Mushroom Observer uses a scale of: No opinion, Okay, Useful, Good, Great but I wasn’t able to find any documentation on guidelines for those
BugGuide editors subjectively move low quality / “useless” images to their “Frass” section, which, as experienced myself/heard anecdotally from others too, is a good way to make people stop using BugGuide
I rather like the idea of a “great photo” button. For me the "fave " button kind of wants everything - a great photo, all the identifying features and particularly something rare or unusual. I do sometimes comment “nice photo” or something like that, but I think I would click a button far more often. I think this would be a nice way to affirm excellence (or maybe even just good luck) without the discouragement that might come from an unflattering rating.
The problem is not the intention, but rather how it is applied. Adding some kind of ranking system will invariably lead to people ranking based quality of the photograph rather than simply the quality of the observation. I see it all the time on eBird, which uses a 1-5 star ranking system for the photographs. Many times a photograph is given a low ranking because it is not someones idea of a “pretty” picture despite the fact it clearly shows the identifying features of the bird and is perfectly acceptable documentation of the species.
People being told their photography skills are not good, even if the photograph is good enough for a confident ID, will absolutely discourage users and I can promise you that it will happen.
I am hoping to be able to retrieve good quality photos of a given taxon. At present, I often have to dig for a while to find the best, or even good photos of some taxa. Others already pointed out that a ranking system would discourage some users. I understand that concern. I suggested an alternative to low-to-high ranking—that is, a “great photo” button. See my above comment.
Mushroom Observer uses a ranking system (Okay, Useful, Good, Great), and it seldom gets used, but amazing photos are usually praised with “good” or “great” clicks. Observations are thus sortable by quality. It is useful when trying to find good photos, good photos are valuable. I get that iNat is not a photography website, but photography is an aspect of natural history/being a naturalist, and there is an enormous cache of great photos of iNat. Most are cc-licensed and thankfully you can filter by photo-licensing (e.g. for a presentation to your local natural history club). Why not also by quality?
excellent idea! This also circumvents the discouragement concern.
Field guides, presentations, learning what an organism looks like, viewing an organism’s characters. Not all research is simply counting things in transects.
MO users were citing the low-quality of fungus observations. Onaverage MO probably has better fungi photos since MO is more specialized and primarily used by avid amateurs, this is to be expected. But often with fungi, good quality photos, (especially in the sense of my 2nd criterion—shows identifying characters well) is synonymous with good observation. Not entirely.
Thanks for the link. Looks like this exact conversation has been had, in a private group, so perhaps it’s good to recapitulate here?
“I am hoping to be able to retrieve good quality photos of a given taxon. At present, I often have to dig for a while to find the best, or even good photos of some taxa… photography is an aspect of natural history/being a naturalist”
Sure, and I get that. But a good photo that shows the subject clearly and with needed identifying features present doesn’t necessarily mean that the photo has great composition, perfect lighting and/or a spectacular pose and nice background. My concern would be that the second set of criteria would be what is being rated rather than simply the first set. A picture of a black blob 100 feet up in the air and someone expecting us to believe it is whatever species of bird they say it is is obviously poor quality and not at all useful. However, an in focus shot of the same bird perched on the eave of your house at high noon probably wont make it into Nat Geo or the win any Audubon photography awards, yet it can still be a great reference photo. But if people were (and I believe they would) ranking based on how “pretty” the image is, its going to get shoved to the bottom of the pile.
I do think the “great photo” option rather than an actual ranking system would be a good compromise.
Having thought about it a bit more, I think one should be quite cautious about rating all photos. I think that even keen iNatters might start to favour things that photograph well. I would guess that small things that are both common and very alert might often not get uploaded if one started to care about a photographic quality rating. Our local virtual museum actually started a special project for painted lady butterflies, because there were far fewer photos submitted than one would expect for such a common insect.
I really can’t think of any down side to the “great photo” button so long as it was worded in a way that makes it clear that the possibility of an unambiguous ID is a prerequisite for a great iNat photo.
