ie apparently resulted from merged accounts and shouldn't be counted). 

Of the remaining 1,829 accounts, 1273 have 0 observations and 231 have just one observation. Together, these remaining 1,829 deleted accounts have resulted in 7,206 deleted observations, and like the 11 I investigated, I suspect many (most?) are not legit.

My take aways from this analysis is that so far deleted accounts haven't been a problem. While I'm not opposed to building more complexity so that there's an option for some content to persist anonymized, its difficult to argue that its a priority based on the above analysis. And I still kind of feel like if a power user (e.g. someone who's leaving will really adversely effect the community) really wants to leave, they know the harm their causing. And if they really want to delete all their stuff, as a community can't we trust that they have good reason to do so?

-Scott

[David K]

I think that we should separate two points in this discussion.  I believe that everyone is on the same page about copyright, and copyright has nothing to do with my concern re the lack of stability of scientific observations.  I have a similar understanding to Colin re the details of an observation, i.e. that none of that is captured by copyright (as there is nothing created but the user, they are reporting facts), but any supporting media is covered by copyright - and iNat has explicit controls available for users on that topic.

Scott - I am curious about why you think there would be a backlash if people were not allowed to delete their stuff.  If this material was written on paper and published in that form, it could not be erased, so why do observations in electronic form get to be erased?  The points about FB being a commercial enterprise and iNat having a broader scientific goal are important here.  People should be able to delete unfortunate selfies from all-night parties, but what does that have to do with undoing the verification of a northern cardinal observation?

As you continue this discussion, I think that it would be helpful to consider two classes of user material: (1) the user's own observations and media, and (2) the user's contributions to other observations, whether by way of comments or IDs.

I can see both points of view on (1), some people may want to delete their records, but I'm back to the 'once you've published it, its out there' view.  As Colin points out, disappearing records undermine the credibility of the system from a scientific perspective (even citizen science).  

Let's compare this to a real world situation.  I recently participated in a NABA butterfly count, and my name is now part of the official record for that count.  Someone wrote it down, another individual took a picture of me in the field.  I can't undo that.  And why should I?  I intentionally engaged in the activity.  Why would there be a different rule for similar electronic efforts?

On (2), once a user has engaged with other users, that is a historical conversation and I see no reason to permit mass deletion.  To reiterate my point in the first post, I think that allowing someone to remove their comments and IDs is completely unfair to all the people that benefitted from the deleted user's input.  Agreed that the power users are the single biggest risk, but any loss of any verification, especially for niche species that only have one confirming ID, is detrimental for the ongoing user who is now stuck with a Casual observation.  And if that observation is 2 or 3 years old, what are the odds that someone will go back and re-confirm it? 

And, we still have the unanswered questions on GBIF and GoBi.

Many people do not even use their real identities here, so they presumably aren't concerned about leaving records behind.  Anyone who is concerned could just be given the option to be identified as 'anonymous user' - doesn't ebird do something similar, albeit for ongoing users who don't want to disclose their names?

[Charlie Hohn]

hmm... this is a complicated issue. Does copyright imply the right to deletion or does it just deny the right to share without proper attribution? i had assumed it's just the former... if i write a book and copyright it, I can ban others from duplicating it from selling or giving it away. It doesn't mean if I get sick of the book I can 'delete' it and have it ripped out of peoples' bookshelves. That being said I think there is a good argument that people should be able to delete their photos from the site and delete their name from the observation... and maybe also delete their comments... but not sure about that. Not all websites allow that. Unless there is some extreme circumstance (which I can't picture) I don't think people should be able to delete IDs (though maybe they should become anonymous, ie: "Deleted User added ID: Acer saccharum". That seems like a good balance to me... though i'm sure others may have different ideas.

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[AfriBats]

Hi everyone

Tricky issue indeed! I'd largely go with Scott as far as the observations are concerned: if a user decides to delete his/her account, he/she should have the possibility to remove all observations shared with iNat. Maybe iNat could add an option for the user about to delete the account to donate all observation data to the public domain with an anonymized account (e.g. transforming user "jakob" into "user_anoX", where X stand for a consecutive number), and removing all information from the user profile.

I would also vote that all IDs and comments provided by a user to observations other than his/her own should be preserved by iNat. If a user decides to delete all observations in the case above, than iNat could anonymize that user, again with some sort of numbered substitute.

Cheers, Jakob

[Arborsphere]

I share David K's concern and frustration at the loss of the particular user who precipitated this thread. I'd like to add my votes for the following:

1) I reluctantly agree that a user should be able to delete their observations. But not globally all at once. In other words, they can do it one at a time, just like how they created them. That way, the means to do so is there, but the scope of the user's value is a built-in consideration and the disincentive to delete oneself increases with the number of observations the user has contributed.
2) deleting oneself should not include contributions (i.e., IDs or comments) to someone else's records.
3) retained elements of a user should not revert to some anonymous pseudonym. The site already allows nicknames, which a number of hardcore biologists already find problematic based on requests I have had for my "real name" from the scientific community.

Other thoughts:
1) The expediency of the internet and the ephemeral nature of digital things is somewhat responsible for making this discussion even possible. Before the internet, we used sightings cards and labelled specimens to build databases of species records in museums, national parks, etc.... If iNaturalist worked like that, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.
2) The fallout of this particular user's self-deletion has been profound for iNaturalist.ca. The Canadian site has not been around for very long, and, I suspect, has proportionally less users and less records than the original "main site". For example, when this user deleted themselves, about 10% of Ontario's records disappeared. For both total species and total records, this user had been #2 on the provincial leaderboard. I can only guess how many other peoples' records have reverted to "Needs ID". As for myself ...
3) Dozens of my own records have now reverted to "Needs ID". This is discouraging to say the least. Similarly, comment exchanges with that user now only have my comments showing, making me look a bit like an idiot talking to myself.

Just my 2-cents worth. Thanks for reading.

[Chris Thawley]

Just a quick thought on this old topic (since I found it yesterday while looking for potential solutions to an account vandalized by deletion).

A few folks brought up the fact that users may retain copyright over their postings and thus are free to remove them. While this may be the case in some scenarios, it seems like iNat defaults to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial license. According to my understanding, these licenses, in effect, cannot be revoked, so that any use that began while the license was in effect, is protected and allowed to continue (for an overview, see here: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2014/12/09/revoking-creative-commons-licenses/) NB: I am decidedly not a lawyer, so I only know what I read.

But assuming this is true, since the licenses are created when observations are uploaded to iNat, it should not be an issue for iNat to maintain observations (and comments, ids, etc.) even after a user deletes their account. Of course, some users do retain full copyright on some or all of their observations, so this would be a different scenario. But as I have to imagine that a really high proportion of users stick with the defaults, this could allow iNat to retain most data from deleted accounts and preserve community effort.

[Charlie Hohn]

My understanding is you can copyright a photo but you can't copyright information. I can't tell you "i saw a wood turtle under the Main Street Bridge on the Winooski River, Copyright 2019 Charlie Hohn" and demand you keep it secret. Nor can you say 'Hey Charlie that's a wood turtle! Copyright 2019 Christ Thawley" and compel me to forget what it was if you don't like me any more. So it's hard to see any legal grounds behind having to delete comments or IDs. I think it's more of a 'data sovereignty' issue, and a hard one at that.

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[jdmore]

Scott, do you have similar statistics for how many IDs the deleted accounts took with them?  Based on the few I know about, it could be argued that is where even more value was lost from iNat with those accounts.

In principle I would be in favor of making it policy to anonymize and preserve "non-copyrightable" information contributed by a user if they delete their account.  Information like IDs and comments on observations of others.  Pretty sure this is already done for curatorial records created by deleted users, like taxon swaps, new taxa, etc.  (but correct me if mistaken...)

In practice, the scary part would be announcing the change in terms of service to the usership, with the inevitable misinterpretations, overreactions, etc. potentially leading to more people considering deleting their accounts than would otherwise be the case.  Somewhat akin to what is going on with Flickr right now, in terms of a "bait-and-switch" interpretation by some (though not monetarily in iNat's case).  (And please, no one go off on the Flickr situation in this thread!  ;-)

So yeah, adding some more mixed feelings here, and as long as the problem remains relatively small in scope, maybe we should keep hands off.  As the site gets older and larger, though, so may the number and frequency of deletions, for reasons various and sundry.

--Jim Morefield (jdmore)

[Mark Tutty]

I had a secondary acct of over 900 records (from memory) that I deleted recently. They were casual grade (no photos), and it was deleted because I mistakenly perceived it to be causing a problem for another member. It was a trial implementation for a particular project, and I was not overly happy with the datasource used, so I knew I was going to be replacing or deleting it at some stage anyway. The alarming ease with which the account was able to be deleted is largely what got me enquiring about the possibility of splitting out important data before a delete, and also about the possibility of placing controls or checks and balances on the delete process, such as a delay or a “counselled exit”.

