Thank you - this explanation helped me a lot.
I’ve had this thought as well. If the CV could be accurately trained to recognize cultivated organisms, it might be the only way to really solve this problem. However, there are a few challenges here. Depending on the evidence uploaded, there can be little or no indication whether a plant is cultivated. Or, that evidence might be present in photos other than the first, which as I understand it, the CV ignores.
Also, we’d need to train iNaturalist users to discern which observations are cultivated vs wild, which, in my experience, they are not very accurate at correctly labeling. This is understandable, since evaluating cultivation status isn’t as interesting and people haven’t thought as deeply about it as they have about IDs. But if we want to use user labels as training data, this needs to be considered.
Overall, it might be hard for the CV to be accurate at this because it often involves making a judgment call involving the geographic setting, species ID (and its behavior in the local area), user habits, immediate placement in the landscape, etc. Not all of which are visual elements in a single photo.
I agree. They could just add an announcement to the top of the users dash.
As someone who focuses mostly on mammals, this is also very prevalent with people just uploading photos of their pets. While there is an argument for those that have escaped and established themselves within an ecosystem, some are very clearly pets.
Yeah, this is a bit annoying. I can understand using a pet to kind of “test upload”, but folks usually don’t delete the observation after that.
Very sorry for taking such a long break from this thread and coming back after people got bored. I’ve been thinking of different ways to remind people who use iNaturalist on what is and is not cultivated in hopes that it causes a fraction of improvement. Others here said it’s a losing battle if these reminders are not given and that this is just an acceptable loss. I don’t want to drop this topic.
Certainly there’s a balance here, right? Many researchers like me who would love to use as much wild-only observations to compile an algorithm or machine learning model that requires good data, however we don’t have the time or money to sift through and ask every user to clarify whether or not a questionable observation is of a wild or not-wild organism.
Our Options
- train observers better: get more ambassadors to recruit volunteer identifiers to look at the data quality of others’ observations and hope the “quality observation” to “total observation” ratio improves.
- incentivize identifiers to continue: this already being done through the improvements to seasoned identifiers’ UI and compensation for certain identifiers through their workplaces, but some other things that could help avoid identifier burnout may persuade them to continue identifying even though they may still have to tell observers to reconsider the captive/cultivated status of their observations. I don’t know how to make a person want to continue identifying other than money, a better UI, and a welcoming and supportive atmosphere, but there have to be more ways.
- make the reminder system: suggest, program, and just hope a pull request for a regular reminder system gets approved (not likely, and there’s no consensus on whether it will be in the site or in an email).
- automate captive/cultivated suggestion: suggest, program, and implement an expansion of the CV model that classifies whether or not an organism is captive or cultivated based on surrounding evidence. This is going to be a big ask, but let’s consider it. It’s not easy due to the nature of machine learning, but if the CV uses a multiclass model that predicts captive/cultivated status for different reasons (e.g. the classes are “wild,” “potted,” “planted in a row,” “indoors,” “collared,” “caged,” “near building,” etc.) the automatic suggestion would require the user to either accept applying the captive/cultivated status or dismiss the notice. It may or may not be integrated with the geomodel and might interfere with other existing models. The model will obviously never override the observer’s decision; the observer chooses to accept or dismiss the suggestion.
- Example 1: if a dog-shaped thing is detected by the model and it looks like a collar-shaped thing is around it, the model is likely to suggest to the user to mark the observation as captive/cultivated with the reason that it looks like the “dog” is “collared.”
- Example 2: if the model detects a green, leaf-shaped thing higher than a rectangular or cylindrical clay-colored thing in a well-lit area, the model is likely to suggest to the user to mark the observation as captive/cultivated with the reason that it looks like the “plant” is “potted.”
- Example 3: if anything evidence is taken in a background that looks well lit and has detectable patterning like tile, marble, floorboards, or wallpaper (easy-ish for high-quality CV models), the model is likely to suggest to the user to mark the observation as captive/cultivated with the reason that it was photographed “indoors.”
- find another more feasible idea
- give up
I am perfectly happy splitting these up into one or more feature requests if others suggest it is a good idea.
If iNaturalist Has a Reminder System
However, if iNaturalist implements a repeated reminder to users about what is and what is not captive/cultivated, the notification shouldn’t be overbearing or repetitive, so it should only be shown a few times for each user.