I’m not really sure where that leaves us for voting for this as a feature request. I would like to vote for the “great photo” button, but I would not want to feel that my ordinary photos were being judged.
As I’ve said above, I don’t really think we need a photo-ranking system. But if the consensus is that we should have one, I would much rather it wasn’t called a “Great photo” button. That’s surely destined to become a Facebook-type “Like” button very quickly, and not result in the best photos for ID rising to the top (which was, after all, the original aim of this thread). If it were called a “Useful/helpful photo for ID” button, the good/bad value judgement is much reduced, and at least people might stop to think about whether they really know the important features for the ID of that taxon before they click it.
Neither of those statements are shaming. If someone says “I wish I could help but I can’t see detail in your photo”, how is that them shaming you? I’ve had people say that about my observations and it just makes me go “Oh well, better luck next time”. Even the best photographers take blurry photos, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
This is a great idea! It took me a lot of trial and error before I was able to figure out what details I needed to be focusing on for observations. An eye catching photo or artistic photo is not always going to be the best thing for identification’s sake, but I think that’s what most people are going to be focusing on at first.
That’s one of the original aims, the other is simply to be able to find good quality photos—e.g. I may want a photo of an example of a Cordyceps s.l. mushroom, for a presentation, yet I don’t care about species ID confidence for that purpose. I may search family Cordycipitaceae, then sort by photo quality rating.
I think that’s possibly a good idea, but I personally would also like to be able to retrieve/sort photos by aesthetic quality (in addition to documentation quality). I might just want to find an eye-catching photo, e.g. for a title slide on a presentation.
Let me summarize some points:
The quality of photos on iNat ranges from awful to awesome. Photo quality can be judged by 2 criteria (1. aesthetic, 2. good documentation) and these are often, not always, independent of ID confidence. Sometimes the photo quality makes a photo a more exemplar image of a taxon (especially if it shows ID characters, but it helps if it’s also not blurry). Even though sometimes an observation with an average photo has 100% ID, another observation with equal ID confidence could have a superior photo, with superior demonstration of a taxon’s characters (e.g. it shows more of them). The latter photo would more deserve to be the taxon’s default thumbnail, or go in a field guide, or be at the top of a taxon’s search for someone trying to get an idea of what a taxon looks like.
Surely if there is a photo quality rating, it won’t replace ID confidence, and one should be able to argue ID independent of an observation’s photo quality (other things matter, e.g. season, location etc.). Mushroom Observer, e.g. has both an ID confidence rating of an observation, and a photo quality rating for individual photos.
My thinking was that the best quality photos should be retrievable or maybe sent to the top of a search by default. It would help for users (and non users surfing the web) to learn what a taxon looks like, and enjoy to good photos. Natures beauty is also an important aspect of natural history, and good nature photography serves to inspire people. Of course you could also sort on other criteria (date posted, date observed, ID confidence, photo licensing etc.). Date added, is the default, and it could be kept this way, so that photo quality is not a distraction.
So far, I see only 2 legitimate concerns of the photo quality rating :
by not added a photo quality rating, less-skilled photographers are more included and maybe that increases participation and encourages people.
it would be a distraction from Identification, which is a more important function of iNat.
The other concern—that a rating system would actively discourage some—I think has been resolved by suggestions above, i.e: hidden rating system, “great photo” button, a useful-to-great scale rather than bad-to-great.
Sorting observations by Faves will pretty much always turn up aesthetically pleasing photos and/or excellent documentary photos for a taxon, in my experience.
This was mentioned, and that is not always the case. People fave an observation for a number of reasons. E.g. I fave observations often based on rarity of the find, or collections that I vouchered, etc., and it has nothing to to with photo quality. If you search my pet genus, and sort for faves, the list will have little to do with photo quality.
Agreed, but what I’m saying is that you will usually find pictures that fit both categories being discussed here if you sort by faves. So I’m not convinced that a photo quality rating system would be a big improvement.