Some iNaturalist users, usually inexperienced ones, don’t know how to add multiple photos of an organism to one observation and end up making multiple observations from one encounter with an individual organism. And others, either via a mistake or a technical issue, may upload the same photo multiple times for the same organism. While this can be frustrating, it’s not a problem if the user only does it a few times.
If you come across a duplicate observation, please do not flag it or treat it differently. If you want to identify it, add an identification to the most accurate level you can and include a polite comment explaining to the observer that they should make one observation per encounter with an organism and, if possible, remove extraneous observations. This is usually enough to prevent them from doing it again.
If a user continues to do this despite being asked not to, please submit a ticket and we’ll take a look.
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