If Reminder System Is on Site/App
To make it most effective, it will have to:
- occupy the entire screen or otherwise remain at the center of the screen in the form of a div box or equivalent
- require the user to read the whole thing, and implement an “I agree and accept this interpretation of captive/cultivated” similarly to how some mobile websites force you to scroll through the entire terms of service before you can click on the “I agree and accept the Terms” button
- link to a more detailed page, possibly something on iNatHelp, discussing the concept in further detail using more verbose terms to encompass as many edge cases so people don’t have to keep asking on the forums and possibly merge the automatic non-wild deliberation explainer into it
- be in the language set by the user
- use stronger language explaining that it is a guideline, insinuating that it not a suggestion but not a rule either
We can and should debate these requirements. Nobody wants an annoying reminder system on the website or app to also fail to do its job.
If Reminder System Is Implemented in Email
If implemented here instead, it will need:
- similar basic requirements to the alternative
- explanations, not very verbose, of what terms like “wild,” “stray,” “feral,” “waif,” and others mean
- to explain the importance of marking things as captive/cultivated; if it’s subjectively important to people, they would be doing it more often
- reminder to archive or bookmark the message to re-read on occasion
A reminder system would be a terrible idea if it were implemented for everyone currently using iNat, and usually a person only needs to be told once or twice, quite sternly, to remember to do something.
Otherwise, I’ve given up on the idea that iNaturalist is also for data quality-sensitive research…where the people who benefit from iNaturalist by using its data for models and other aggregations will never be as prioritized as the average citizen scientist. That’s disheartening for conservation science where every finding of [reader’s favorite species with declining population] needs to be identified when many identifiers work on hundreds of species at a time and are swamped with fixing observations with other DQA issues.
iNat is a great place for tracking personal interaction with nature (which is fine, and I know I can’t just “change the mission” of an established platform), and so far that just means a wide network of people who like to show off which organisms they recorded, an extra source of data to funnel to GBIF, plus a few hundred or thousand publications using iNat data. If only this one data quality measure we’re so concerned about was monitored better because a lot of observations have to be discarded for research. I think a reminder system is fine if experienced users don’t get reminders.
Again, very sorry for the late response. I wanted time to think.
Thank you for this. These are helpful.
I want to add in another possible wrinkle or idea - in discussions about the ID-a-thon, folks have noted the sheer number of entries that come in via the city nature challenges. Reflecting on this, it occurs to me that, unless observers in such challenges are instructed on captive/cultivated, iNat will be inundated with non-wild observations. That then leads me to question the structure and purpose of the CNC largely as it relates to plants, because that’s where I strongly suspect the biggest load of captive/cultivated observations would come from. Someone is walking down a street, and takes a photo of a pretty tree in flower. That is likely not wild.
They have already announced CNC26 will exclude Captive / Cultivated. The old problems are here, but at least there will not be fresh ones next year.
Identifier fatigue is real. I started out enjoying going through getting Unknowns out of that queue, but it got tiresome really fast because of people uploading absolute junk photos with seemingly not a living object in them. Plus rocks. Plus photos dumps where it is photo after photo of the same organism not under a single observation.
I’m unsure what is with the absolute refusal of iNaturalist to encourage users to stop doing such basic mishaps, over and over and over again, when I am an advanced birder who uses eBird and that site has repeatedly gently nudged everybody to stop doing very annoying things that I’m sure eventually make reviewers want to punch a wall.
On iNaturalist I’m now only down to IDing birds, because that’s what I’m passionate about, but some of the same problems are absolutely rampant over there too, especially the mass dumping of glamour shots that provide poor identification angles across numerous separate observations, where it’s clear that it is the same hard-to-ID bird species. And something really should be encouraged for people to get more than 1 photo of the same bird, from different angles. Part of learning to ID things is learning what should be photographed, because then you are also learning the useful features.
But this is all probably why in my long run of using iNaturalist I have seen actual researchers, professors, and fellow birders decide to no longer browse iNaturalist and confirming bird identifications isn’t really taken as seriously as being an eBird reviewer because there’s no vetting process, either.
What strategies do you suggest iNaturalist should adopt to accomplish this? It is an ongoing concern for many of us, but beyond a general request for better user onboarding, we have struggled to come up with viable mechanisms to nudge users towards making better observations.
One of the challenges that iNat has to deal with that is probably not present to the same extent on sites like eBird is the fact that it is meant to be accessible to people who may have never consciously engaged with nature and who may not know anything about collecting and recording biodiversity data. I suspect that in a reasonable percentage of cases, people don’t even realize that their observations represent potential scientific datapoints – they may just be curious about something they saw and they may think iNat is just an app for getting identification help.