 

I have witnessed the delete of an account that was probably around 200 to 300 observations, and they were terrific observations! Professional quality photos, perhaps not showing a good range of views per observation, but most certainly of taxa that are not encountered very often and a good number of them of undescribed species. It was a stoush over copyright issues, and I understand both sides views. While he had identified a few observations for other people, largely we were not affected in that respect. I had enjoyed seeing his observations every day, and looked forward to them, and so I felt a sense of loss at losing that member. Looking back, the mourning did not last for long and the long term impact of his deletion has been minimal. If he had never joined iNaturalist then we would never have had those observations anyway.

 

I think the greatest “real” losses are in the effort spent in identifying those observations, and losing the conversations that have occurred on them. I would not call myself any sort of expert, but I certainly would have put in close to 30 hours on identifying (or trying to) for those observations. But I have learnt from having spent that time, and he did not delete what I learnt. I gave that time freely and with no expectation of anything in return, apart from perhaps a desire to repay (paying forward?) the effort given to me by others. The discussions, for me, are a very real and impactful loss.

 

Where they are deleting accounts with identifications that THEY have made, then it’s less of a concern, because usually they have been confirmed by others. We can mitigate this loss by learning to recognise the reliable identifiers, and then “adding weight”, where appropriate, to their Ids.

 

I strongly believe in the right to delete ones content, but I am just alarmed at the ease with which it can be done, and there being no rollback.

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

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[studebakersamuel]

I have been following the discussion with interest as a related issue that I hope belongs in this thread is..,what happens when a member dies? Eg Naturally of old age...perhaps in most cases nothinb would happen, but a relative might delete their account if they came across it. Perhaps account settings could include an optional statement of inheritance in the case of decease, of copyright eg by iNat? It could be worded less unattractively than that.

[Charlie Hohn]

Why would a relative delete their deceased loved one's data? I know of at least two iNat users who have died, unfortunately. In one case the profile was reflected to say so but it would be nice for a more formal way to do that. I would certainly hope no one would mess with my observations after i die. 

[Colin Meurk]

I think rather my point is that one always has to anticipate the worst case ('we' are all normal, right?  But cant account for others :-)) - and sadly one of those is dementure or other psychological illneses that change rationality as one ages. It also requires a slight shift in expectations (and policies) that all data is being overseen by live/active people when clearly this will gradually change and at some point there will be more deceased accounts than living ones! I appreciate these are not exactly happy topics but we have to grasp reality.

Sent from my Samsung device

[studebakersamuel]

Well, To step back a bit, I have been wondering what happens to an account if someone died...I am not active in any other form of internet community...other than occasional bouts of music production technical forum queries..and did not know what happens by default...eg what if the email account is closedm as presumably it would be...is the google account still activr? Etc. All that is a mystery to me. but when a dear  friend died I deleted her contact numbers from my phone. I know iNat is different but people used to social media like facebook might think "she doesn't need this any more". 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 on the Telstra Mobile Network

[Mark Tutty]

There are countless stories of drawers full of pinned and vials full of preserved specimens all being thrown out because those that inherited them saw no value, and didn’t have the connections to pass on to someone who did.

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

--

[Mark Tutty]

Considering the Intellectual Property Rights (IP) side of the subject...

 

People are uploading observations with no expectation of a contract with identifiers, although they are expected to explicitly state whether their photos are full copyright or not. They might be using very expensive equipment that they would like to recover the cost of, or they might like to retain the right to any financial return on those photos to put toward bigger and better gear. At the very least, there is a general public acceptance that a photo is a work that would need permission of some sort before using.

 

An identifier applies an identification to an observation of their own volition, and with the exception of the rather annoying habit lately of tagging the top10 identifiers “making” them look at your observation, it is done so in an unsolicited form. There is little in the way of public perception of the value of that ID or the effort/expertise/knowledge that derived that ID, but there is almost universally a gratitude for it. There is no IP mark applied to say that this identification is the Intellectual Property of the owner, and may not be used to blah blah and so on...

 

Now, if a photo is put up and it is fairly open under Creative Commons, and an identifier puts an ID to it, and then takes a copy of that photo for fair use under the copyright settings the owner has applied, then it becomes a derivative work, with the value added of having the ID. But the original observation is still the IP of the observer. The identifier can do with their derived work as they see fit (within the confines of their rights under that transferance). To put it another way... If I hang a painting in the art gallery and someone writes on it “this is a cool painting”, it does not make it their painting nor does it give them the right to have a say in whether the owner of the painting chooses to destroy it or not. The fact that they have applied the review does not alter or change the ownership of the IP in the painting, and if they wanted their review to be under their own control, they shouldn’t have attached it to my original work. If on the other hand they had taken a copy of the painting and applied their critique to that, then it is protected from being destroyed along with the original.

 

Here’s another way to look at it. If someone shows me a mushroom, and I tell them what it is, I am not going to be annoyed if they forget what it is a week later. But because in iNat there is a persistence to the observation, I might go to a lot more effort to make that ID (maybe going to a deeper level or some effort at looking up literature) because I perceive that observation to be useful to me or to others in the future (maybe in the form of building range maps etc). Does the person who I tell the ID to know that I plan to use his observation in the future, or for that matter how I plan to use it? And if the range maps is my intent, then surely it doesn’t matter if someone deleted their observations, because I would still have a bunch of others that it would build from. Just think about all the material that is collected in personal collections that never makes it to Museum collections. This is no different... we get access to, lets say, 95% of all material that was ACTUALLY collected, and the 5% we never saw is no big deal, vs in iNat we actually get to see (for a brief time) what we are missing out on...

 

Lets continue looking at that notion of 5% loss, or a portion of the collected material (or observations) not making it to, or surviving in, Museum collections. Think of an observation that is under full copyright control of the owner/observer as being “in a private collection”. The owner, or their family after they are deceased, can destroy that material at their discretion. Anyone that has reviewed that collection and applied Ids is going to lose access back to them, unless they took photos of the material while they were there. That is how it is with observations. Then consider the material once it is transferred to a Museum, with the corresponding security and level of curatorial care that that brings. When you review that material now, there are more guarantees that the material will be there in future for you to reference again, simply because it is managed with that intent. How does iNat sit in this sort of context? Is it a personal collection manager that assists us all to see what we each have, that then gets drawn from to populate a more enduring “museum like” archive such as GBIF and so on? Or does our personal collection become the property of the public before we are ready to divest that ownership? As I build my collection, I would like the right to add to it AND amend or delete from it as I see fit, because ultimately it is MY NAME that is on that collection. If I got to the stage of divesting my physical collection, I would like to think that I could choose not to share it if I felt it portrayed me in a bad way, and in a similar vein, if I thought my Full Copyright was being infringed upon, I would most certainly expect the right to delete ALL of my observations and nip that in the bud.

 

I’m not suggesting for a moment that the IP of an identification is not something that we should be considering protecting, just the opposite. I do think that it is unfair to be critical of someone that deletes “their” observation just because you had attached your IP to it. Maybe factoring in a week delay on deleting would allow those that have IP (in the form of Ids and comments) to go through and recover their IP before it takes affect. Or even better still, it could be made so that full copyright observations get deleted, but those that are less restrictive in their rights are retained for the public record.

 

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: studebakersamuel
Sent: Monday, 21 January 2019 2:14 PM

--

[Chris Thawley]

I fully support the ability of folks who have retained full copyright of their photos to delete all their observations when an account is deleted. No way around that.

However, I believe that for creative commons licensed photos, iNat already has a copy of the image (on their servers) and has added value to it by hosting other info (coordinates, identifications) and associating it with other users' comments.

It seems to me that one implication of the situation as it currently stands (users being able to remove their identifications at any time), is that iNaturalist observation IDs would not be considered permanent records, and therefore not appropriate for most scientific publications. For observation/occurrence data in many journals, that data generally needs to be available in a database that is transparent and (at least designed to be) available in perpetuity. If iNat observations (using the observation number as an identifier) aren't guaranteed to be available in the future, it doesn't really make good sense to treat that as a data repository. Otherwise, those data may not be available to and replicable for future researchers. For isolated observations I've used when publishing, I've usually had them accessioned at an museum (which does fulfill that), so that seems to be a good solution for the present.

Chris Thawley

[tony rebelo]

I am not sure that I fully understand the full ramifications of this topic and why?

