Agreeing IDs on observations with no media

Random question for anyone who might know: I’ve noticed a couple of particular users have put a lot of agreeing IDs on observations that have no media. Obviously this not ideal, and is just an attempt to inflate their ID count, since there’s absolutely no way they could know if the observer actually saw that organism or not. But does this have any negative consequences beyond that, if the observations are going to remain casual? It won’t be expanding species ranges or influencing the CV, right?

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Without pictures, this seems pretty useless. However, I’m not sure what happens if the observers decide to add pictures to these. Would they go straight to RG?

Are you sure they id that when observation was casual? I saw many observations that lost their media, ids added with cv and no photos, and someone agreeing with them.

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I saw at least one where the IDer asked if there was a photo, was told no, and added an ID anyway - but you’re right, it’s very possible most of them were identified when a photo was present but has now been deleted.

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That is weird then, unless they were together (but then wouldn’t be asking about photos), it doesn’t affect the cv, as you said maybe it will affect which species are seen nearby if id is wrong? Not sure if casuals are used for that. But I have no idea why would somebody do that.

I don’t think casual is used for ‘seen nearby’ determinations. If that was the case, I think we’d all be seeing a lot more cultivated species being suggested by CV.

Or it could just be a friend, not motivated by ID counts. But still not ideal, for sure.

Yes, I think they would, if missing media were the only deficiency in the data. One way to avoid this might be vote Yes on “Can the community ID still be improved” so that it goes to “Needs ID” instead if a photo is added.

[EDIT: moved this question to its own topic]

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It’s also possible that the user who confirmed the ID was present when the uploader observed the unphotographed organism, so he can testify its veridicity with firsthand knowledge.

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Much of this is based on iNat’s new feature: IDs based on smell. A user with the right equipment can record an organism’s smell and another user with the proper equipment can take a sniff and make an ID. Of course to those of us without compliant olfactory replicators it will seem like there is no media attached.

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Were there any explanatory notes on these observations? I have, when appropriate, confirmed an ID where I could not confidently identify from the picture alone, but could do so from the combination of the picture and the notes. I can, therefore, conceive of the possibility of identifying from only the notes.

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Ages ago someone flagged a supporting ID because the observation had no media. When I checked the observations of the person supporting the ID they had the same organism/date/location in their list also without media. So I think this is plausible (and as far as I know ok although perhaps not ideal)

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Ahh I should have guessed! You just scratch the screen a bit and take a sniff, right?

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