I definitely see it in vascular plants sometimes including ones that are usually pretty easy to ID. There are some vascular plant photos that you can clearly see you can’t get an ID, like most sedges with no reproductive material for instance. those may make sense to bump back to genus.
What’s worse is cases where a heavily studied region (like the United States) is near enough to a less-studied region (like the Dominican Republic) that it skews the “expected nearby” algorithm. The moth genus Acrolophus is the first one that comes to mind for me. If you go by the species list on iNaturalist, you would think that every Acrolophus sp. the Dominican Republic also occurs in the mainland United States; whereas if you look at the species list on Moth Photographers Group or Wikipedia, you see that these two countries have no Acrolophus spp. in common.
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That sounds to me like pushing the ID back to a higher level due to lack of knowledge, not lack of evidence.
I realize that the two are not completely independent insofar as evidence is based on collective knowledge about a taxon, but there is a difference – “I don’t personally know enough” or “I do not have the skill to assess these photos” is not the same as positively knowing that certain key diagnostic features needed to distinguish between multiple species possible at this location are not evident in the material provided.
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My point – the interface and wording make it too easy for someone to just boldly claim “a lack of evidence” (then click the yellow-orange hard-disagree button with no reason provided, and disappear without further ado), instead of acknowledging “their lack of knowledge maybe” on how to deal with all the evidence (then ask what in the evidence supports the id and how, and decide from there… or just click the green soft-disagree button and move on).
And my point was that any new wording should not say “it is definitely not this species” when disagreeing because there are lots of legitimate cases where IDers need to be able to push an ID back due to lack of evidence.
This is in fact one of the problems with the current wording – there are many users who understand the orange button to mean “definitely not species A”, and therefore they argue that (for example) a hard disagree to subspecies in a region where only species A and species B are possible logically implies that the disagreer is saying it is species B instead, even though the disagreer in fact means “a species ID is unjustified because it could be species A or species B, but there is no way to be sure which based on the evidence provided”.
due to what they believe, wrongly sometimes, to be a lack of evidence yet have no incentive to disambiguate - let alone justify - that particular belief in the context of an ambiguously worded message
“says who? are you by chance some omniscient deity?” “[citation needed]”
→ need incentives to click the orange button if really ready to prove a rejection is in order based on factual info and logical reasoning (or else there’s the green button).
I have already explained what I mean by “lack of evidence”. I could cite any number of examples where the likelihood that anyone could rule out similar species at a particular life stage/sex in a particular location when certain features are not visible is virtually zero. I have also explained why the green button does not serve the needed purpose (it does not create a disagreement and does not change the community ID). But it seems to me that your objection is not about specific cases, but about a principle.
It may well be the case that people often conflate lack of personal knowledge with lack of evidence. But this is a different issue than whether the wording of the disagree button should acknowledge that there are cases where IDers may legitimately need to push back an ID even though they are not saying it is definitely not that species. Because the wording currently does not do this – i.e., unless a new wording addresses this, it will not solve a important existing problem.
It is not clear to me whether you are arguing that that IDers should never push back an ID unless they have evidence that it is NOT the species in question. If this is the case, you have not explained to me how an arbitrary ID for which there are absolutely no visible features that allow for distinguishing species A from species B that is also present in the region in question is meaningful or useful for anyone.
If you merely wish to argue that a message when disagreeing should discourage people from assuming that just because they lack the knowledge/skill to ID an organism does not mean that anyone can, then I agree with you. But I don’t see that this has to exclude an effort to find a wording that addresses both situations (lack of knowledge and lack of evidence).
If you are proposing that people need to provide a reason when using the orange button (i.e., pushing back an ID without suggesting an alternative), this is also a different question. I suspect you will find that IDers who have good reasons for pushing back an ID often do in fact provide a reason (but note that previous proposals to require people to include a comment any time they disagree have generally been viewed pretty critically by many IDers). Whereas people who are determined to push back an ID because (e.g.) they dislike observations with poor photos or lack knowledge of the local species may well do so regardless of the wording of the disagree button, and if the only requirement is that they type some comment when disagreeing, I don’t see how this will really solve the problem – a comment like “photo is blurry” takes a few seconds to type and doesn’t make the disagreement any more well-founded than if they did not enter a comment.