I post observations on iNaturalist, and then after some time decide I want to remove them and do.

Does this mean that iNaturalist must go to all backup and historical copies of the site and delete them as well?

Does this mean that sites that keep time-specific copies of other sites are illegally retaining my data?

Does this mean that to all intents and purposes the data that were on iNaturalist between my posting them and deleting them did not exist and may not exist?

I would argue that copyright and all other issues notwithstanding, once you add something to inaturalist, it should remain there permanently (as long as the site remains).  If you then delete it, the observation  and all other issues associated with contributions, it should be retained and displayed, but marked deleted and date of deletion..

OK, so we need a balance, and the above is the one far extreme.  But I feel that the current iNat policy is the other far extreme and a balance is required.

Certainly, comments and identifications should be permanent.  So long as this is explained up front in the terms and conditions, I dont see any issues.   I also dont think that 99% of users would disagree with it.

[Patrick Alexander]

I think there's an argument in favor of being able to delete one's data that is being overlooked--or at least that I have not seen mentioned above.

A couple times, I've given data to organizations that didn't give me the ability to subsequently manage that data in a way that presents that data or my own work accurately. I would very much prefer to be able to remove my data entirely in that scenario. If you take biodiversity data seriously, you take misleading biodiversity data seriously. iNaturalist is dramatically better than those organizations, but has some of the same issues (e.g., an observer's original ID can't really be captured and preserved on iNaturalist, while every other biodiversity database I've worked with that's more advanced than an excel spreadsheet has that functionality) and even with good data management, sometimes you'll find yourself in a pickle where it turns out you were wrong and, beyond a certain scale, it simply ceases to be viable to correct the data. So, you either leave it up to mislead others or you delete it. This can be especially problematic if you have data living in multiple places, you soon realize you can't fix the errors in all of them. So, better to have one "real" copy than a "real" copy and a few others that slowly diverge from it over time...

[Charlie Hohn]

Does any of this apply to IDs though? I feellike deleting IDs is more disruptive to other people and less justifiable. And there's no copyright issue there i can imagine. What is the argument fr letting people delete their IDs? 

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[Reuven Martin]

There are definitely people who are hesitant to add information anywhere on the internet if they don't have some ability to remove it in the future if they want. I'm not one of them, but it's a valid point of view. I think the potential loss of these users probably far outweighs the potential negative impacts of people deleting their accounts. 

Don't forget that the stated goal of iNaturalist is not foremost scientific data collection: 

"However, despite the fact that iNat can be a bit technical and seems scientific, our primary goal in operating iNaturalist is to connect people to nature"

(https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/what+is+it)

99% of the time this goal is aligned with the goal of scientific data collection. But this is one of the cases where it may not be.

However, I think the option to delete your account without deleting all your data would be valuable.

[Charlie Hohn]

Honestly, the stated goal makes no sense.  You want to 'connect people with nature' you take them on a hike  or something... iNat is about SHARING information about nature - data, whether it be rigorously collected scientific data points or a picture of an interesting bird at your feeder. I wish this outdated and constantly cited 'goal' would get changed or updated in some way because it doesn't match what the site or community is about at all. If you've got a case where 'connecting people with nature' is damaging or removing data, something has gone wrong and that isn't going to help anyone. It's also, honestly, kind of a destructive attitude. Collecting data about disappearing ecosystem is one of the most important tasks we can do. Yes we need to connect people with nature as well, and it's just as important, but if you don't want to connect via collecting and sharing information, iNat isn't going to be the place for you. No one is going to be looking back in 500 years and thinking 'wow Charlie Hohn really collected with nature in Chickering Fen on July 7, 2016' but people may look back at the data i collected there after whoever many huge changes happen over the centuries and actually want to use it for something. 

In the very least, i think the bar for deleting IDs should be higher than 'threw a temper tantrum because i don't like what someone else named a bird'. We don't let our 3 year old rip up her books or art because she's mad about something like that, and we should expect better behavior from adults here.

Sorry... the 'mission statement' just really bugs me at least in the way it is cited all the time as an excuse to not do good data management.

[Charlie Hohn]

iNat may literally prove to be the most important conservation tool of the 21st century. I think we should give ourselves and the community more credit. It's not a toy. It's fun, but it's not a toy. It's really crucially important. If in the end we need to let people delete IDs, so be it, but we should go at it knowingly and with solod reasons that aren't platitudes.  I'm sorry if this seems ranty, I don't mean it to be that way. It's just frustrating seeing this massive amount of potential not being realized over semantics.

[Mira Bowin]

Agree with Charlie.  

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

[Reuven Martin]

Charlie, I agree with a lot of what you wrote. I certainly don't think there is really any legitimate reason for somebody to want to remove all their ID data from iNat. But I see it as:

1. If you can't easily delete your stuff, this will discourage some people from contributing in the first place
2. If you can easily delete your stuff, this will result in some people removing their data.

I suspect 1 is a bigger problem than 2.

As for the goal... I'm having a hard time expressing my thoughts clearly. But, more or less, I don't think the goals are ever exactly opposed. Some thoughts:

• I think, in my area, iNaturalist is currently having an enormous impact in turning birders and botanists and herpers into naturalists. To the point that I feel the passionate 15-25 year old birder who doesn't care about snakes or flowers barely even exists anymore. And this can only increase scientific data. 
  
• 99% of the time, features that site users find cool or useful will also be positive in terms of increasing the scientific value of iNat data
• I don't use iNat with the goal of creating good scientific data. I'm here because it's fun and interesting and satisfying and educational. The scientific value is certainly a bonus, but it's not why I'm here, and I suspect a majority of site users are in a similar boat.
• To me, "connecting people with nature" basically means that site users are more knowledgeable and passionate about the natural world, and spend more time in it, and spread that passion to other people. This is valuable for not just the increase in scientific data, but also because I think it increases human happiness and well-being. That's important today, regardless of how the data created is used in 500 years.
• This stuff does make a difference. eBird is a quite different project, in that the stated goal IS scientific data. And it shows in that the user experience is far inferior to iNat in many ways. It's a "top-down" rather than "crowd-sourced" environment. Since I started using iNat, I've only submitted about 10 photos to eBird, although I still use it religiously for records without photos
• Any change to iNat that results in less people using it, or existing users using it less, is a negative to scientific data. This is kind of my key point here.
• I basically think that iNat is such a great place because it has been designed with the "connect people to nature" goal in mind.

[Charlie Hohn]

Hmm. Well, i agree that the deleting stuff problem is not an easy one. Note that i am only talking about IDs. I find that one weird because i tell people what stuff is all the time, in 'real life', and the idea that you can take back that information later is just odd. Why would you want to chase someone down and make them forget what a flower was? It's just ...odd.

As for the mission statement, i am not disputing that connecting people with nature is important! I just don't think that 'mission statement' on its own really captures the deepness and richness of what iNat is. It's a buzz-phrase that could apply to anything from doing yoga in the bushes to climbing Mt Everest. Which isn't to say those things are bad (except maybe climbing mt everest is bad) but that isn't what iNat is about. it's about finding things, sharing them, and talking about them. Perhaps the term 'scientific data' is a bit isolating or alienating to some people because it calls to mind lab coats or randomly collected transect quadrats or something. That's not what I am getting at, at all. Rather, I think it should say this: "our primary goal in operating iNaturalist is to connect people to nature through community sharing of what we see". That's the whole point of the community. I see stuff i don't want to share all the time, but I don't add it to iNat. I have profound and wonderful experiences in nature alone or with others where i connect with nature but if i am not collecting and sharing stuff, it has nothing to do with iNat at all. It's like saying the purpose of google search is to 'help people connect spiritually with the Internet'. The purpose of it is to search for stuff. The RESULT of iNaturalist is people connecting with nature, among other things. You mention 'site users are more knowledgeable and passionate about the natural world, and spend more time in it, and spread that passion to other people.' That spreading is what I am calling collecting data.  Without that spreading and sharing, there is no iNaturalist. 

You can be an emergent crowd sourced community and still gather information. I think eBird just has a less interactive community and is very top-down and structured. I think that is what you are getting at. I am not proposing iNat be like that. Though the main reason I don't use eBird is because i am not that interested in tracking birds. 

"  Any change to iNat that results in less people using it, or existing users using it less, is a negative to scientific data.  "

Watering it down to a feel-good nothing is going to result in less people using it. Making it less useful for its stated purpose is going to make less people use it. I am not saying this has happened to it thus far, but it is what i am most worried about here. If the data isn't itself valued as important and an end goal, data quality will suffer and a lot of the 'experts' will leave. Then it will end up like Project Noah and just slowly die.

