I just tried the non-“Advanced Mode” upload process for the first time and wow, it just gives you the species suggestion and does everything else on its own. At least there isn’t auto-upload any more so you at least have the option of editing it before clicking to upload.
I really don’t understand the reasoning for having this as an upload workflow, plus the combination of it with the way the new app CV is so much more species-oriented. If the goal is to get fast species IDs for people without them having to worry about other details, why not send them to Seek where it’s less likely to lead to community burnout?
It would be fine if citizen science weren’t the primary driver behind the core of the community, community science weren’t the primary driver of iNaturalist, if the data weren’t sent to GBIF, and if the use of the data in scientific studies weren’t so proudly celebrated. In my mind, if they don’t care about data quality, they don’t care about one of the core values that has driven iNaturalist to become what it is. It’s in the first sentence of the about page: “iNaturalist helps you identify the plants and animals around you while generating data for science and conservation.”
It wouldn’t bug me so much if the language in the community guidelines were stronger on this issue. But as is, it’s stated that we merely “prefer” that people mark their observations correctly. The language around this should be as strong as the “Intentionally adding false IDs or DQA votes” because it is a DQA parameter. You wouldn’t know it from reading the guidelines.
I knew the new app was bad, but I didn’t realize it was this bad! For people using this app, we don’t even have the ability to educate newbies on how to create good observations without forcing them to go to their settings and turn on advanced mode.
I think this is your first mistake. Calling this a “RULE”. It’s more like a guideline. If it was a RULE then it would be mandatory for people to select a value for it when they create an observation. But it’s not.
So you’re pretty much just shouting into the wind. As would including a single reminder in a single email. Investing way too much energy for very little return.
It’s easier to change your own behavior than it is to change the behavior of large groups of people. If you care so much about it as an identifier, then use the web interface so you can mark this DQA item. I don’t tend to identify a lot of plants, but I do mark the occasional DQA item or add fields on some things. As other people do to some of mine.
I personally think part of the issue with the wild/cultivated tag is how inat dumps everything cultivated into “casual” obs. Casual observations are very largely ignored by identifiers. New users, in particular, often have a problem with this (I sure did). They want to see people on inat engaging with their content. But when they upload the cultivated stuff they see and it gets dumped into the casual category immediately, they get no engagement whatsoever.
I have had an issue with this for a long time and have made suggestions which inat has emphatically refused to consider. IMO, even casual observations should keep a “needs ID” tag until they are confidently identified. and if they cannot be confidently identified, there’s at least one DQA field that would get them out of the “needs ID” pool
This is one of the most popular feature requests and hasn’t been closed. iNat is a small team and even small changes take a lot of development. A change like this would probably require reworking the whole RG/Needs ID/Casual badge grade system and triggering updates to all the hundreds of millions of observations on the platforms. It’s not something they’d be able to do lightly.
This is starting to sound a lot like Pirates of the Caribbean. I’m sorry, but community guidelines to me are the rules of engagement for a website or community. Maybe it’s my elder millennial coming out, or maybe it’s because I don’t understand the point of having a citizen science website where the integrity of the observations posted isn’t a priority. @nathantaylor has been banging this same drum.
I will personally say that, while I’m on my phone, I actually don’t see the casual IDs. What I DO see are tons of photos of street trees and my personal least favorite, a human[‘s] dog classified as research grade. I’m far more likely to skip those than a casual ID.
And we again arrive back at identifier fatigue and again, I am not changing my habits regarding identification because other people aren’t being required to do what I thought were the basic requirements for engaging on iNat. And honestly, iNat cannot have it both ways without substantial more resources – more identifiers being engaged, and having iNat do multiple things all at once, while not educating and goading people into being good members of an engaged citizen science community. I feel like we’ve forgotten that community is not just a happy-joy thing where we let issues slide. There are responsibilities, and parameters for behavior so people know what to expect of each other.
This Boomer will say to the elder millennial that iders need breaks when they get upset. Take a break. We all do what we can. The dear and overworked staff just produced and posted a video to help get more involved with ids.
