[Taxacom] iNaturalist and the dangers of community ID sites!

[Geoff Read]

Probably it has occurred to others too, but iNaturalist sends its verified
ids to GBIF, and for the time being at least you can still access the
metadata of Stephen Thorpe original observations there, and get links back
respectively to the iNaturalist photo page and the photo itself.  The
photos are not hidden.

https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/download/0082808-210914110416597
GBIF.org (19 December 2021) GBIF Occurrence Download
https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.x8t2es

7,256 occurrences published by iNaturalist, recorded by Stephen Thorpe.

Thus if a species you were interested in had been recorded by Stephen in
New Zealand, you will still have the occurrence data, and maybe permanent
photo access, although inconveniently.

I do not know if there is more than one iNat Stephen Thorpe, but that
seemed to be the only one with given name first.

Cheers,
Geoff Read





On Sun, December 19, 2021 3:41 pm, Stephen Thorpe via Taxacom wrote:
>  Mike,That is a view, but, on the other hand, I had populated the internet
> with good images (particularlt recently) and associated collecting data
> of many species that even many taxonomists will never see in the wild. I
> have little videos of the critters in action in the field, immature
> stages, plant damage (mines, galls, etc.) It is a fantastic free
> resource. There are several professional taxonomists on iNat who take an
> interest in my observations, e.g. Geoff read, Robert Hoare, and several
> others. I couldn't have predicted that it would end this way, so quickly
> and without warning, as I desperately tried to alert iNat admins for
> advice, but nothing came back to me in time and I didn't know what Hegg
> was going to turn his attention to next. I didn't actually know, until it
> was too late, that the observations of a suspended user are no longer
> publicly viewable!Cheers, Stephen
>     On Sunday, 19 December 2021, 03:29:14 pm NZDT, Ivie, Michael
> <mivie at montana.edu> wrote:


--
Geoffrey B. Read, Ph.D.
Wellington, NEW ZEALAND
gread at actrix.gen.nz