[Mark Tutty]

Well... I DON’T agree with Charlie.

 

I am on the verge of leaving iNat because I don’t like the idea of being left with the impression that if I did delete my account, that others would think badly of me for my choice. I started this thread because I was sad to see a member leave over a copyright fracas started by a scientist who was pissed because a professional photographer wouldn’t change their rights setting, and when I had a situation recently that nearly had me deleting my account, it occurred to me that doing so would affect others more than is made apparent in the delete process itself. Since then (and thanks Colin) I have been called selfish and divisive of the community.

 

If you think about it, it’s kind of like the kid who owns the ball deciding to leave the game, and wanting to take his ball with him. Only, there are a lot more players, and everyone else has got balls too...

 

My intention with raising this thread was to discuss how we can maybe have a delay, or some sort of “cooling off” period that might allow differences of opinion to be resolved, perhaps even with input from other members/curators or iNat community outreach staff.

 

I am appalled at how a certain member seems to think the stated goal of iNat must be wrong because it doesn’t agree with his world view...

 

I am appalled at the notion that I might share what I am seeing of the world and then have the right to take that down again taken away from me just because someone put an ID to it, or made a comment on it. Any Ids that I have made I have done so with no expectation that the user must never delete them. Ditto the comments. I would be hugely saddened to see them do so.

 

This idea that the “data” belongs to the scientific community is rubbish. I witnessed a new user suggesting to a regular user that they should “get out of their car”, implying that they did not make a reasonable effort at a photograph of a tree (not the best photo, but certainly not the worst either!). When I challenged that commentator, they said they literally edited back from saying “don’t be so lazy and get out of your car next time and take better photos”. I pointed out to them that we are actually quite lucky that this person takes the time to share what they see of the world around them, and I was told “I don’t think of this as a community like some seem to do, I think it is purely a scientific site, and they should make more effort or not contribute at all”...

 

I had a similar situation recently of a professional photographer criticising another observers photos and more or less implying they shouldn’t bother uploading them. I have seen worse photos IDd to species, and I have seen much better photos that have not got further than family. For Pete’s sake, how is the average observer supposed to know the difference? And bless the complainer, they edited their comment and left our comments looking very much out of place... groan...

 

My understanding is that we are allowed to delete our account, for what ever reason that might be. That would be sad of course. We are each allowed to ID as we see fit, and we must respect the right of others to ID as they see fit. We can state our opinions, and others are free to take them on board or not. I for one am not shy in putting it out there that I am not an expert. Passionate Amateur... not that I believe I have to, just that I think it helps to know from what position on the expertise scale I sit.

 

It has been suggested to me that iNaturalist is an “unwritten contract” between the scientific community and the general public. I for one like to read what I sign, and to me a contract is something that is signed, so the notion of an unwritten contract just puts my hackles up.

 

I can literally feel my enthusiasm for iNat ebbing out of me...

 

Rest assured, when I get annoyed enough to leave the game, I will leave you my ball...

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

 

From: Mira Bowin
Sent: Friday, 1 February 2019 4:12 AM
To: inatu...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [inaturalist] Re: Questions around deleted accounts

 

Agree with Charlie.  

[Charlie Hohn]

hmm, respectfully i think you are misunderstanding what i am saying. I'm not saying that people should not be able to delete their observations because someone else added an ID. I was questioning whether people should be able to withdraw *their* ID help. IE if i identify a plant for you, should i be able to delete it and all of my other IDs because i am mad about my 'ball'?

I don't know why you are 'apalled' that i disagree on what the stated goal of iNat would be (if you are indeed talking about me). We aren't allowed to disagree with or discuss the goals of our community? I don't agree with or advocate any of those other behaviors at all, and the 'get out of the car' thing is laughable as I have a billion photos taken from cars as do many other people and there's nothing wrong with it at all. And none of these bad behaviors are what i am advocating for at all. All i am saying is that we should recognize the data as an integral and valuable part of our community. If what you are saying is 'the community members are more valuable than the data they produce', then yeah, of course. I just don't think we should give up on trying to have a data based site in pursuit of some vague watered down goal that doesn't mean anything.

And to be clear I am NOT an admin I am just another community member. I'm sorry you encountered some awful behavior, i have encountered some of that too, and i agree, it's inappropriate. It's just that what i was trying to say doesn't really have anything to do with that. I am NOT NOT NOT advocating for atop down admin-heavy dictatorship. 

If people don't think something can be identified based on a photo, they can (sparingly) mark it as no further ID needed. Whining about it beyond that is just ill behavior. 

[Mark Tutty]

My apologies Charlie, it was directed at you and perhaps unfairly. I did misunderstand, as I thought you were referring to observations, not Ids. Although I think Ids is less of a problem, as often there are confirming Ids made that anchor the ID in place. The loss of one side of a dialogue can be a huge loss, particularly as the other sides of that dialogue are still intact, and the whole suddenly seems nonsense.

 

I held a position on the ID of a certain spider species a while back, and when it turned out I was wrong (dang literature, how dare it be misleading!) I deleted ALL my Ids on that genus in frustration (and to a certain extent embarrassment), so I can partially relate to what you mean. I’m more embarrassed now about deleting my Ids than I was about the incorrect position I held, which amuses me no end...

 

You might perceive that I have had some disappointing interactions of late... aggravated by a lack of sleep recently, so I apologise to you and others if my venting has upset anyone...

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

[Colin Meurk]

Disagree. I'd prefer people who have no social conscience to go off in their own little bubble, and be as disruptive as they like there, but not contribute to or disrupt this creative and constructive enterprise. C

Sent from my Samsung device

-------- Original message --------
From: Reuven Martin <jaeg...@gmail.com>
Date: 01/02/2019 3:45 am (GMT+12:00)
To: iNaturalist <inatu...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [inaturalist] Re: Questions around deleted accounts

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[Charlie Hohn]

and i apologize for being overly dramatic or not communicating well. You're explaining well the issue with the deletion of IDs. The loss of Research Grade can be fixed, but in some cases the entire ID may be lost - for instance, if someone else IDs something I don't know, i let community ID change the ID instead of doing it myself, because i don't really 'know' and don't want it to be research grade. Then if they delete my ID it is just lost because i didn't 'agree' with it. I think a compromise would be to retain the species tag in cases when deleting an ID removes the community ID, or to offer notifications to the main user when that happens. Doesn't help with 'fled users' but would be something.

I think deleting IDs after one realizes they are wrong is a different issue. In theory it is better just to withdraw them, but sometimes it's just a mistake or mixup or even typo and it doesn't seem to serve any purpose to keep them.

I've had some odd issues from time to time too... while I mostly use iNat on my own time, i'm a field ecologist and my observations aim for vouchering diagnostic features, not beauty (the pretty photos go on instagram instead). So i've got lots of blurry pictures of species like Joshua Tree that you can ID from a blurry picture. That seems to bother some people, who whine about it not being a pretty enough photo. But i could care less. If they want pretty photos and an empty community they can go somewhere else. If the photo is not diagnostic and they point that out, i will mark it as not needing further ID. I do have some of those especially when i was starting on here.

[Charlie Hohn]

sorry, that last post was to Mark. Colin, i can't tell who you were referring to.

[Reuven Martin]

Charlie, getting a bit off topic, but for what it's worth I'm not sure we actually disagree on much at all. I would say that iNaturalist generally does an excellent job of balancing good scientific data against a fun and engaging website for people of all experience levels (usually those two goals aren't even opposed). I think you would probably agree with this.

My previous citizen science experience is largely with eBird. eBird is great, but there's a bunch of stuff I don't like about it. Almost everything I don't like is IMO a result of more of a focus on data than on users, and a top-down rather than crowd-sourced model. Everything I don't like about eBird is done better on iNaturalist. So my instinct is generally to be concerned about an increased focus on data at the expense of user engagement.

It sounds like your previous experience is from places like Project Noah, which had too little focus on data, and this may be why you seem to be more concerned about movement in the other direction, towards dumbing-down and prioritizing user experience at the expense of data.

I don't think either of us is really wrong - just a different perspective, and both are important.

"our primary goal in operating iNaturalist is to connect people to nature through community sharing of what we see"

I agree that this is more or less what the goal of iNat should be, and I think the admins do basically run the website with this goal in mind.

[Tony Iwane]

Hey all,

I'm glad this is calming down a bit, I know a lot of people have spent a lot of their own time adding IDs to observations and it's tough to see some of that work disappear.

