For me the internet and all the scams has made me a skeptic and I trust no one unless I have had enough interaction with them to develop trust. It sucks because i used to be the opposite and trusted everyone untill given a reason not to. My first thoughts when I read his post was what scam can someone do with this request for quality photos of my corals along with information about them? The first thing that came to mind was theft. A coral presented for sale scam using my photos was the first thing that came to mind.
Then we introduce building some sort of data base for AI based on information obtained from hobbiest which may or may not be accurate/correct. If the information provided is correct that's great. If it is incorrect then we just have more misinformation polluting the data base that more and more people are starting to accept as fact. Eventually they'll have the ability to spoon feed us the information they want us to have and use that to control out thoughts and beliefs because they will be based on the information that we have been fed.
EDIT: Fortunately I'm old enough that I'll be long gone before that time comes.
I'm sorry I'm just not the same trusting person I was before the Internet. I'm not happy to no longer be that person but as the saying goes it is what it is.
Im not accusing Varun of any wrong doing but I wanted to explain why my scepticism prevents me from offering help.
