What a nice topic. Self-control. This does not only apply to ID messages or questions about locations & dates but also to emotional taxonomic discussions.
I try to be direct and polite.
When ‘cleaning up’ observations and seeing that certain people so heavily and overconfidently rely on the CV I might get passive aggressive sometimes but I try not to sound so when reminding them that they can also suggest things like ‘Plantae‘ (obvious and easy IDs which do not lead to disagreements especially when the user does not react anymore, I would help them anyways)
Someone might think it’s annoying but I love when people actually care and ask me why I suggested e.g. a different species and do not react emotionally out of spite (because not wanting to be corrected is somehow human as well).
I would not like the other naturalists to feel that they have no knowledge, but to create an atmosphere where they can improve themselves (with no judgement, because we’re here to learn from each other).
I also started from zero on iNaturalist. I accepted all polite criticism and suggestions for improvement. I still remember very helping and insightful comments like they were yesterday. Few nice words can have a big positive effect/impact on others and change their perspective more easily. Why not continuing this legacy?
This discussion reminds me of somewhat parallel situations when I was a student and also when I submitted manuscripts for publication. Whether it was a professor or an editor putting “red ink” all over my writing, and whether it was done neutrally or with a little snark added to the comments, it did sting. But I remembered those corrections and it made me improve my work as a student and as a writer. I still think fondly of some of my harshest reviewers, even if they could sometimes be a little rough. Sometimes improvement has to come with a little pain.
This has been a reason quoted to me by new users leaving iNat–because of the perceived rudeness in correcting IDs. Both people felt intimidated. One was a retired park ranger and the other was an environmental attorney. Both very smart but not biologists and they told me they felt the site seemed competitive or not friendly to new people trying to learn plant names.
I wonder - if I Nat had something like the Forum - John is new (be kind, and helpful)
Would that help? I use the metric I can see - has only a few obs, probably new, explain carefully. Already has 1K obs and still posts Lookit the purty flower!! without leaves and a wide view.
When I was in High School, a national park ranger was not very nice to me because I accidentally got off a poorly marked trail (I went straight and the trail curved). And I’m sure many people that lawyer interacts with are intimidated by them. It’s too bad everybody, everywhere, at all times, can’t be gushing in complimentary graciousness! But geez, surely we can all realize that people sometimes are busy, sometimes having a bad day, sometimes aren’t one to write in a way that gushes complimentary graciousness, and, yes, grumpy people exist in this world–but we move on without it causing us to vacate the premises altogether. Almost weekly, I see someone post on social media about how other people should act on social media. I don’t think we’re going to be successful at social engineering by making these kinds of posts.
Did you hear whether they were getting rude comments or just having their ID corrected without comment?
In a normal social setting if someone labels a photo one thing and I come along and replace their label with another name without talking to them, that’s likely to come across as passive aggressive. But on iNat identifiers can’t leave a nice clarifying comment on every single ID they correct.
It’s really hard to avoid giving offense or sounding condescending, given the diversity of people on iNaturalist. When I review a taxon I develop paragraphs to paste in to explain why I made a change. I’ve received enthusiastic thanks and angry responses to the exact same paragraph! I try to be supportive, I really do, but I can’t always get it right.
Explaining why one is making a change is polite. It increases the chance of education and decreases the chance of offense. However, I get tired or frustrated at the many repeats of the same error and I become terse.
Someone commented, “I leave a lot of comments like “This is not a grass” or “This is not a moss” instead of bumping it up.” Please, do this in addition to bumping the ID up to an appropriate level. I doubt adding the corrected ID makes the experience much worse for the observer and I know this kind of non-correction annoys me as an identifier. I come along later and I have to do it – although maybe I would never even have seen the observation if the correction had been made by the first identifier.
Note: I’m not objecting to not making a correction one is uncertain about! That’s entirely appropriate.
Sometimes I have to stop and realize what seems terse to me is only a language difference. It’s not personal, nor intended, and sometimes it’s the way I read it to myself. I don’t often respond verbally to comments, but will silently withdraw.
When it comes to ID, I don’t like situations where I feel a need to “teach” nor where i am being “taught”.
I like fact-based comments on votes and often, when i see the other person much more experienced in that field, i am asking actively for more detail on their decision.
That’s creating controverse situations where people are not willing to explain themselves or where people show questionable observations. This is for me not part of taxonomic identification and is still difficult to deal with. Rather than getting explosive (which is part of my temprament) , with age i learned to escape to cynism, being excessively polite or completely step away if i conclude that those people cannot be helped. All no good solutions but as neutral as i often can be.
For me, in an ideal world, the ID process would be cleaned from a need of that sort of social teaching. I am not here to correct people’s social habits.
Or does it come in response to shortcomings of the iNaturalist platform, namely the lack of a ‘disagree’ button, or the difficulty of picking an appropriate level? Are identifiers really to blame here?
that is a deliberate choice. To avoid identifiers yelling NO, it is NOT that. We are supposed to add a ’constructive’ ID, whether correct, or at least broadly correct. Not an orchid, it’s a dicot.
I don’t view providing fact-based comments as different from teaching. I mean, I provide such comments in order to explain, to teach. If I didn’t want to communicate how the plant was misidentified, I wouldn’t comment, just provide an ID and move on. Obviously, I’m missing a distinction you’re making. What’s the difference, for you? Is there something about how the comments are presented that seems like teaching rather than, what, fact-based comments?
I really internalized this when my colleague got tut-tutted by a client years ago for using the word “educate” instead of “inform”. Small nuance but big impact in feeling.
I refer to “teaching” more in the sense of the “red ink” example given above by jnstewart.
More in the sense of teaching habits than teaching content, as you understand it.
If “teaching” means to distinguish bees by wing pattern, that’s what i want to learn.
I’ll never ever be expert for everything i observe. Therefore i consider it more as constructive exchange while accepting my own limits.
If “teaching” means telling people that their picture shows no evidence of life, that’s not what i want to teach nor do i have the impression those people are much eager of being taught.
Any way to take this apart from IDing is very welcome.
I think I can see this distinction, but personally don’t feel it’s that important, but some evidently do. It’s been said many times that if you remember no facts from your school days, you’ve hopefully at least been taught how to inform yourself (you’ve learned how to learn) and to think in different ways. I suppose that’s being educated versus just acquiring a bunch of facts.
I agree. I appreciate everyone who has answered questions and shared their knowledge with me, so I like having the opportunity to do that for someone else. And once or twice, I’ve actually clicked the wrong option, and someone asked why I IDed it the way I did. That gave me the opportunity to go back and check my ID and correct it if needed.
I find it surprising/interesting how many species are identifiable by very specific things like the cloaca (or, in the case of some larger species, most easily identifiable by their tails). I like to ID sheep and goats and sometimes deer. I’m not sure how many times I’ve commented “I think it’s such-and-such species but I would need to see a photo of its tail to be sure”.