As with so many situations, I don't think this is one that will be "solved" in a way that will leave everyone happy. iNat is trying to make sure a user can delete their content if they want to (and for what it's worth, I personally think that's important, I wouldn't want to not have that option. And yes, I do use Facebook but am cutting back on it, I promise!). True, IDs are a more nebulous case than one's own observations, but the option should be there. As to leaving an anonymous ID record - that sounds intriguing but I feel like one of iNat's strengths is that those IDs and comments are at least traceable to an actual person who (hopefully) can and will respond to questions or comments. It would be strange for me to see IDs attributed to "Anonymous" on an observation, although I understand the utility.

We are working on making it more clear that when you delete your account, you delete all your content which includes the IDs you have made for other users, and we want to add one more step before the account to reduce accidental deletions or decisions made while in an emotional state. Perhaps some sort of "You will be deleting the x observations, y IDs and z comments you have contributed" in the pop-up would be a good way to get across the consequences of account deletion? Thoughts?

Colin, I'm sorry to hear your reports about those untoward behaviors on iNat. Sounds like you perhaps prevented those users for making more comments such as those, but always feel free to email us at he...@inaturalist.org and we can take a look as well.

Tony Iwane

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Charlie Hohn
Montpelier, Vermont

 

 

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Charlie Hohn
Montpelier, Vermont

 

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The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

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Charlie Hohn
Montpelier, Vermont

 

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[Tony Iwane]

Apologies, I meant to type Mark rather than Colin.

Tony

[Mark Tutty]

I did mention Colin (in brackets) as he had criticised me in a PM about raising the matter in a public forum. Personally, I think open and honest debate is a good thing. At the very least, misunderstandings are resolved and one can move on... but again, my apologies Colin, it was an unfair slight, and symptomatic of my other less than pleasurable interactions of late.

[Colin Meurk]

It was to rueven martin posted 0345!  To his view that people wont join something if they can't remove it. And so the view seems to be that having them involved for a while is more impoirtant than the information they may randomly withdraw. Well that might be so in an anarchic dystopian fb world. I can understand it in the fb context where some political or judgemental statement may later be regretted. But a collectively constructed database is based on a social contract and trust. There is to me a bigger and more serious danger that people wont join and contribute (IDs) if they sense it is just ephemera. Museums, art galleries and databases (based often on gifted collections) would cease to be supported. 

Sent from my Samsung device

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[Mark Tutty]

Oh...

 

I think I need me some sleep 😊

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

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[Patrick Alexander]

I really don't think it's helpful to describe people who may want to have a little more control over their data as "having no social conscience".

And, well, if people do decide to leave and delete their data... and you didn't want them there in the first place... surely that's a good thing.

[Charlie Hohn]

Reuven: Absolutely! I guess my angle is not that people are less important than data, which i did not mean to imply. My point is the data is the core of what people group around in the community. it's more specific than 'connecting people with nature' which could also refer to things like Outward Bound, the mission of the National Park Service, my vegetable garden, an astronomy class, or a great number of other things. I commented because i have seen that mission statement pulled out to justify things that created wrong or problematic data, which I think is not a good justification for that. And yes, i wouldn't say anything on iNat is 'dumbed down' but we have lost some of the data-centric user interface features over the years and in my opinion it hasn't bought us a better community (we already have a great community) and needless to say I don't think we should be doing that.

Tony, i know there's a huge push by iNat admin towards making sure a person is always behind any postings, but my main issue with that push is with users who just leave, or die. There are a lot of reasons why people might put good data here, and then leave or not be around, but would still want the data available (or not mind having it so). I personally think it's counterproductive to push that at the extent of causing damage to the data or the community. Same with the 'joint user accounts'. A lot of people just end up leaving the site for whatever reason, and i don't want to move towards deleting IDs when a user isn't active any more. I personally think anonymous IDs make way, way more sense than deleting them, even though there's no ideal solution. I recognize that it's a hard problem with no easy answer. But I hope you'll at least consider the issue of community IDs being stepped back to higher taxonomic level without the person adding the observation even realizing it (no notifications occur when an ID is deleted, but you wouldn't want 500 of those if a power user left anyway)

[Charlie Hohn]

i guess my best metaphor for my issue with the user statement is to consider the knitting community site Ravelry where people share knitting patterns with each other. https://www.ravelry.com/account/login  . Imagine if the site declared "Ravelry isn't about knitting! It is about connecting people with textiles!". Well... that would be a meaningless statement that really didn't tap into what the community actually is. The Ravelry community (to my best understanding) is built around knitting. and here our community is based on knitting together our knowledge of the natural world. Which is, to me, one of the most powerful ways of connecting with, honoring, and loving the natural world - telling its story in a way it can not itself, as a communal endeavor, with new and old friends on iNaturalist. To me it is also a way of mourning loss as ecosystems are destroyed or damaged in various ways. iNat is not the only valid way to connect with the natural world by an means, but one of the most meaningful to me, and to others here. It's a very specific way of connecting with nature and i think changing the user statement to reflect that would be a good thing.

Sorry this is a bit off topic...

[Patrick Alexander]

Colin, it's interesting you mention that idea of people being less likely to join and contribute if it's "ephemera". I guess I'm coming from the other side of that coin... I want my data to serve as a useful long-term record, and if I were to decide to delete my data and leave iNaturalist in the future, it would be precisely because I am not sure that iNaturalist can serve that goal because of limitations in my ability to manage my data--and, presumably, because I have found an alternate platform that reduces or eliminates those problems. Orphaned data can be the opposite of ephemera, persisting when our understanding might be clearer otherwise.

Regarding IDs, I guess one question is how changes in nomenclature get handled... do we create ghost annotations on behalf of deleted users? Personally, I really dislike those ghost annotations even when the user is active--attributing an ID to a person who may not even be aware of the ID is, IMO, bad data management. Attributing IDs to people who are gone or even dead...  surely that raises some red flags. On the other hand, do we want those annotations just stuck at the "old" name, and presumably making it harder for other users to update the observation? Well, probably not... that's the kind of orphaned data problem I'm talking about above.

[Tony Iwane]

Sorry, I think the issue that my proposed account deletion text didn't address was the issue that by deleting one's observations, you will be removing the IDs others made for them. Will keep cogitating on something to address that as well.

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============================
Charlie Hohn
Montpelier, Vermont

[Mira Bowin]

I would like to share my views on this more generally and I’ll try to find time to do so later but for now I thought I’d offer this possible idea:

Is there a way to weight the IDs (on others’ observations)  of deleted users differently so that the ID is retained anonymously but isn’t equivalent to the weight of an ID of a current user?  Some way so it wouldn’t be bumped completely without the user whose ID is affected knowing?  Maybe it appears differently,  visually indicating that the ID is there but not as highly weighted as other IDs where active users can be engaged in discussion as needed?

I have a VERY rudimentary understanding of all the weighting of IDs and data management generally so if this makes no sense just ignore it.

Aspiring to be helpful,

Mira

[Colin Meurk]

It is no longer just them. They have engaged in a social relationship and drawn people (unwittingly?) into their web by having them ID or comment on their records and creating a kind of 'dependence' or certainty that those records are now part of our human knowledge of the world. I get that this is an ideological divide - social/collective responsibility or (as our nz prime-minister frames it currently) 'kindness' versus rugged, self-focussed individualism. To me, in our example, deliberative removal of this socially interconnected 'good' is a kind of hostile act against the community that had nurtured them. I'd rather let them know the rules of engagement at the outset so they couldn't later threaten that social contract and just use fb or plant snap or some such inferior product. Well, im not so humourless that I can't see that I may later regret these spontaneous words and wish I could erase them from everyone's consciousness :-).

[paloma]

Maybe it would be helpful when a person begins to delete an account to offer reminders (via pop-ups) of less-drastic alternatives, too, such as the ability to block people, to report violations of the Community Guidelines, to change their profile name, to obscure their locations, etc. The person may not really want to leave, but may think it is the only solution to a problem when it is not. I personally think that appeals to the person's obligation under some kind of social contract would backfire, but it might be a good idea to remind the person (via pop-ups) how important their observations could be to science and ask them if they could possibly pause to reconsider.

On Thursday, January 31, 2019 at 1:11:57 PM UTC-8, Tony Iwane wrote:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

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[Patrick Alexander]

I don't think the situation is that black and white, and I think it's a mistake to portray it as communities vs. individuals. The community is the individuals and to the extent that there's a real social contract here, we have to imagine it going both ways. We can't just assume that if a user feels like iNaturalist isn't holding up its end of the deal that the user is always at fault. That's a good way to get more disaffected users, and then of course the community doesn't do well.

Personally, I see the ideal community in any scientific context as one that makes it as easy as possible for its members to disagree productively.

