Adding unnecessary identifications to unique observations?

[grampianshiker]

@sedgequeen

Sigh. Communication can be hard.

So true!

[spiphany]

@jasonhernandez74

The general trend of this and previous threads on this topic is, “don’t be brave enough to suggest a meaningful ID.”

No it isn’t. There is a difference between “do a bit of checking before adding an ID” (which is what those of use who spend a lot of time correcting careless IDs are advocating) and “don’t ID anything because there is a 0.001% chance that it could be something else” or “only ID if you are a certified expert in the taxon” (which nobody here is advocating).

[rqy-yong]

I see the value of fun, but there does seem to be a class of iNat user who seems to want to have it both ways, i.e. if you read their profiles they’re trying to set themselves up as “informed enthusiasts”, giving the impression they have some degree of serious basis and expertise to the IDs they give, but if you call them out for merely supporting previous IDs or even just ask why they think it might be the thing they say it is, they then say they were just being flippant and having fun. Some of them don’t even respond; they just wordlessly ape what another person does. That bugs me way more than things like the 10th ID on my African elephant obs (which, to be clear, does sometimes bug me, but I’m mostly over it).

This is less noticeable on obvious things like elephants and much more so on things like entomofauna, many of which are incredibly niche and dependent on genuine experts for good IDs. As much as I agree with the general principle of people having fun, those observations feel intrinsically more valuable as they are often rare, and given governmental databases, policy-makers and actual academics now regularly tap from iNat, having the wrong names repeatedly but ignorantly backed up becomes a genuine concern.

[taylorse]

@spiphany

I don’t personally feel that adding extra IDs merely as insurance against an eventuality that might or might not come to pass is a particularly good use of my time when there are thousands of observations that have not been reviewed by anyone.

Yeah, I never go through intentionally adding extra IDs in order to protect against something which might or might not ever happen. That would indeed not be a good use of my time.

However, sometimes I’m looking at observations for research, or out of curiosity, or just to look at pretty photos. And since I am already looking at it, adding an extra confirming ID is probably at least a tiny bit helpful, so long as the effort involved is negligible. (If I have to get out six different books, then no, I’m not identifying that. But if it’s a Yellow-headed Blackbird, I’m going to identify it.)

@rqy-yong

they then say they were just being flippant and having fun.

To be clear, I meant that it is fun to identify things that you are able to identify. I enjoy identifying Yellow-headed Blackbirds, so if I see one, I will identify it. There doesn’t have to be any more reason than that (for adding good-faith identifications).

Adding or agreeing with joke IDs because you think it’s fun is acting in bad faith. Adding careless identifications because you think it’s fun is just careless. But it’s the being careless and the acting in bad faith that are the problems in those cases, not the having fun.