Doesn’t it feel bad also if people chime in with extra id’s that are against the one you put, and so the observation tips over? That’s what happens anyways in this case: your id vs many opposing id’s, and the only way yours will ‘win’, i.e. ‘appear to count for something’ is if there is a majority, either at species level or higher, for your taxon. It’s not at if, in the original case, it will be put to your ID, or even something commensurate with it, if it is outvoted at a higher level. This is the same as that, in that respect, except it actually ‘moves on’ with the observation ID. If you got enough supporting ID’s for your taxa after that, it would tip back. Does it really feel better to be the one holdout when a mob has to come to put the observation into another category - i.e. there will always be a large number of votes against yours when it advances - than to have only a few votes conflicting yours but the leading taxa ID advances with the consensus? I don’t feel it’s any better to have large numbers of people disagreeing with me. This system, if anything, encourages that.
And since none of the ID’s are erased, it’s possible to put something back, and even easier I would say than if five or more identifiers had been tagged to put it ‘forward’ in the first place, and now even more are needed to counteract them if it must go to a taxon commensurate with what the holdout is holding out for.
At any rate, it just doesn’t seem to make logical sense from the point of view of ‘tip’ agreement.
I ask again: can you not weight things so that a holdout has a chance? It’s fine to hold out, per iNat laws, and it’s also fine to get people to outvote someone, apparently, and also fine to be outvoted.
Perhaps if the leading id is not without conflict, it may take more votes before it can be placed as the leading ID, but that should work at all levels, not just the species one: should work at community ID level too, and at higher taxa levels too.
I’m not specifically for the weighting like this, but it must be consistent at all levels. None of them must be more special, or treated differently. The model right now, and the slant of the discussion, doesn’t seem to be focused on this but I think it’s paramount: to get the behaviour you want it shouldn’t mean resorting to somethign inconsistent and/or ‘illogical’ about the model you are using, aka treating taxon levels differently wrt disagreements / not using the idea that ‘one taxon is inside of another (higher-level) one’.
This is how I’m thinking of it, and that’s all I think I can say on the subject. I don’t see how significantly fewer feelings are hurt - and importantly I don’t see how it’s more mercenary than what I would call ‘iNat’s typical behaviour’, and if you want that to change we should change that, but as it won’t change how taxa nest inside of each other it won’t necessarily change this.
