The request is to add a button to the edit taxon page e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa//edit which would block non-curators from editing the taxon photos. Such a block already exists for Homo sapiens, so hopefully it appears the feature already exists for admins and this request extends that ability to curators.
This is to prevent the revolving door of photos on charismatic taxa (garter snakes, plantae, cats, etc) where people frequently change the photo for self promotion of their own photo.
I think Iâd be OK for observose, higher-level taxa. In general I havenât come across many real issues but Iâm definitely not as into the taxonomy as many others are. If I see a new photo for, say, Plantae, Iâm usually thinking âOK, well I guess that photo has its time in the sun until it gets changed.â
I must admit to being rather shocked when I discovered a while back that any user, such as myself, could add or change a taxon photo.
The proposal of locking them seems okay as a way to curb abuse, but I see a couple of issues.
First, I donât think curators should be able to lock taxon photos when the photo is their own. That could obviously lead to abuse and unnecessary tensions.
Second, what if a curator locks a poor photo that is the best available at that time, but then quits as curator. It would then be a hassle to try to get the photo updated/improved. Perhaps the locks should have an expiration period and/or the number of photos that a curator can lock should be limited to, e.g. 10.
Given that this feature request comes after a lengthy discussion of pros and cons of different approaches, do you want to propose any more specific details about how this would work? Iâm thinking that a more detailed proposal might get more support and it might be easier for iNat staff to determine whether itâs feasible.
For example:
Is the button available to all curators and for any taxon?
If photos are locked for a taxon, does that mean that curators can still edit them (I think thatâs your intent), or do they need to unlock the taxon?
What guidance would you suggest about how and when curators should use the âLock Photosâ button?
Taxon photos more then ever have importance and real impact. Because the CV now uses any taxon photos when using the CV. Very poor taxon image choices, even if the 12th one can have an impact on 100s if not 1000s of other people trying to use the CV to identify their observations.
I strongly support something changing to help lock more taxa from harmful photo changes.
In case thereâs any confusion about this, the taxon photos do not have any special role in determining the species suggestions that computer vision (CV) offers. Those are based on the similarity between the photo on the current observation and an essentially random selection of several hundred photos of each species that was chosen for CV training (with some logic to prioritize related species and those expected nearby).
But once CV has determined its top suggestions for your observation, for each species the first photo it will show you is the most similar one it can find among the taxon photos for that species.
iNat has always shown users taxon photos as examples of what a species looks like. The only difference is that instead of always showing you these in the same sequence, the first photo is now the one that seems most similar to your observation. This means that if you saw a caterpillar, youâre more likely to see pictures of various caterpillars, and if you saw a plant with fruits, youâll probably see other plants with fruits.
Itâs still important for the 12 taxon photos to include a good range of representative views of that species in a sequence from âmost typicalâ through âother common formsâ to âimportant variantsâ.
Personally I have not come across any situations where there have been âedit warsâ over taxon photos so I canât comment much on how useful this would be. But I certainly think it would be best to limit this to taxa with a certain number of observations. Thereâs no point in locking out non-curators for taxa with only a handful of sightings.
I would assume it would be something curators would only do if there were some good reason, such as edit wars or possibly very high level taxa - which I canât imagine are likely to come up very often?
(The closest Iâve seen to an edit war was once when I looked at taxon photos for a species and decided that flower, flower, flower, flower, flower, flower wasnât very helpful, so I edited to add photos of seeds, leaves etc. - and next time I looked at the taxon, found someone had changed it more or less back to flowers that werenât even very representative of the flowers Iâve seen. I decided I couldnât be bothered fighting and left it - though, to be fair, I might care more with some other species.)
If there are repeated changes, please flag the taxon and tag the users involved in the changes to have a discussion. Staff may lock a taxonâs photos in the event of an unresolved edit war.
For those who have had issues with users repeatedly changing taxon photos, has this recourse been used, or has it been used and not led to a solution? Or is the problem so prevalent that further limitations are necessary?
I do think having representative, diagnostic taxon photos is important (for the reasons noted above), especially for species and some other lower-ranked taxa. However, it feels like it gets more difficult to pick representative taxon photos for higher-level taxa (e.g. what is a ârepresentativeâ plant?), and it may not really be as vitally important, since such high-level taxa are not usually suggested by the CV.
I do get a bit thrown off when taxon photos change for taxa I see a lot (plantae, tracheophyta, monocots, dicots), but itâs also kind of neat to see what new picture gets chosen. Still, itâs not really that representative or helpful when 9 of the 11 taxon photos for Kingdom Plantae are tracheophytes (and 6 of those are dicotsâŚ). In addition, many of those (admittedly very cool) photos are of species with under 50 global observations. The help page does say photos should âshow diagnostic features of the taxonâ and âFocus on the most common morphs and variants rather than unusual onesâ (though perhaps that advice is geared more towards species, not kingdoms).
Would people be more inclined to pick Angiospermae rather than Plantae for their flower photos if the leading taxon photos for those werenât both flowering plants, and the latter were an alga or something? I donât know (and I suspect adding algae pics as Plantae taxon photos will get me into an edit war from which I would not emerge victoriousâŚ). Maybe the leading photos like we currently have for Animalia, Vertebrata, Mammaliaâa tiled group of 4-9 different photosâwould be better for such diverse high-level taxa?
For ease of implimentation, I was thinking it should be available under every taxon.
If photos are locked, yes I think it would still make sense for curators to be able to edit them. That way if somebody flags the taxon and requests a genuinely good photo to be added, then it could be added.
For guidance, I think a lot of that was already laid out in the other thread, but it would be for taxa which have their photos frequently changed (can see via the taxon history) especially where one user is repeatedly modifying the photos.
For all the other curator available settings on iNat, they can be changed by any curator. I intend for this to be the same. Therefore, if a locked taxon had a poor photo, a flag could be made to either have any curator update the photo or unlock the photos.
Heads up that I removed the links above as we aim to keep discussions on the forum general rather than discuss individual cases where usersâ actions may be perceived as inappropriate. (If need be, feel free to use the direct messaging system to discuss specific cases)
As someone who has many times added photos to species without a photo, or changed out to a good photo from a shyte one that was best available, I would think this is a good idea to have an observation count cut off. Iâm guessing curators donât need more work, when there are plenty of non curators who are very good in their areas of expertise.
Another option would be not locked by default, but taxons doing weird things, you could lock to curator only (how much does that actually occur? no idea, i donât do much in âcharismaticâ species haha).
I have never seen a taxon photo war. Maybe thatâs because I confine my fiddling to the species level and generally to species with fewer than 100 observations.
Thatâs my feeling, too. I can see locking the taxon photos in cases where less-diagnostic photos tend to be promoted, but in most cases, I donât see why it matters. The OP mentioned cats; how is it harmful to rotate pictures of cats?