Clone Without Annotations when Bulk Importing

What Wildbook are you working in?
Seals Wildbook

What is the entire URL out of the browser, exactly where the error occurred?
https://seals.wildme.org/import.jsp?taskId=e87b4b24-afd7-4486-bad3-7975c64cef4d

Can you describe what the issue is you’re experiencing?
For most of the larger bulk imports I have been doing (more than 100 encounters) Wildbook will create several cloned encounters. This occurs after the import has been sent to detection. These clones are identical to another encounters in the bulk import (except do not have an assigned ID. I have just been deleting them so far. I am wondering what is causing them to be made.

Can you provide steps on how to reproduce what you’re experiencing?
Import a large spreadsheet into Seals Wildbook and then send it to detection. Then scroll down to the bottom of the import and sometimes there will be several extra cloned encounters.

Hi @CindyE

Cloned encounters happen when more than one body or head annotation are made in the same image. The system assumes that more than one head or more than one body means multiple animals are present in the image. Since 1 encounter = 1 animal seen at a specific point in time, it will clone the encounter if it detects multiple animals.

Do you see this happening when there’s only one seal photographed? If so, post the URLs to those specific encounters and I can take a look at what’s going on.

Thank you for the explanation!

Yes I am seeing this happen when there is only one seal photographed. Here are the URLs to two examples of this:

Thank you! Have you noticed this with other species aside from Phoca vitulina?

No I haven’t, as our work is only with Phoca vitulina.

Thanks! While I look into this, I also wanted to let you know you can go to Administer > Data Integrity > Annotations Duplicated in Two or More Encounters for a quick way to find encounters that share the same photo. This will help with any clone cleanup and any accidental double uploads.

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Have you been able to find what is causing these clones to be created?

No, not yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I have an update. Thanks for your patience.

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I have an update for you! The detection sensitivity was turned up too high so we’ve lowered the threshold slightly. Testing shows that only one annotation appears per seal now. Let me know if you run into issues with future uploads with seals missing annotations so we can refine the sensitivity again if needed.

That said, this doesn’t retroactively apply to encounters you’ve already uploaded. Those extra annotations will need to be manually deleted as you come across them or you can use the Data Integrity tool path I shared earlier to proactively find them and clean them up.

Another option if you haven’t begun matching yet is to delete the affected bulk imports and re-import your spreadsheets.

Alright this is great to know! I will let you know if I run into any issues.

Thank you for helping with this!

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