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

Speaking from experience, I agree with RG observations if I am very sure that’s what that is, because occasionally someone who doesn’t actually know what it is will add an incorrect ID and mess up the RG (I’m meaning an ID that’s obviously wrong, not a genuine disagreement ID)

But if I leave an extra ID on that already RG observation, it makes it easier to get back to RG, or may even keep it from going to needs ID. This happens decently often.

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Just want to add that sometimes additional IDs after an observation has reached Research Grade can be unhelpful if the species is ever split. Some observations can be correctly identified many times, but then the taxon is split and it becomes necessary to specify the identification to one of the split varieties-- superfluous identifications are a hindrance in this regard.

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+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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Yet another aspect:
Observations are also here to teach us. I like to call it “target practice”. Having IDed myriads of e.g. mediterranean goby observations I am slowly getting good at it. So, many of my IDs for RG observations have been given solely for my personal training. I’d advise everybody to do the same.

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Interesting to see the stats on iNat’s appeal for funds.

Each hour on iNat
5K new obs
12K IDs

So - if the IDs were going 2 to each new obs, we wouldn’t have a backlog. In an ideal world.

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@kuchipatchis already alluded to a problem with the “consensus”:

I recently had to opt-out of community ID just to get useful information; people were identifying it as “Dicots,” saying that my ID was “totally wrong,” but offering nothing beyond that. After I opted out, I finally got a follow-up comment which mentioned a plant family. That was my first clue that I had chosen a section in the wrong family; that comment was my cue to change my ID to one in the correct family, and it never would have happened if I had accepted the consensus of “Dicots.”

Did you tag or message the IDers asking about it? Most are usually happy to explain the reasons why to anyone who expresses an interest, but very few users seem to do so. And many people just ID one particular species they are extremely familiar with, so the “I have no idea what it is, but it definitely isn’t x” IDs are the best they can offer.

However, the part of my post you quoted is referring to a different problem - the issue there is that 3 agreeing IDs on an observation can become 2 IDs and one unintentional disagreement when a user doesn’t have their account set to update with taxonomic changes.

For example, Species 1 undergoes a taxonomic change and is split into Species 1 and Species 2. All the observations within the declared range of Species 2 get re-identified automatically as Species 2. Three people have identified an observation back when it was Species 1, and two of them are set to auto-update, so their IDs change accordingly. The person who is not set to automatically update has their ID stay at Species 1, which then makes the whole observation stay at genus level.

Basically all I’m saying is if you want to add extra supporting IDs, have your account set to update with taxon changes, or you may unintentionally mess up the RG status in the future.

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additional IDs for a RG are definitely useful if the observation is tricky.

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There was a discussion about this recently. The thread was closed because it was not considered by the moderators to be doing any good; but one thing in it that I had wanted to address is pertinent here. One person oblected that the way iNaturalist handles the taxon changes constitutes falsifying data. I knew immediately what he meant, but nobody else picked up on it, and the thread was closed before I could comment. Here is an example:


In this screenshot, the part circled in red is a false statement: jennpo did not suggest an ID of Heptapleurum actinophyllum. A true statement would be “iNaturalist changed an ID.” Now, maybe most of you don’t mind having these changes attributed to you, and maybe you think it is a small thing; but it obviously mattered to the person who brought up falsification of data.

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I read this as “jennpo suggested an ID that iNaturalist considers identical to Australian Umbella Tree, the name iNaturalist prefers now.” So I don’t consider it a falsification. I can see why some people might, though.

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I agree with all of this, especially two ID agreements being fairly low standard for RG. I was surprised by that when I was first starting out on iNat. I understand why; it would be nearly impossible for any observation to reach RG if any more IDs were required. Even still, whenever I’m leafing through projects and filters that I know have much lower identification activity, I support any RG observations that I can confidently agree with. However, I do focus on posts with one or less IDs more often than not. Either way, it’s good work!

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For general ID activity I focus on observations which haven’t reached RG but if I open an observation which I can confidently identify, I will almost always add a suggested ID even if it has reached RG status. Sometimes because it’s a taxon of interest, sometimes just because I’ve not refreshed the Identify page after opening it so it’s still showing observations which have reached RG since I opened the page.
Personally I do think it’s a good idea to add an ID if there are only a few even if they are all correct but don’t spend any time actively browsing them.

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I must admit I hadn’t noticed this was possible until reading this thread. It would have saved me a lot of time over the last few weeks because someone has been going through what seems like every observation I’ve ID’d or posted over the last couple of years for a fair number of taxa!

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There are taxon specialists who periodically go thru recent obs … and I get swamped with a wave of notifications. That is why I unfollow as soon as I can, and keep the interesting discussions and fresh stuff rolling in.

Wow! Thank you for that!

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The bee I got in my bonnet recently was due to someone doing this for a wide range of taxa going back a couple of years. I’ve now learned to unfollow but that can only be done for other people’s observations. I’d have still got all the notifications for my own observations.

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