How does WI handle duplicate images?

[Dan Levitis]

I have found in our database that some deployments were uploaded twice. I conclude this because we have several hundred images, perhaps thousands, in which every image is an exact match for one other image, including the time stamp, down to the second. In some cases the metadata of these duplicates match exactly (other than the deployment code) and others where the timestamps in the metadata are different.

Is there an efficient way to detect and remove duplicates, please?

[Wildlife Insights]

You can prevent the upload of duplicate images by selecting the "Don't upload duplicate images" option during the upload process:

Once the images are uploaded, there's no quick filter to search for duplicates.

It sounds like your duplicate images are uploaded to different deployments. In that case, you can delete an entire deployment by going to the Details tab and scrolling down to the Camera deployments table.

Hope this helps,

Nicole

[Dan Levitis]

Thank you. That box prevents more than one file with the same filename from being upload as part of the same deployment, but our volunteers falsely thought that it prevented duplicate images from being uploaded (in different deployments, or with different filename). We always had that box checked, but now have thousands of duplicate images in the database. Is there any way to delete them? Having identified all of the duplicate images, it seems like a strange design choice to have the system disallow fixing these errors.

[Dan Levitis]

I should clarify that it is also not the case that we are able to delete the duplicate deployments. I see the delete button, it is grayed out. Is there some way to ungray it?

[Wildlife Insights]

I apologize for the inconvenience - there's no easy way now to identify duplicates but you can submit a feature request for this option and our team will evaluate the request in the future.

There is a 90 day limit to delete deployments. Beyond that limit, you can request deployments to be deleted by emailing in...@wildlifeinsights.org with the numeric project ID and deployment ID that you'd like deleted.

Cheers,

Nicole

[Dan Levitis]

Thank you! We are putting together a list of deployments that need to be deleted and I'll email them in.