Description of problem:
This may or may not be related to the problem, but I was having an issue with the iNaturalist tab before I witnessed this bug. A dialogue box said an that I was timed out from the Forum, or that I switched tabs.
Step 1: Log onto the iNaturalist Forum in another tab with your iNaturalist Account.
Step 2: Look at this observation.
Step 3: Despite being Research Grade, in the Data Quality Assessment window, it states that this observation is not supported by two or more identifications.
This is because only species level is required to reach “research grade”. The first ID is Eacles imperialis ssp. imperialis, a subspecies, and the second ID is Eacles imperialis, the species. Both agree that it is the species Eacles imperialis, which is why the observation is “research grade”.
Research Grade is applied based on the community taxon (on the right side of the observation page), not the observation taxon (in the header of the page). However, the site gives no indication of this, and in fact iNat shares the observation taxon with GBIF and other partners, based on whether the community taxon is RG. In nearly all RG observations these have the same value, but there can be edge cases, such as yours, where observations can be RG with an observation taxon based on an unconfirmed Leading ID. Another example is when an observation is manually made RG at the genus level by somebody checking “community taxon cannot be improved,” while there is still an unconfirmed (but not disagreed-with) Leading species ID. IMHO, both of these are a problem.
As you have probably noticed, based on your interest in peppered moth subspecies, a single initial Leading subspecies ID does not change the community taxon or observation taxon at all. This is a clumsy way of preventing observations with a single species ID and a subsequent subspecies ID from appearing to be “RG subspecies” observations. It also prevents leading subspecies IDs from downgrading RG species-level observations back to Needs-ID. This design has been subject to its own criticism. But, in your case, since the initial ID was at subspecies, the later species ID did change the community taxon and make the observation RG. This is not a “bug” per se, but an inelegant design choice.
If you are not comfortable having your observation RG without a second opinion on the subspecies, you can check “yes the community taxon can still be improved” under the Data Quality Assessment. Just keep in mind that I’m pretty sure you will need to uncheck the box manually (or somebody else will have to counter it with a ‘No’ vote) once somebody agrees with you, to let the observation become RG again.
I think they’re also pointing out that the Data Quality Assessment section says “No” (X) next to “Has ID supported by two or more”, whereas the species ID is in fact supported by two people. Seems that yes/no should be in reference to the community taxon not the observation taxon.
Going forward, this will no longer happen. We’ve updated the algorithm so that an observation will no longer be Research Grade if the observation taxon and the community taxon do not match.
However, this change is not being applied retroactively. So if an observation was RG before today with a community taxon at species and an observation taxon at subspecies, it will remain that way unless it’s reindexed. Observations are reindexed when something gets added to or changed on them, such as a new ID, a DQA vote, a fave, etc. So reindexing an observation like the one described previously will make it Needs ID. I’ve done that with the observation in question here, it’s currently Needs ID.
You’ll also see a new line in the Data Quality Assessment:
So this is an intentional feature now and not a bug like I thought? I was really confused earlier today when this observation didn’t become research graded when it got a supporting, coarser non-disagreeing ID. But I must ask, because this seems slightly flawed, but won’t observations be stuck in Needs ID for forever if they’re identified to subspecies by the observer but more than two people submit species level IDs? Or is that going to only apply for the subspecies itself, and if so, how is that being displayed?
for reference, the extremely small sample size poll I ran a few years ago would suggest that most people expect a ssp ID followed by a sp ID to take the observation to RG at species
Progress, iNat is now ‘working as intended’ and ALSO as I expect it to - can be Needs ID at ssp. Instead of leaping from RG at sp … then jumping straight to RG at ssp. (I waited 4 years)
@tiwane@loarie Perhaps one of you can post this change as an announcement and direct discussion there instead of having it scattered across half-a-dozen threads in bug reports?
As I noted yesterday, I think this is likely to have undesired effects for species where infraspecific IDs are only used by a fraction of the community, though I am somewhat reassured that it sounds like if the first ID is at species level a subsequent infraspecific ID will still make it RG at species instead of preventing the observation from becoming RG at all.
A planned but thus far nonexistent blog post is not useful when the change is already live and there are half a dozen forum threads where it is being discussed.
I’m really curious what would be the impact on initial (author’s) identifications; whether we will witness a decrease in subspecific intial IDs, for observers to have a greater certainty of reaching the famed “Research Grade”.
The fact that this change also makes observations casual if the observation ID is not the same as the community ID when the DQA “ID cannot be improved” is used is also anything but ideal. These observations are not broken; the only “problem” is a mismatch between observation ID and community ID. They should not be casual.
It means that if a user uses the DQA before there is a community consensus – or if this is lost due to a user withdrawing an ID – and doesn’t notice that their action has made the observation casual, a perfectly good observation will essentially end up being thrown out instead of being returned to “needs ID”, because very few people look at casual observations. This affects observations, for example, that have one or more genus IDs and a single active ID at some level between genus and species (subgenus, section etc) and the DQA has been used to take it out of “needs ID”.
It seems that what we need is for the DQA to only be active (both in terms of being votable and in terms of how it affects the observation) as long as the community ID is the same as the observation ID. But note that this would leave us without a way to deal with opted-out observations that the community has tried in vain to refine, so maybe there would need to be an exception (I think this would be covered by something like “community ID must be the same as or more specific than the observation ID” but I would need to work through more possible scenarios).
If I understand this correctly, if an observation is at Research Grade at species level, and if I add a subspecies ID, it gets kicked back to “needs ID”???
The problem is that people do not think of Research Grade as “finished, nothing more to do”. People treat it as the goal, the highest grade. It’s going to seem like observations are being downgraded because somebody added a more specific ID.
