I agree that this is a shame, mostly because this shouldn’t revolve around “who you are”, but rather “what you’ve done”.
I think any reputation system should take into account that sometimes you don’t need to be an expert to make an expert-level (ie, high accuracy) ID. You don’t need to be an anthropologist to ID a human. Likewise, most people can ID a reasonable image of a Great White Shark.
So if it’s done right, I don’t have a lower reputation than you because of your so-called “education” or “expertise” - it’s because I screw up all the time and you don’t.
I would oppose making identifications more complicated. (I have no opinion about removing the Agree button – that wouldn’t make a difference to me, though it is handy.) Last night I unwound after an evening out by identifying iNaturalist observations. Nothing difficult – I didn’t have the brain power for that – but lots of common weeds and well-displayed North American birds. They need checking, too. I thought about the impact of a little questionaire popping up for each identification, and realized I’d have played solitaire on the computer instead. (Just a data point for you all.)
This issue is related also to the local or widespread lack of expert identifiers. Trying to recruit more experts or to encourage those who already are here to contribute with identifications could be helpful.
I come from two Italian forums where only moderators could approve an identification while “common” users could only propose one. I do not know if this solution could be applied to iNat where there are much more observations/day,
Maybe the criteria for species level IDs could be more rigorous than for the higher classifications, especially Phylum or Class. We don’t need more roadblocks between Unknown and Plants, but maybe we do need some more for the species.
Seriously, there’s a limit to how much trouble I’m willing to go through to mark something as a spider or a dicot. But for species level, I’d be willing to check a box. Because periodically I forget to double check the distribution and mistakenly ID a Red Sea fish as the visually similar Indo-Pacific fish.
Part of the problem is that we’re trying to prevent “thank you” or “you must know your stuff” agreements. Maybe there needs to be a Thanks or Like button for IDs, so you can tell the person who provided the ID that you’ve seen it and appreciate it. I’m not sure I’d use it but I don’t auto-agree either. (I don’t even auto-agree with myself… :-). But many of our younger users were brought up to acknowledge posts in social media with Likes or other responses. The UI needs to work in that universe too.
The ability to withdraw one’s incorrect id is not immediately apparent to new user as this function is hidden under a drop down menu. As a result new user tend to click on the agree button instead of withdrawing their incorrect id.
I would like to suggest the following :
Move the [Withdraw] function from drop down to a button next to the compare button so that this function is more apparent
Treat the agree button as a ‘thank you’ and add a ‘confirm’ button next to the agree button.
We should treat agreeing as concurrence without validating the suggested id while confirm as the person has independently validated the suggested id.
So agree is treated as thank you and confirm is taken as id.
“Treat the Agree button like a Thanks button and add a Confirm button.”
NO! That goes against user experience design best practices. Don’t change the behavior of a long-established control unless the workflow changes. We should instead rename Agree to Confirm and add a Thanks button.
Please: if a Thanks Button is ever added, can there be an option to switch off notification when people do this. Those who thank in comments are already enough to clutter up my dashboard and irritate me no end.
I dont want ‘thanks’ (and definitely not mindless thanks from a button press): rather thank me by loading up more observations for me to identify.
I do second the request to turn off thanks notifications (not sure whether I’d use it myself). may best be posted in the notifications brainstorm, if it would ever be implemented (not a given)