[Ben Phalan]

Tony, all,

I've been reading this thread with interest. I'd suggest to offer the user three options, if they decide to delete their account, with the ability to customize further if they want (e.g. delete only selected observations, option 2 + delete comments, etc.). Wording could be something like this:

1. RECOMMENDED OPTION (although we'd still prefer not to see you go!): Delete your profile page and username. All your observations, IDs and comments will remain on the site, but attributed to "Deleted user"

2. DELETE PHOTOS AND PHOTOS: Delete your profile page, username and photos/audio. Observations will remain (attributed to "Deleted user") with their associated comments and IDs, but lacking photos/audio, will automatically go to Casual grade. Your IDs on other users' observations will remain, also attributed to "Deleted user"

3. DELETE EVERYTHING: Delete all content you have added to the site, including your IDs for others. Note that this option will also delete IDs others have added to your observations. In the case of accounts with many observations, adding those could represent a considerable amount of other people's time, so please consider carefully before selecting this option.

Then have a 2-6 month "cooling off" period during which the selected content is taken off the public site but kept on iNaturalist's servers, and so that users could recover their account if they change their mind.

Of course, options 1 and 2 are inferior to the person not deleting their account, but they are superior to losing everything.

Thoughts?

Ben

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

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[Ben Phalan]

*In option 2 I meant DELETE PROFILE AND PHOTOS

[paloma]

I think Ben's idea is a good one. In addition, I think we as a community need to do more to call out or flag those comments that are gratuitously rude and demanding when we see them, before people begin thinking about closing their accounts. (Apparently, from other posts in this group, there is a problem on iNaturalist with comments characterizing people as lazy or selfish, and demanding that they change their account settings.)

[David K]

I still don't agree with the view of Ben and others that users should be able to delete their input on other people's observations.  It remains unfair to the other individuals if that is the only agreement, and I haven't seen a convincing explanation of why people should be able to 'unpublish' something as benign as a confirmatory ID (a single erroneous one, yes, but not everything they have entered on the site).  I suspect, but haven't checked, that many of the deleted posts exist on www.archive.org, so there is possibly some futility in the effort except to make it harder to find the original.

As I stated much earlier, I understand why people may want to control their media.  But erasing something that has been indexed and/or aggregated by others really undermines the citizen science part of this site.

I am a bit disheartened by the fact that I started this topic two-and-a-half years ago and the iNat team still hasn't addressed what many of us regard as a serious issue.  Nonetheless, I am happy to see the discussion revived.

David

On Wednesday, August 3, 2016 at 7:01:03 AM UTC-4, David K wrote:

Hi Scott - I am a big advocate of personal privacy, but I’m not sure that the spirit of the ‘right to be forgotten’ is the right one here.  The origins of that argument are for people to be able to suppress information about them that is created or indexed by others.   That is a far distance from someone deliberately participating in an online nature discussion and then changing their mind about their involvement.  Joining iNat, adding observations and contributing in any way to another user’s observation are all active choices made by the individual.  And every step is done on the internet.  Where is the expectation of privacy in that process? Letting them bail out and remove their IDs and comments (and frankly, their observations) just goes against the concept of open, communal citizen science.

 

I saw a github discussion where this issue was raised in the context of a minor who was disclosing too much information, and it makes sense to erase a user in that circumstance.  But the example of an adult that provides IDs hundreds (or thousands) of observations and then changes their mind about their continued involvement is completely different.   By that point other people, and likely institutions, have used or gathered some of the data that the individual touched.  Let’s face it, because of iNat’s open structure, the data may already be in some other database (in addition to GBIF and GloBi) and there is little likelihood that it will disappear from those secondary databases as they obtained it when it was publicly available.

 

Think about it another way, what if Greg Lasley, Mark Rosenstein or any other major contributor deleted their accounts – even by accident?  How many observations would flip back to Casual?  How many observations would just evaporate?    

I'm not sure which direction Alex is going with the reference to copyright as I'm not familiar with US law.  But I am focused on the observation details and comments, not the media (as I believe that copyright applies to the media, not to the other information.)

[Patrick Alexander]

I guess I'm not sure how making an ID and then removing it is any less fair to someone than not making the ID in the first place. Psychologically, sure, we have loss aversion. Once the ID is there we don't want it to be taken away. But in terms of the status of our data... the ID never made is worse!

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[Mark Tutty]

An observation is posted, it gets given an ID by the observer (ID1). A confirmer chips in (ID2) and the observation goes to RG. Cool. I’ll add here that it is not a REQUIREMENT that obs get to RG.

 

The confirmer one day has a melt down and deletes their account. ID2 disappears, and the obs goes back to being casual with the one ID. That pushes it back into the “Needs ID” pool and some other confirmer jumps on it and gives it a confirmation (ID3) bringing it again to RG.

 

Now... let’s pretend the first confirmer never joined iNat, and it was therefore up to the 2^nd confirmer to put ID2 to get it to RG. The NETT RESULT here is the same. So this idea that the delete is somehow causing damage by deleting their Ids is absurd. They are simply undoing what they did by joining in the first place.

 

The reality is, most observations have several Ids applied, I for one like to add mine to all species I have learnt about, or are learning about, so that I can add to or follow any discussions relating to them. Sure, I can just choose “follow”, but when you have limited time and want to review as many obs as possible in that time, “agree” (if you agree) is a single click process compared to the two click process for “follow”. In fact, “agree” also marks the obs as reviewed, whereas “follow” does not.

 

To my thinking, the ID side of it is negligible... it’s like a line of troops, one drops, the next rank puts a man forward to fill the gap. If it happens A LOT... then that is a different story... and symptomatic of a much larger problem anyway.

 

The REAL problem, as far as I can see, is in the loss of the comments and dialogue. What was an informative exchange of information and views that led to a concensus view suddenly becomes one sided and difficult to follow. Nobody else can step up and fill those gaps. Links to the images (assuming CC) and observations of the deleting account are also troublesome, in that many broken links result. Rather than rehash an argument, I’ll often link to another observation that has that discussion and resolution.

 

I used to review obs via “Needs ID” and it was defaulting to reverse date order, so I would pick an observation that was particularly notable (and impossible to ID), and I would work back to that observation and then would know I was “up to date”. Any further reviewing would be chipping away at the back-log. In fact, I picked 3 observations, from different observers, so that if any of the observations became IDd, deleted or accidentally marked as reviewed, I would still know my other placemarkers. One day I noticed one was gone, and when I went looking for it thinking I had accidentally marked it as reviewed, I discovered the observer had deleted their account. That was the first time I encountered how impactful a delete could be. I looked into why the observer deleted their account, and to be honest, I agreed with their reasons. I have put a lot of thought into the issues involving deletes since then, and even still to this day, issues come up in this thread that I had not considered. It is a complicated matter, both from the perspective of the deleter and from the community as a whole.

 

I am guessing, but I would say that of all the deletes that happen as far as significant sized accounts and those with useful dialogue content, the majority of them could be averted simply by introducing a cooling off period of, say, one week. A statement along the lines of “We will be sorry to see you go... your account will be deleted within 7 days. If you choose to cancel the delete you will have until midnight DD MMM YYYY (UTC) to do so. In the mean time, would you consider helping us by completing the following survey, so that we might improve the iNaturalist experience for others”... and then in that survey a list of questions designed to 1) determine the reason for the delete 2) gather feedback to improve the site and 3) drop casual suggestions for alternatives to deleting based on the answers to (1). At the end of the survey, the offer to discuss the problem with a support person (eg a curator with particularly good people skills...). It’s amazing what a few days can do to the enormity of a problem, and failing that, it is even more amazing what talking about it with somebody who understands your point of view can do.

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

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[paloma]

I think it would be a good idea to go forward with (1) the warnings about the consequences of deleting an account and (2) some type of cooling-off period sooner rather than later, because no one seems to like the way it works right now.

[Ben Phalan]

Thanks David,

It's not really my view that users *should* be able to do this, but it does seem like there are some strong views that we should be able to delete any content we added to the site, which would have this effect. So my suggestions were more out of resignation that a solution that is needed that accommodates the possibility to delete, rather than enthusiasm for this option.

Perhaps there is a way to preserve the history of the Community ID on observations, so that even if the most precise ID from some individual was to be deleted, there is still a record of what the Community ID had reached. One challenge with that is that it would also preserve IDs from when, for example, someone mistypes, adds the wrong ID, realizes their mistake, deletes it, and adds the right one. That could be minimized if the "change" history of each observation's Community ID was only updated (say) 24 hours after a change had occurred, but now we're getting into a whole different discussion...

