What are people’s thoughts about certainty level in providing identifications? I see that some identifiers submit a suggestion at a genus (or another higher level) and then provide comments saying what species they think it is. Sometimes I found myself thinking, why don’t you just put that species-l…

Plus iNat is NOT forgiving with scientific name spelling. I wish it had a little wiggle room to tell “Coelo” from “Caelo” or “Celo”, especially if you continue typing the species name

I copypasta to Google which is kinder. Then come back to iNat with typo-free correct spelling. One wrong letter, and iNat says flatly Never Heard of It. Focuses my mind on learning the names.

Is there an epistemologist in the house? I know there are entomologists …

I took a few epistemology courses, but I’m not sure if that’s a good way to understand the topic.

Much prefer, that if I am not certain, to just identify at genus and make a comment to what I think it may be. Too often I get someone in America, for example, making an ID on an Australian observation and the ID they give is for a species that doesn’t even occur in Australia. This is frustrating …

[image] arthur_chapman: Then someone else wanting to get their ID numbers up confirms the ID without any knowledge whatsoever. Why do you assume that is their motivation? Why do you assume they have no knowledge whatsoever? Being wrong doesn’t necessarily indicate ignorance. Sometimes it is j…

I rather think that naturalists/scientists/biologists a century ago might well have had these same conversations. When the variability of human minds tries to map the variability of living organisms onto a system, even a good system, much less a system in uproar (think Fungi), of course there won’t …

[image] arthur_chapman: just identify at genus and make a comment to what I think it may be. Too many times I have identified at genus, only to have it revert to family later on because the genus was split. Whereas if it was identified to the species I think it may be, the genus split would s…

One of these days I have to go through the lovebug species Plecia nearctica and send all of the asian records back up to genus as this species is exclusive to the Americas. Probably one person selected it from the dropdown and someone else sent it to RG and now there are dozens of incorrect records. …

I might be wrong here but I believe the way to get a genus to pop up in the list is for it to have enough RG observations at least at the genus level. The more species from that genus are in the computer model the more likely it is to show up when observed.

Certainty and uncertainty in identification

General

kevintoo March 11, 2023, 12:27am 65

Why do you assume that is their motivation? Why do you assume they have no knowledge whatsoever? Being wrong doesn’t necessarily indicate ignorance. Sometimes it is just an error.

This topic has been discussed before. There are lots of good reasons. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-do-some-observation-receive-plenty-of-agreeing-ids/37287/30

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Certainty and uncertainty in identification

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