Ok, I knew about the sound recordings, but I was paraphrasing. I think my point stands. An observation without a photo/audio/other supporting evidence will be treated as casual. Why should a similar observation that has a poor photo included (ie. one that doesn’t support a species level ID) go to RG just because the photo doesn’t preclude the proposed species level ID? Aren’t the two scenarios roughly equivalent?
Non-expert (and sometimes expert) users add incorrect IDs all the time. Explaining why those IDs are incorrect is a lot of work, and half the time, the explanations are ignored. Enlisting other knowledgeable IDers to outvote the incorrect IDs is a lot of work as well. Yet here we are, worrying about knowledgeable IDers bumping IDs up to higher levels for observations that lack sufficient evidence to support a species level ID. The first is a problem we live with, the second is a non-issue that’s is being used to argue for what I think are unnecessary changes.
In my taxon/region, there are very few people bumping IDs to higher levels. By and large, only a handful of knowledgeable IDers are doing this, and we typically provide explanations when we do so. If there are corners of iNat where non-expert users are bumping IDs inappropriately, then I think the solution is to address the behaviour of those users, rather than taking away the tools that knowledgeable users need to do their work. If some people are running with scissors, the solution isn’t to blunt all the scissors (unless maybe you’re running a kindergarden). Some of us have work to do and we need proper tools to do it.
i’m not sure why you think anyone is going to take away any functionality from the system. please scroll up a few posts to my last post, and look at the link that i referenced there. that’s the latest plan from iNat staff related to all this. please read it, and tell me where there’s any mention of any functionality going away.
I think this argument is running around in circles. I don’t think anyone would want observations that don’t have enough evidence to support the ID go to research grade. But some folks can’t stand leaving them in Needs ID either. Since a frequent concern for unsupported use of the disagree button appears to be to keep observations from reaching research grade and/or making them casual, maybe a DQA item for “insufficient evidence to confirm” or something like that would help. If enough people marked that, it could go casual. Forcing these to a higher level without evidence supporting a disagreement is a poor work-around and I don’t think how iNat is supposed to work.
But that’s beside the point of the discussion in this thread, which started out focused on the poor wording of the ‘orange’ and ‘green’ options and the apparent disconnect between what it says on the button and what clicking it does to the community ID and the disagreement message generated on the observation. However, fixing the wording doesn’t fix the behavior that has developed around the use of these buttons. This is something I was told on another thread: The result is what counts, no matter what the words on the button say.
The argument that it takes too much time/effort to post an explanation for bumping something back to genus always seems a tad on the lazy side for me. iNat is a social media site along with being a repository for nature observations, and for me communicating with other users is a big part of it. So what if it appears the observer is gone and unlikely to come back? Then think of it as communicating with the next ID’er looking at that observation.
I read that. The whole discussion around ancestor disagreements is confusing (I know, I know, they went to a lot of trouble to illustrate things using examples). My understanding is that the proposed solution is to offer a 3rd disagreement option, and we will still be able to bump an ID up to a higher taxonomic level when the evidence does not support a species level ID. If that understanding is correct, then I’m fine with that.
But the impression I’m getting is that some people are unhappy with that solution, and are arguing that iNat should limit the ability to punt IDs to higher levels or perhaps they are arguing that IDers shouldn’t use the option if it is still available. So count me as one vote for iNat to stick with the plan and not cave in to pressure to limit our ability to punt IDs to a higher level.
i don’t like the idea of encouraging people to knock things back to genus or higher if they can’t tell what it is. I think a better idea would be to make the ‘no, it’s good as it can be’ button work differently. Reword it to ‘can not verify this species with available info’ so that it can’t get research grade unless it gets outvoted. And allow it to work with just one ID. Riht now it’s too complicated - if i see something that i think shouldn’t be research grade to species, but i don’t want to knock it back to genus, i have to add a non disagreeing genus level ID AND click the button. It’s confusing.
I disagree. We are “forcing” observations to a higher level “without evidence”, we’re putting the observations at the lowest level for which there is supporting evidence. To my mind, it’s the user who has applied the lower level observation who is doing the forcing - they are trying to force the observation to a lower level than what is supported by the available evidence.
Your argument seems to turn on species level as being the ultimate goal. You suggest that if the evidence doesn’t support species level, then the observation should go to casual level. The evidence provided may be perfectly good for IDing the observation to a higher level (eg. genus), and that hiigher level observation may be useful to someone. In fact, that higher level observation may contribute to the accumulation of information that can eventually lead to us finding ways to better identify “problem group” observations down to species level, at which point it may become possible to refine that ID. Moving the observations into the casual category is a bad idea IMHO, but I suppose it may be appropriate in some cases.
