Did a bug associated with the taxon change cause this observation https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/111324 to become “casual?” I can’t find any reason for it not to be Research Grade.
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Looks like he opted out of community ID…
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Here’s another: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/285350 In both cases the observer opted out of community ID. But there is no disagreement on either ID. It doesn’t seem like an agreed observation should become casual due to a taxon change.
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My understanding is that if you opt-out of community ID, the observation can never become Research Grade. So it should have never been Research Grade prior to the taxon swap, unless the user changed their settings after the community IDs had been applied.
Not at all Eric. The opt-out just means that the observation ID remains at what the user posted themselves. It has no effect on research grade. But it does mean that it can only be research grade if the community ID matches the user’s chosen ID.
This is actually a common bug which has been around for a long time. I’ve had to refresh a bunch of my old observations after taxon swaps have happened, because they “became” casual after the change. The refresh is simply ticking something in data quality and unticking it, or changing the ID.
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Thanks. I’m just going through “casuals” in my area in ascending posting order, so I’ll do that. But there must be a lot of these on the site.
Interesting, has that changed over the last couple of years? I remember having this conversation a few years ago on an observation that had several agreeing IDs (to the users first ID), but could never get research status. A curator stated what I said above. I have tended to ignore opt-outs due to that for a while now…
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Certainly not since I’ve been on the site, which is more than a few years. Maybe they saw cases where the user opted-out and had a different ID to community ID, which would have prevented research grade. But most users that use opt-out are happy to be corrected or “opt in” for that observation, so that the community ID overrides their ID.
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I’m pretty sure it was a thing too… around 3-4 years ago… I noticed it was not the case recently, and wondered if there was a change or maybe I just assumed it to be the case! Memory plays tricks…
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it looks like the observation in the original post got switched to the new taxon, even though it’s still an opt-out case. did someone do something to fix it? i ask because i came across a case for a different species, and i’m wondering who i should direct this to for a fix, if a fix is appropriate in this case: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/6187728.
EDIT: i’m reading the original post again, and maybe i shouldn’t have posted here. i think this might be a different problem. sorry.
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I’ll file a bug report. I know this was happening with Diplacus aurantiacus a little while ago. Monkeyflower taxonomy on iNat went through a bunch of revisions fairly recently and I think that might have gummed something up.
This has never been the case, in my memory.
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if it helps, i noticed that in the observation that i noted above, when i went in and checked the observation is wild 
, that observation went from Needs ID to Casual, and when i unchecked the , the observation stayed in Casual. i’m guessing this is because this observation that i noted has the inactive taxon as one of the IDs (for whatever reason, which is a separate issue). but I’ve noticed that while a taxon swap is happening, the old taxon goes inactive first, and then some time later, the new IDs with the new taxon get added. so i suppose if someone comes in during that time when the IDs reflect an inactive taxon and maybe adds a DQA flag – or possibly an annotation or something else like that? – then maybe that is when these observations go to Casual.
If the observer opts out, and their ID differs from CID, then it won’t be able to get to RG. If their ID matches CID, then it can.
There are still around 100ish of these that need to be reindexed so that they turn from Casual to Needs ID/Research Grade: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?captive=false&photos&place_id=97394,97393&quality_grade=casual&subview=table&taxon_id=470643&verifiable=any&d1=1900-01-01
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Done. One observation is still casual because of a DQA.
With a large volume of refreshes, the tick/untick method is less convenient, and as I find these I’ve gone to using letters from the keyboard shortcuts:
-Typing 2 F’s will toggle the record as a favorite and refresh the record. However, this may send a ping to the observer about someone favoriting their obs (apologies if so, to the opt-outers I have recently spammed).
-Typing 2 X’s will toggle it in and out of Wild temporarily, as far as I know not alerting/bothering the observer. It also defaults to your having reviewed the record, so if you want it to stay unreviewed, type XXR instead of XX.
If anyone has other efficient methods, I’d be happy to hear about them!
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There’s more than 100 of these which are just mine, I suspect the final total is way higher?
Although recently I’ve been getting “unknown” pings on some obs which were clearly related to this, maybe people favouriting and then unfavouriting my obs to reset them.
There are only 4 remaining in that link; can you share an example from your obs that is still casual?
Sorry! You were definitely one of the people I spammed by favorite-toggling the last few days until I went to the captive-toggling trick.
You can also just upvote evidence of organism. No harm in that, and just one click.
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