Description of need:
There has been ongoing discussion for several years about the curator stats displayed on the community / people page. The main gist is that there three issues: (1) there are inconsistencies about the numbers displayed for the first of the three categories (taxa curated), which appears to change over time, sometimes decreasing, sometimes increasing, without it being easy (or perhaps even possible) to understand the reasoning behind these changes; (2) the people who contribute most (thousands of curation actions) are often not displayed, yet curators with few or no actions undertaken are listed by the score. To all users (regular iNatters or casual visitors) this latter issue gives a very misleading sense of the real amount of volunteer curation undertaken, and having lots of curators that have not done any or few of the three “traditional” curatorial actions gives a very strange impression to all; (3) the three “tradional”, listed curation actions are not representative of all curation actions possible…
Feature request details:
I suggest, if I may, to limit the display of curators to the top 10, or twenty or fifty, curators (perhaps in the same format as identifiers and observers) on the community/people page and shift the curation data to each iNatter’s profile page, where it can be posted under the other profile data: e.g.
I don’t mind seeing a long list of curators with 0s, so that’s not a huge issue for me unless that’s what’s causing people to intermittently disappear. As for what stats should be included, I think taxon changes committed is more helpful than added (and you can’t search for changes committed either). Having taxa added would also be good, or make it clear that taxa curated includes that (right now I’m not sure if it does). The only other curator-specific actions I can think of are user (un)suspension (not sure that needs to be publicized) and name editing (also under taxa curated?). Not sure what does or should happen regarding unresolved flags or deleted taxa.
Do people with 0 do anything else? Like, can you be an active curator with 0 curated taxa? If not, why are they shown, if yes, maybe the sorting should be not by curated taxa.
It’s a known issue with people appearing or disappearing. As far as I understand it there are about 500 on the list, but there are more than 500 curators so it picks a fairly random selection of curators to populate the list. A lot of the curators with triple-0’s date from the times when any curator could make someone else a curator, so lots of people were made curators without their knowledge, or even wanting to be curators - so assumptive judgements of those people should probably not be made.
I don’t see the value in reducing the length of the list, what I would be in favour of is making it the top 500 rather than a random 500 and possibly removing all the triple-0 folk. Better still perhaps the triple-0s (who have been curators for more than say 6 months) should be contacted to see if they still want to be curators, and if they don’t, or no reply after a second email, remove them as curators. This would free up the list to make it less random.
I’m definitely for emphasizing and making public the amount of work that curators do, in a much better way that we do now, and I agree with @matthewvosper that a full or perhaps searchable list would be nice.
Today’s list has 3 ghostly grey heads. Curators should be encouraged, since iNat is visual (mostly), to add an avatar. Favourite taxon is even better, you don’t need to reveal your face. I’m the butterfly guy - works for me.
I would rank that display starting with
Noble curators (actually curating)
Presuming more than 500 are active, that curated list could display a random 500 each day.
Followed by (active and useful)
Most IDs for others
With added an ID to an observation NOW! Don’t need to BE a curator for that.
Trailing along at the bottom. If at all - do we need that on a Who are Our Curators display?
I never look at that page. What I would use is - search the curator list for the Butterfly Guy since he uses john_smith (random example)
I’m not even sure what “taxa curated” means. I’m the top ID’er of multiple marine invertebrate taxa including all sponges and have created multiple names, but I’m listed as 0,0,2. Obviously resolving flags and taxon changes aren’t “curating species” because they’re listed separately.
Thanks to you all for input. There are other curatorial actions that haven’t been mentioned (Atlases, their creation and upkeep, for example). As @blue_lotus notes, there is even ambiguity as to what “curation” is and what a curator can do - I put three of the actions in the demo pic, but added “a.n.other” as a hint to the possibility of extending to the full list of actions…
The issue of “Active” curators - this is perhaps part of the bigger picture. When I have checked of late (last few months), the 0-0-0 curators are curatorial iNatters who have logged onto iNat within the last day or two.
I personally think it is more instructive to see the curators who contribute the most, and have each person’s profile page with full curatorial content posted, linked from a searchable list with speciality area(s) highlighted…
Looks as if this could be a big rabbit hole - and I really don’t want to distract from the primary focus of observations, identifications and correct taxonomy underpinning the two. However, for visitors, and for academic purposes, a coherent, clear and functional way to display curator contributions is a must now. This fabulous website has grown so far in 11 years. It would be a great shame to see possible new contributors turned away by an inadequate system of displaying and keeping track of the curatorial side of the volunteer work done.
