From trespassing to taking pictures of your camera’s photo, what attribute of naturalists annoys you the most?
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For sure trespassing. While I understand you may accidentally stray onto private land without realizing it, people who knowingly do it give all naturalists a bad name.
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Holding things you shouldn’t touch, and especially doing it wrong, painful way for an animal.
I’m not against nest photos, but against adult people, who knows what they do, stalking nests without any scientific purpose.
And of course ignorance of older (than me) people, something I’m naturally against.
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For me. Freezing to take a pic of something, and other people waltzing past you even though they can see you taking a pic disturbing your shot.
Or better yet, walking into your line and asking what you see.
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By far: Making useless IDs of unidentified observations like “Plants” or “Life” …
(Yes, I know it is in the guidelines and encouraged: but that does not make it seem any more useful, than not being identified at all)
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@tonyrebelo see conversation here for why those IDs are important for moving an observation in the proper direction. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/amount-of-unknown-records-is-decreasing/8594/6
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You’ve mentioned this before, and it’s been responded to before, but for others reading this:
IDing an “unknown” to a broad ID like “plants” or “flowering plants”, is perfectly fine if that’s as far as you can go. That means identifiers looking to ID plants will now find the observation whereas they wouldn’t have before. Very useful!
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@malisaspring @bouteloua it’s “biggest peeve”, not “I want a solution to this”. Tony even points out that he knows all that…
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Sure, and I think it’s fair to let others know their contributions are welcome, not useless.
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Rude comments toward newbies or people who make ID mistakes is one of my biggest pet peeves for sure.
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It is still my biggest peeve!! I post something that I dont know (trees are the worst: getting to family is difficult and if you know the family, you probably know the genus and species), and eagerly wait for someone to help. And then I get an ID on my dashboard and it has been identified as - - “Plant”. Well hello: it is green is it not? Very useful!!
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Sounds like you should have already IDed it to vascular/flowering plants?
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I don’t find this thread to be in keeping with the spirit of the iNaturalist forum guidelines: “Remember that discussions here should be constructive , so please refrain from merely airing complaints.”
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I don’t see anyone being targeted here and generalities are not attacks.
My pet peeve: naturalists who are self-righteous and make known that their way of appreciating nature is the only way. Thankfully I’ve encountered few of those, but they don’t inspire others to become naturalists.
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I think that the most important rule is “Assume people mean no harm”. The question is what is your biggest peeve among naturalists, and to my mind, people are responding honestly. We may disagree with their peeves, but I don’t think any harm is meant!
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mine is probably 'splaining and talking down to people, when oen assumes they know more than anyone else and isn’t ready to learn. Which is not a good habit to get into in this field since everyone has so much to learn. That being said, that sort of behavior is thankfully pretty uncommon on iNat, especially compared with other science/academic community settings.
I think the post is supposed to be biggest pet peeve among naturalists right? Not biggest pet peeve about iNat. Though everyone knows I’ve got them, you’ve already heard them all so I won’t repeat them :)
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I like your style! Just remember that it is older folks like me who have been doing these things for a long time. Yes, there are some older people who are ignorant, just as there are some young people who are ignorant. Just as I refuse to talk down about Millennials, I would like the same respect given to me and others in my age bracket (I reluctantly admit I am a Boomer, albeit one of the later ones). I’ve been doing this stuff since before you were born.
Keep it up, though - it’s the younger folks who keep us all on our toes! And honestly, I do like your style!
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People complaining about taxonomic changes. Just stop. This is how science works.
Edit, just to expand a little: bad faith grousing by a recalcitrant old guard is incredibly disheartening to people who are new to the field and could be brought closer in by reframing this stuff as a learning opportunity.
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Excessive and cryptic taxonomic changes. Just stop. We choose how science works.
:)
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