If you really want to help get folks to follow “the rules” become an ambassador and start educating interested people. Take action.
I do plan to talk to the ambassador program person whose info was given in this thread – one issue I plan to ask about is that I can see there’s probably a bunch of people who think iNat is equivalent to Seek or other ID apps like PictureThis, and that leads to problems both for those folks (their expectations aren’t met bc they weren’t appropriate in the first place, but no one told them/misunderstanding) and folks already on the platform.
“Elder Millennial” is just a term to refer to Millennials who were born in the older part of their generation (the 80s), not saying that they’re literally elderly. ;-)
Speaking as one myself, we have some traits that blend with the tail end of Gen Xers. For example, Millennials born in the 90s were too young to really experience 9/11 or the Columbine shooting or the 2008 economy crash but Elder Millennials were very affected. Young Millennials are usually digital natives, but elder Millennials usually expreienced “life before the internet”. Since the media likes to lump Millennials with Gen Z, it’s a way to show that some older cohorts have more in common with older generations, that’s all.
I’m saying this as someone who gets accused of being pedantic on the regular (owing to ADHD and quite possibly undiagnosed autism), I think you’re being overly pedantic about THE RULES.
Let it go, man.
People use inat for different reasons and in different ways. inat encourages a large amount of this flexibility. There are some things it’s less flexible about. It’s either a platform that works for you or it isn’t. I am a wildlife professional who really wanted to use inat data for some projects this summer. But a couple of the policies make that a lot more difficult and time-consuming for someone who works for a small nonprofit conservation organization. The policies exist for good reason, but the mechanisms for someone in my situation to get useable data are just untenable. Disappointing, but it doesn’t take away from the value of inat or its data.
inat is not my only exposure to crowdsourced programs. With ANY crowdsourced data, you have to deal with the crowd. The more restrictions you put on people in order to promote data quality, the smaller your crowd of people willing to contribute. You sacrifice data quantity for data quality. What is the correct balance between the two? There’s no clear answer to that. I’ve been a research technician. I’ve trained research technicians on a project’s data collection methods. Any scientist is going to tell you that ANY data you collect will be imperfect. Your technician(s) will mess up. Your equipment will fail. Nature will invariably mess something up. You will make mistakes. You’ll always need to clean things up. Anyone actually using inat data recognizes this. The issues that you’re totally stuck on mostly aren’t hard to filter out or clean up. If you, as a researcher, have the time and budget to actually use inat data, then you probably have the ability to do some cleaning up.
Araucaria in Europe and South Mediterranean - Around 90 observations of Araucaria sp. are marked as non-cultivated in Europe and mediterranean Africa. It’s a pretty common tree to be used as ornamental species.
As you can see here, the number exponentially increases to almost 8.500 observations when adding casual observations
Myself have found, in a space of 10 years, 4 observations of the same species (A. heterophylla). In Portugal there’s quite the amount of these trees all over the territory. In fact, in those 90 observations of wild Araucaria:
Have you considered using the website on your phone?
Observations on the app have a place to click view on inaturalist.org and from there you can select dqa
I only really use the app for uploading, if I need to do anything else iNat related and don’t have access to my computer I will just use my web browser app on my phone.
I understand this might be inconvenient for you, but for the time being maybe you should accept the current solutions available instead of being so headfast and hoping everyone else does everything as they should be.
What I meant was, at the time the user uploads their observation, if the CV recognized a "potted plant” or similar, it would specifically throw up a pop-up asking if the observation is of a captive/cultivated organism. This would give the opportunity to users (especially new ones) to easily mark those sorts of observations when they might otherwise not know they ought to.
I am a parent of two millennials, '81 & '87. To hear you say “geriatric millennial” sets off different things…the first is “gosh, I’m ANCIENT !!”
The second is “oh dear child, you still have a long and winding road ahead, don’t look for things to trip over, because you will definitely find them”
One benefit to aging for me is being better able to choose my battles. Gosh I tripped over so many small things!