I don’t think I made that argument. Please re-read that paragraph. What I’m arguing is that lots of people suggest incorrect species level IDs ALL THE TIME. It’s a lot of work to make the corrections, and provide explanations. That’s a problem we live with, and nobody is arguing that we need any changes to address this problem. People enter IDs that are DEAD WRONG, and we deal with it. We patiently provide corrections with explanations. We treat it as part of the process.
So why are we having this discussion around punting IDs up to higher levels? I can’t speak for other taxa/regions, but in mine, this doesn’t happen very often, and when it does, it is typically done by knowledgeable users (one might venture to call them experts), who usually provide explanations. If we can live with the first problem (a much bigger one IMHO), why are we unable to live with the second? I’m not sure I get why some folks agonize over:
a) an ID that isn’t at the species level
b) an ID that remains at the “Needs ID” status
I spend a fair amount of time (pretty much daily) explaining why I am punting IDs up to a higher level. I probably spend much more time explaining why species level IDs are incorrect, and a different species level ID is more likely to be correct. To my mind, these are just two different aspects of the ID process. Like I said, the first is pretty much a non-issue as far as I’m concerned. But I imagine there are taxa that are much more problematic, where it’s much more difficult to ID observations down to species level, and it’s probably frustrating to see a lot of observations lingering in the Needs ID state at higher-than-species level.
One way to do this kind of thing now is to use the Favorites feature for this purpose. (Not the “list of favorite taxa” feature, but the “favorited observations” feature. I wish these two features had different names.) I mark observations as favorites if they contain useful discussion that can help me identify other observations in the future. But it would be similarly useful to use it to mark observations that you want to refer back to for other reasons.
I’m here because another thread was merged into this one.
Suggestion
The wording of the “Potential Disagreement” prompt is incredibly misleading!
It’s in dire need of rephrasing into something like:
Thank you for your suggestion!
Do you think the evidence presented in the observation could allow a more specific identification by someone in the future?
Yes
No
Bold formatting for emphasis of prompt elements I consider important. With formatting itself not necessarily being part of my suggestion.
Critique
As it currently stands:
Is the evidence provided enough to confirm this is %PRIOR_TAXON%
I don’t know but I am sure this is %CHOSEN_TAXON%
No, but it is a member of %CHOSEN_TAXON%
The prompt is:
Complicated by verbosity, stuffing giblets of the intended question into the answers.
Inconsistent, since the single subject of an observation would have to be a “member of” a non-species taxon in both cases but only one option uses that wording, leaving the user to wonder if this is the dubious distinction being inquired of them.
Confusing, as the options read like two phrasings of the same exact sentiment if you approach it as a communal scientific effort. The “No, but” of the latter option is easily interpreted as still implied with a degree of uncertainty, especially after being primed by the “I don’t know” wording of the former. See gripe #1.
Furthermore, there are cases where you expressly intend to disagree with a more specific prior identification, are sure of a less specific taxon belonging and do know that the evidence present is enough for further identification to a more specific taxon but aren’t able to provide such yourself.
The technical effect of choosing the former option does what you want but its usage of “I don’t know” comes into conflict with your position.
Neither of the options is phrased to fit this scenario notionally and leave the user (that’s me ) in an irritating stalemate.
I believe that my suggestion at the top addresses all of these issues with proper conveyance of reasonable degree of confidence, while also signalling the technical substance of the decision being made instead of inferring it.
P. S.
I also believe it’s better to deal away with coloring of the buttons altogether, and I get that this is a vibe-based opinion, but it makes the user worry that their suggestion will be rejected by the platform if they display misunderstanding of the rules they suspect having missed due to the sheer mind-boggling confusion of this misleading prompt.
Also, I just changed “down the line” into “by someone in the future” as it conveys what I meant with the former but I now realize that the idiomatic nature of the former wording may require unreasonable linguistic aptitude of some of our multicultural platform’s users.
I agree that the current prompt is confusing, but what you’ve proposed seems to be addressing a separate issue. Your wording sounds more like what the DQA bit about “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” is trying to ask. What the orange / green disagreement buttons are really asking is not whether a more specific ID is possible, but rather whether the existing more-specific ID should still be considered viable. A person might choose the hard disagreement and not know if a more specific ID is possible or not, they just know that it’s not %CHOSEN_TAXON% and want to kick it up a level.
) in an irritating stalemate.