So users may be starting out with a lot less experience than the average eBird user, and also without context to understand why people want information to be entered a certain way. In addition, they also may struggle with the technical interface, which is fairly complex regardless of whether one is using one of the apps or the website. There is, I think, a often bigger learning curve before users have a solid basis that enables them to submit good observations.
I think the onboarding for iNat could definitely be improved. I have the impression that staff think similarly, but there must be something else going on because the app developers have been pretty steadfast in making the app starting experience as smooth as possible without much in terms of onboarding or pop-ups. I know most people just skip through pop-ups anyways and find them annoying, but it would really help a lot to remind users “you have a lot of Casual observations <because of captive/cultivated//missing location/date>, here’s how to fix that”. Similar with having only one photos in every observation. Things like that can theoretically be detected automatically and trigger relevant automated notifications.
You have 50 broken obs. You are blocked from uploading any fresh obs … till you fix your old and broken ones.
Yeah, something like that… I have 200 Casual obs but that’s 1% of all my observations. If a new user with 10-20 observations has >10-30% Casual, they’re probably missing something. It would be helpful for both them and everyone else if they’re aware of this before they start making a lot more.
I looked into eBird briefly because I was curious after your post, and I had a few thoughts:
(1) birds are a more defined area of expertise that can mean that there is actual expert review possible/much more easily than iNat
(2) I looked into what it means to put observations into eBird and I got super overwhelmed very quickly. I like that they have a strict focus on data quality, but the checklists and “ID exactly when you start and stop” and other things turned me off because I’m usually just out and about and I see or hear a bird. There has to be a middle ground between that and what we are struggling with on iNat.
What is a glamour shot?
Also, while more than one photo is ideal, sometimes only one is possible. I don’t think those should be discarded.
A blog post encouraging people to use annotations in general. I just wish I could annotate when I am creating the observation on my Android phone.
Having to go back to add track, scat is something a lot of people are not doing.
Maybe annotations need to be in the year in review!
A wow photo - very nice, dear - but for iNat we need field marks and information. Or those - can you guess what this is 
pictures, beautiful but sigh of despair. Is A Thing, was possibly once alive ?
e Bird has almost 11K sp. Compare that to insects, and plants, and fungi. Sounds of hollow laughter. Birders have it easy.
I understand the frustration behind this comment, but am concerned it would drive away potential users.
Could simple questions be added to the app at the time of the observation that must be answered prior to uploading? First possible example is on the Android phone app, the observation defaults to the Notes field for completion instead of the What Did You See? I have wondered if that’s why we see the name in the notes and not where it should be. Along with that, something must be entered such as Plants then it could go to the Annotations.
Don’t worry - it won’t happen. I am okay with a a name in Notes or comment, instead of an active ID. It can be read and used. My issue is with the Placeholder - but I hope, since it is not in the new app, that it eventually will disappear from the website.
The argument here is really quality over quantity. Yes, eBird takes time to learn. But that means it’s also not drowning in really horrible observations. I’ve just spent weeks on iNaturalist identifying for other people and I won’t be doing it anymore, because it is clear that users don’t want to be bothered learning for themselves, how to adequately use iNaturalist OR how to start identifying anything they’re putting on here. They just want to photo dump and have everybody else do the work into infinity.
The review process on eBird actually works a LOT OFF eBird, we have numerous discussion groups which quite often include the eBird reviewers. Today I’ve finally run into an issue here on iNaturalist where the discussion has been done to absolute death elsewhere on whether Ring-necked Pheasants can be counted in the northeast as being wild. Yet here on iNaturalist today I have somebody trying to argue with me when I marked the bird casual. Which is what it is supposed to be, even based on iNaturalist rules, that this person even linked to, considering Pheasants are released BY HUMANS for hunting where the observation occurred.
We can argue all these points all we want on here, but I think what’s being forgotten about is that identification takes time, is done for free, and capitalizes on a lot of expertise that goes unacknowledged and sometimes insulted, which is not even allowed on eBird, but hey let’s laugh at eBird on here. I for one am frustrated and now also disgusted because none of this is a competition, I was simply pointing out issues that should be addressed on this site that I thankfully do not have to put up with elsewhere.
Good luck to everybody who continues to use this site, I for one will not be wasting my time anymore.
Bird obs get and ID on iNat very quickly. What is left waiting for an ID, is waiting for a reason. The good obs are RG before ‘you’ get a look at them.
If you were insulted - then flag the comment. Not accepted on iNat either.