What would you like to see? Current process and on-page Instructions allows for uploading multiple images and video for a so called Encounter. This is not in fact how the system is functioning as each image (and each animal in an image) is in fact defined as an Encounter.
How would this functionality help you?
Data submitted this way should be parsed into multiple Encounters while staying associated with the Original sighting data as entered by the user or extracted from the EXIF data (Only one data set can be entered for all of the images submitted anyway). Today I know of no way to go back from an Encounter submitted this way with multiple images and recreate as a Sighting. Since I would have to delete images from the Encounter and create separate new Encounters for each image.
The system is actually submitting an Encounter: one animal at a location and point in time. You can submit as many photos of that one animal as you want through the form. This comes both from Wildbook’s history in application for more solitary animals and with the need to support mark-recapture models, which need to be able to determine who-when-where (Encounter) for any modeling.
If we find…through machine-learning-based detection…that >1 animal exists in any one photo, then we know that the definition of an Encounter has been broken. There are multiple animals present. We do our best to split additional Annotations to new Encounters, looking to preserve this definition of an Encounter. These Encounters are linked by a common Sighting (formerly “Occurrence”) to help preserve associations among the data (and animals).
However, if we’re given 3 photos with 7-9 animals present in each photo…all bets are off. Which annotations belong to which animals across each of the photos? Curating inter-photo relationships within a single submission is a much more complex UI interplay between user and AI as both may have knowledge about the photos to suggest who-is-who in which photo. Future Wildbook versions will support this Sighting-based submission. Currently, we do not. The submission form is intended for one animal at a time data entry with some additional smarts to split off Encounters when it is obvious that >1 animal is present.
If you want the ability to “Report a Sighting”, that’s a feature request. It seems you are more trying to denote that you think the language on the existing system is confusing and should be renamed. Is that correct @PaulK? That’s more of a support concern, and is addressed by Jason’s response above.
Feature Request Yes, I am requesting addition of a Feature for “Report a Sighting” because I believe that will better support our interactions with Citizen Scientists.
Support Request ?? I would like the verbiage in the current drag box to read “Drag a single image here to upload, or click here to open the file dialogue box and manually select an individual image file. Do not load video files here please. (If you have many files to upload or video files you wish to contribute, please contact the ACW site admin at info@tech4conservation.org to arrange for a more efficient transfer)”
Unless you can show me how to access video files that are uploaded so we can extract stills and also how to parse out a group of images submitted this way to individual encounters in a Sighting ?
