Are concurring ID's posted to a Research Grade observation useful?

+1 for yes to adding extra IDs.

  • There are many wrong Research Grade records in iNaturalist (e.g. school kids agreeing with each other, deliberate misidentifications). A third or fourth concurring ID helps to affirm that the ID is probably correct
  • Research Grade is mostly useful for its social media / friendly competition / gamification aspect. When downloading iNaturalist records for research, I will always exclude records with only two confirming IDs for which one of those IDs is not a known expert. As stated above, the percentage of 2-ID research grade obs is too high for that dataset to be useful
  • You can filter lists by known competent identifiers, but only if they have bothered to add an ID in the first place
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