Flag for Taxon: East African Sand Boa (Eryx colubrinus)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| florinastanescu | East African Sand Boa (Eryx colubrinus) |
this is someone's pet, hence not an observation from nature (in Romania). It may confuse users. |
Sep. 16, 2019 09:40:37 +0000 | cmcheatle |
Acceptable content per site guidelines. |
Comments
There is only 1 record for this species submitted from Romanis, and it is marked as captive.
As long as they are relatively low in number and properly marked as captive/cultivated, submissions of captive things are allowed under site rules. Please see
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#inappropriate
As such, this is acceptable under site rules
Hi, I found this in the Guide of iNaturalist, regarding records of captive species: "The main reason we try to flag things like this is because iNat is primarily about observing wild organisms, not animals in zoos, garden plants, specimens in drawers, etc., and our scientific data partners are often not interested in (or downright alarmed by) observations of captive or cultivated organisms.".
Also this: "Pictures of pets, humans, abiotic phenomena, or obvious test observations are okay unless someone repeatedly posts such content. If you encounter inappropriate content, flag it or contact the site staff at help@inaturalist.org."
The person who posted the record that I flagged has introduced this kind of data repeatedly. I strongly believe that iNaturalist should discourage this kind of behaviour, which might indirectly support/promote the pet trade with non-native species.
The person who added this record has added less than 15 such records (excluding plants which I dont believe is your concern)
out of over 500 submissions. Those records appear to come from the educational centre where their profile suggests they work. I don't consider that to be an inappropriate number, but to satisfy your concern, I have flagged the iNat staff member responsible for reviewing these issues to take a look.
Hi, I apologize, since I flagged the entry for Eryx colubrinus, that user removed the entries concerning pets. I know the educational project you talk about and I commend the efforts, but still think that some limitations are required in order to maintain the quality of the data(base). Thank you for taking into consideration my concerns, i highly appreciate this!
I'm Tony Iwane, I work for iNat, thanks for expressing your concerns about this. As @cmcheatle said, there is nothing inherently wrong about adding a few observations of pets or garden plants, provided that the observer marks such observations as "captive/cultivated", and it looks like this user has done so. Once an observation has been marked as such, it becomes "casual" grade, and by default does not turn up in search results, so it's unlikely these observations will be seen by many people, and anyone using the data will know that the organisms are not wild. So in my mind the data is of good quality. The data user can decide what to do with it. If a user adds a lot observations of non-wild organisms and refuses to stop after been talked to, then I agree it's an issue.
Which observation? The best way to deal with pets and cultivated plants is to mark it in the DQA as Organism not wild.