Ben

[Charlie Hohn]

yeah i think in the least, a full delete of all IDs of a high volume user should specifically be set up NOT to revoke community ID. It could go back to 'needs ID' but having it bump back to whatever level it was before doesn't make sense.  As mentioned previously, it's generally considered best practice not to 'agree' with something you don't know when someone adds an ID on a taxa you know nothing about (like when someone IDs a bee for me or something). That way the observation can wait to get a second ID for research grade, rather than me giving it research grade without that knowledge base. But i am reconsidering this given that people may delete IDs and i may lose my community ID, if this is not fixed i may have to switch to agreeing with any ID that seems reasonable even if i don't have a clue, because i don't want to lose the CID if that user decides to rage quit or whatever.

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[David K]

Hi Patrick – I’m not sure that your characterization of loss aversion deals with my point.  Loss aversion deals with a trade-off of some opportunity for gain vs some risk of loss – as you note, people prefer gains to losses. The situation here has no real gain once an observation is at RG, but there is a very real prospect of (unrewarded) loss if the sole identifier pulls the agreement.  

However, my bigger concern (articulated earlier by Chris T and others), is that RG observations are regularly fed into various third party datasets, via GBIF, API or direct download.  Once those observations are used to support some paper or project, it seems strange to say that it is then reasonable that the observations could be erased later because someone decided they wanted to leave iNat (or worse, accidentally deletes everything).  Someone from the iNat team recently compiled a list of publications using iNat data, how would it look if the authors had to be notified that the data included in their papers was removed from the site - what impact would that have on iNat's reputation?

 

I keep going back to publishing on paper: once someone publishes something – a book,  a paper or a photo – it’s out there as long as someone retains a copy of it.  There is no erasing.  Why are people so determined to do just that on iNat with objective events like natural observations and commentary that is voluntarily added to other people’s records?

 

This is an open, public site, generally funded by conservation organizations, academic institutions and generous individuals from what I can tell.  If someone doesn’t want to contribute their data to third party projects that can access the data here, I suggest that iNat isn’t the site for them.  Accommodating those people forces comprises that I feel undermine the credibility of iNat.

 

Hi Mark – I’m glad that your experience is that there is a line-up of identifiers to fill any backlog left by departing IDers.  My experience is that your assertion that "[t]he reality is, most observations have several Ids applied", is not supported by facts around the world.  Have a look at the stats page https://www.inaturalist.org/stats, just under half of the site's observations are not RG. 

The comprehensiveness of IDs likely depends on the taxa involved, and possibly the location.  A very active project that I started has close to 70,000 RG-eligible observations, and approximately 30% of them are currently at 'needs ID'.  Some are likely due to a difficulty assigning species IDs to micro moths, others are legitimately stuck at family/genus etc., but most of those are simply unreviewed.  I do not know how many of the remainder have only 1 confirming ID, but the number is considerable based on anecdotal checks.  I don't doubt that there are projects and taxa groups that are thoroughly reviewed by multiple eyes, but I see no evidence that it's common.  

David

[Patrick Alexander]

Hello David,

On 2/4/19, 6:49 PM, David K wrote:

Hi Patrick – I’m not sure that your characterization of loss aversion deals with my point.  Loss aversion deals with a trade-off of some opportunity for gain vs some risk of loss – as you note, people prefer gains to losses. The situation here has no real gain once an observation is at RG, but there is a very real prospect of (unrewarded) loss if the sole identifier pulls the agreement. 

"Once an observation is at RG"--well, yes, if you take the "gain" out of the picture there's only the "loss"! But what we're talking about here is precisely one gain (the ID to get to RG) and one loss (the removal of that ID).

OK, probably this is still not exactly how a psychologist would define loss aversion, but precise use of psychological terminology isn't really the point. I think it's better ultimately to have an ID for 50% of the time than 0% of the time, and that an ID made and then deleted is therefore preferable to one not made in the first place. Be glad for the gains for however long they last and try not to worry too much about the fact that "however long" might not be "forever".

However, my bigger concern (articulated earlier by Chris T and others), is that RG observations are regularly fed into various third party datasets, via GBIF, API or direct download.  Once those observations are used to support some paper or project, it seems strange to say that it is then reasonable that the observations could be erased later because someone decided they wanted to leave iNat (or worse, accidentally deletes everything).  Someone from the iNat team recently compiled a list of publications using iNat data, how would it look if the authors had to be notified that the data included in their papers was removed from the site - what impact would that have on iNat's reputation?

That's kind of an interesting question, and not one I'd thought about--guess I missed it earlier. I guess we'd have to have a better idea of the scope of the problem to have a feel for how much we should worry about this.

Even old school physical specimens are not immortal. They get irreparably damaged, lost in shipping, and so forth. Some museums close their doors and you might not be able to track the specimens to their new homes. Sometimes they don't even find new homes for specimens. This isn't usually a big deal in practice, but it happens; the fact that this might happen does not mean the data isn't usable, just that impermanence is a fact of life. Also, if I were publishing with iNaturalist data, I would be a lot more worried about the "museum closing" scenario. There have been a lot of biodiversity information websites out there and most of them are now defunct or declining and not likely to continue long term. Anyone working with online data has to accept that this is a risk. So... it is a problem that we should probably think more about, but I don't think it's a show stopper.

Another wrinkle here--suppose you publish based on misidentified specimens and someone comes along later and gets correct IDs on them. That would seem to have a very similar effect, in terms of undermining the empirical support for a published work, as deleting the observations. Maybe it's a habitat model and, oops, 5% of the specimens were the wrong species. Kind of sucks for the authors, but we've been living with that possibility for physical specimens since there've been physical specimens. I've seen some pretty glaring examples of this in the published literature, and once I accidentally contributed to an example by sending some specimens to a researcher who I assumed would double-check my not-expert-in-this-taxon IDs but didn't... c'est la vie.

I keep going back to publishing on paper: once someone publishes something – a book,  a paper or a photo – it’s out there as long as someone retains a copy of it.  There is no erasing.  Why are people so determined to do just that on iNat with objective events like natural observations and commentary that is voluntarily added to other people’s records?

I don't think that analogy works. iNaturalist is not a static product in its final published form, it's a dynamic database that you can't just freeze and say, "There it is, no more modifications." If we're going to have an analogy with print media, I think it would be more like having all of your daily writing notes, drafts, edits, etc., preserved for posterity. Some people are going to be perfectly fine with that, and future researchers may thank them for it, some people aren't.

Regards,
Patrick

[paloma]

I'm not sure this really fits into what you are saying, but I just googled whether people know that iNat data is not permanent, and came up with this recent U.S. government document saying that iNaturalist data can be permanently linked to specimens: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6240452/ --no need to respond, just pointing it out to anyone interested

[Tony Iwane]

Regarding the paper paloma linked to, you'll see in the Acknowledgements that myself, Ken-ichi, and Carrie were all consulted by the authors and we made it clear that while we hope iNat will be around for as long as possible, and that links to the observations will remain static, we could not promise these things. I believe that is acknowledged in the paper itself. And note that the paper describes linking herbarium specimens to iNat observations, so presumably the person posting the observations is not relying on observations (or even IDs) of others, but is uploading the observations themselves.

Tony Iwane

[Mark Tutty]

I get what Patrick is saying... Maybe loss aversion is not the right term though. We miss what we have lost far more than if we never had it in the first place. I alluded to the same concept when I analogised to personal collections not making it into more permanent places such as museums or herbaria, and that we experience the loss here in iNat because we have had a temporary custodial role in the lost observations.

 

I see the observations being in a kind of limbo between the personal collection and the curated museum record. In this limbo, discussion can occur and id can change until it settles out at a community concensus. Only then would it be picked up and made "secure data" by the likes of GBIF (well, in the real world perhaps some “unsettled” Ids get up there too!). The photo evidence doesn't need to follow it into that secure record, because it was only needed for the determination. In the same way that literature lists occurrence records, and perhaps many of those occurrence records are just “IDd in-field” and not actual physical specimens held anywhere for potential re-determination.

 

On an interesting side note... I long while ago I noticed a member delete his account, and just in the last few days noticed he was back under the same account name, and re-posting back up all his observations. He has not responded to any of my “welcome backs”, but maybe he is focusing on getting his massive collection of photos back up as observations again. Sometimes we “gain”, then “lose”, and then “gain” all over again!

 

Maybe this analogy might help. Imagine a field full of tomatoes, and a small crew of 10 hand pickers that can bring in a crate of tomatoes each a day. They are quality tomatoes, because the crew of hand pickers knows what they are doing. Now lets imagine we need more tomatoes than the hand pickers can gather, so we invite the public to come in and pick for us. A thousand members of the public turn up, and each can bring in a crate of tomatoes each, but they are not as good at picking or judging ripeness etc, so only 10% of what gets picked will be useable. For the purposes of this analogy, imagine that the field can furnish an unlimited number of tomatoes. We drop back 2 of the hand picking crew to go through and filter out the rubbish from what the public bring in, and so we end up with 108 crates of tomatoes instead of the 10 crates previously! Now imagine one of the handpicking crew noticed that after they had checked the crates of 10 of those members of the public, the insidious sods had dumped their crates in the ditch by the road because they couldn’t be bothered carrying them to the truck. So it’s 107 crates of tomatoes that effectively have been harvested. I can see why they are bothered by the wasted effort of checking those 10 crates that were dumped, but in the big picture, aren’t we still better off with the publics help?

 

If you look at it from the perspective of the hand pickers, they see what amounts to 10% of their normal effort being wasted. From the perspective of the public, “who cares? You’re still getting a shitload more tomatoes than you were before”. And of the handpickers, those doing the checking would be more aghast than those continuing to collect as usual. But when you step back and see the “system” as a whole, the small losses are far outweighed by the gains. No system is ever perfectly efficient.

 

I think if the public can see that they retain the right to withdraw participation, then there will be considerably more public uptake of the call to action. Likewise, if the public see that those ten sods are whipped and told to pick up their crates, well...

 

I agree it’s a rough analogy, and that if we can find a way to retain that extra crate of tomatoes, then cool... but sometimes the effort to save that small loss is not worth it.

 

I liken it to a (for us) legendary theatre operator who would check your bags to make sure you didn’t have food or drink, because you were only allowed to consume food purchased at their intermission counter. I imagine she lost more custom from that practise than she gained in popcorn sales...

 

To me, it will always be the loss of one side of a dialogue, and of broken links, that ultimately can’t be argued away by such gains vs losses arguments. For those reasons alone I would surrender rights to delete my content...

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

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[David K]

What I find difficult to accept about the arguments of specimens deteriorating, and museums closing etc. is that is doesn't deal with the root of my concern, which is the record of the specimen.  If someone collects a specimen, records the date and place, you have a scientific record.  The point of groups like gbif is to get those records out of dusty museums and to be made available for widespread public use.  If the museum burns down, or the individual specimen is destroyed, that is unfortunate, but it doesn't mean that the record of the observation goes away if it has been shared with others.  Replacing 'specimen' with 'photo' in this example demonstrates the iNat use case.  

As for re-identifications, they are not the point of this discussion, that should be seen as an improvement to the global body of science.  Reclassifications and re-identifications are part of ongoing taxonomic research, they are not a problem to be mingled with deleted accounts and vanishing data.

I keep going back to publishing on paper: once someone publishes something – a book,  a paper or a photo – it’s out there as long as someone retains a copy of it.  There is no erasing.  Why are people so determined to do just that on iNat with objective events like natural observations and commentary that is voluntarily added to other people’s records?

I don't think that analogy works. iNaturalist is not a static product in its final published form, it's a dynamic database that you can't just freeze and say, "There it is, no more modifications." If we're going to have an analogy with print media, I think it would be more like having all of your daily writing notes, drafts, edits, etc., preserved for posterity. Some people are going to be perfectly fine with that, and future researchers may thank them for it, some people aren't.

I'm still not buying this line of thought, these aren't notes and drafts.  When someone elects to post a picture on iNat, is it publishing, which seems to be why copyright comes into the discussion.  This is why I think that the iNat team needs to get off the fence and deal with this.  I love using iNat, I've introduced dozens of people to the platform on the basis that it was a citizen science platform.  But if the data is going to be ephemeral, what's the point of continuing to use it under the guise of a centralized, publicly viewable data collection?  

Data permanency may drive some users away, but data instability may drive other users away.  I think that a choice needs to be made as this ambiguity is unhelpful.

[Chris Cheatle]

I know it was posted in the very first comment on this thread, but getting clarity on what exactly is sent to GBIF in terms of data would help clarify this discussion. There are other much more common instances where data changes versus account deletions - refinements to ID's, species taxonomy updates, just general corrections etc.

What is GBIF sent?

• only newly created records since their last dump
• newly created or updated records since their last dump
• simply a complete refreshed file of the entire dataset

I would expect gbif to be looking for alterations in data from partners, including both changes and ideally (although only possible in case 3 above) deleted records.

[Patrick Alexander]

Hello David,

In terms of records of specimens vs. specimens themselves, I guess the equivalent of "specimen" in this case is the digital media (photos / sounds) associated with an observation and the equivalent of "record" in this case is the other information (ID, date, location, etc.), associated with that digital media. It's odd that you're placing importance on a record without a "specimen" when iNaturalist explicitly does the opposite--media-less observations can't be research grade and don't go to GBIF.

Regarding changes in ID--if having the data on iNaturalist change so that it no longer supports a work of published research is a problem in one case (deleted observations), why is it not a problem in another case (changed ID)? I certainly understand that these cases are quite different in terms of gain / loss in the iNaturalist data, but if that's the issue you're actually concerned with why bring up the relationship of iNaturalist data to published research?

Regarding publishing--everything on the internet is kind of odd relative to past media in that it is published but without any of the expectations of static finality or permanence that go with traditional print publishing. I think what you're saying is that, if it's published on the internet, those other expectations from printed media should carry over. It's not at all clear to me why that would be the case. The whole point of iNaturalist is that it's interactive, dynamic, community-based--all things that are totally incompatible with the idea of a permanent printed work. This isn't supposed to follow the old school print model! So while there certainly are arguments to be made in favor of certain kinds of data permanence here, that it is published and certain expectations traditionally go along with that is, to me, just not one of them. "Published" simply does not mean "permanent" online.

Regards,
Patrick

[David K]

Hi Patrick - I am talking about the electronic or written record of the specimen or photo - even if the specimen deteriorates or the photo is removed, the record documenting the observation still exists, what is missing is the original evidence.  But the existence of the record denotes that the observation is a fact - at some point, something was documented at a time and a place.  Removing a photo doesn't change the fact that an organism was seen, or that someone may have verified the ID.

In iNat terms, the observation was Research Grade, then someone removed the photo. I am explicitly discussing RG observations, not sure why you think that I'm not. 

Back to my earlier example, if a museum burns down but there are back-ups/transcriptions of the records off-site, are those back-ups not scientifically relevant any longer - or should they be thrown out because the museum burned down and the specimens are gone?

[Mark Tutty]

Wow, 2 and a half years ago... I thought this was a new issue that had come up recently...

I have gone looking for species observations of mine in gbif, and even though I have had them for over 2 years in iNat they still don't show in gbif.

Can anyone point to a statement somewhere that clarifies what and when data goes to gbif? And does it also get wiped if an iNat account deletes? It has a huge bearing on the permanence of the core observations data

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[bouteloua]

Mark, to answer part of your question, only observations that are licensed as CC0, CC BY, or CC BY-NC are shared with GBIF. https://www.gbif.org/terms

Yours appear to be licensed as CC BY-SA. You can change your observation licensing in your iNat account settings. Note that this is separate from photo and audio licensing.

cassi

[Mark Tutty]

Thanks Cassi!

[Patrick Alexander]

Hello David,

I'm really not sure what point you're trying to make. If an observation is research grade and then the media is removed, it is no longer research grade. It has the same status as an observation that never had associated media and never was research grade. Whatever special status you think such an observation does or should have... it does not have that status on iNaturalist.

Regards,
Patrick

[Colin Meurk]

Well said David

 

From: inatu...@googlegroups.com <inatu...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of David K
Sent: Wednesday, February 6, 2019 2:58 AM
To: iNaturalist <inatu...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [inaturalist] Re: Questions around deleted accounts

 

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[jdmore]

Weighing in late here after an absence in the field.  I think Ben's suggestions make a huge amount of sense and they have my endorsement FWIW.

I would still like to hear more thoughts from staff about how accounts of deceased members are handled.  I expect there must be one or two of those at this point.  Do they simply remain static untended accounts unless/until an heir gains access and does something to them?  Would iNat consider a way for users to explicitly state their posthumous wishes before they become posthumous, as part of their account settings?  Or does this impinge on the larger legal world in undesirable ways?  etc.

I will add that the "hope" of data persistence -- though of course never guaranteed -- is a huge motivator for me personally in the amount of time and effort I am willing to contribute to a site like iNaturalist.  I expect that's fairly typical, if arguably misguided.

--Jim Morefield (jdmore)

[Chris Vynbos]

We've just had a long standing Asparagaceae expert delete his account. This is a major problem for the Southern African community. I know him well and I can without a doubt convince him to re-instate his account. Pls tell me it is still possible to revert the deleted account?