I argue that
- the wording is problematic, ambiguities should be fixed
- ambiguities should be fixed, by fixing the wording and/or the design - one button, one clear meaning, one clear predictible outcome
- to prevent misunderstandings or quarrels between identifier and observer, the current wording could be improved slightly, to make anyone about to hard-disagree more self-conscious*, shifting slightly the focus from ‘evidence’ (never speaking by itself) to ‘identifier’ (who clicks and sometimes speaks)
- through careful wording and unobtrusive design, identifiers should be nudged – not forced – towards this goal, maybe with the help of extra technical options (e.g. buttons for various sorts of disagreement, a textbox to preemptively expose some argument… whatever works)
(*) for example, reminding them subtly of their own subjectivity and limits, ensuring briefly they’ve weighed the full evidence in light of sound references, explaining clearly the results of that hard-disagreement for that observation, warning gently how - even if not mandatory - many fellow iNatters would appreciate if they would remain open to discussing amicably and reasonably the arguments behind their disagreement. For there’s still some reminding, or even educating, to do…
People do not always agree about how to interpret the evidence. This includes assessments about what evidence is necessary. There is nothing fundamentally different about someone entering a disagreeing ID at a higher level and someone entering a conflicting ID saying that the observation is something else.
In both cases, the onus of justifying the ID does not fall solely on the person entering the new ID. The person who entered the previous ID is also free to question the new ID or to provide an explanation of why they believe their ID is correct. The IDs are part of a dialog; either party may change their mind based on the arguments presented by the other person. If I push back an ID because based on my knowledge and experience there is not enough evidence to support a more specific ID and you are able to provide reasons for why you think it is indeed that species and lookalike species can be ruled out, then I may decide to change my disagree and maybe I will even have learned something useful that I can apply moving forward. Or I may not. And other users may come along at any time and decide that they agree with one or the other of us.
But none of this can happen if you start out from the position that people pushing back IDs don’t have what they consider to be good reasons for doing so. I keep seeing the opinion that pushing back IDs is somehow obstructing the ID process or ignorantly messing up other people’s observations or obstinately insisting on some unreasonably high standard of certainty (“know-nothingism”). Is it possible that some people push back IDs for these reasons? Yes. But there are also plenty of people who enter IDs that are careless or uncritically following the CV or any number of other questionable reasons. Some proportion of IDs will always be misguided. And some portion of the IDs that every single one of us makes will be wrong simply because we were tired or overlooked something or did not realize that there was some other factor we needed to consider.
There is no wording of the disagree popup that will prevent that, any more than rewording the agree button will prevent people from agreeing to IDs they do not understand. What we can do is try to find a wording that will reduce unintended effects and misunderstandings (people not realizing that clicking the orange button will produce a disagreement – or people assuming that a disagreement necessarily means “definitely not that species” when it can also mean “that species ID is not justified”).
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Absolutely. Not every IDer who disagrees is a picky know-nothingist. How to tell though? The hard-to-figure outcome and ambiguous wording of buttons still manage to confuse IDers (see various threads and posts about the green-orange issue), with no easy way to make sense of any disagreement. “Simply ask them why they disagreed” is, unfortunately, hardly manageable - language barrier (another useful info that iNat could incentivize users to provide in their profile), notifs piling up (the notif system is unusable), silent IDers (for lack of time, no common language, notifs disabled…).
Meanwhile, there are still unexplored ways (beyond better wording) to improve the ID/Agree/Disagree situation and communication around it. Additional buttons? Optional textbox offering IDers to disambiguate their click, and even expose their insights for the greater benefit of everybody? (there’s a textbox while Suggesting an ID, no longer available when a disagreement results…) A manageable notification system able to favor -not deter- discussion? Any other feature to keep the community happy and talkative?
At the moment, there is little reason for any discussion ever being started by anyone, since there is little incentive/guideline/advice to do so, little educating/onboarding of users (observers and identifiers) either, and an ID system that rests upon playful clicks on poorly-worded, unclear-function buttons (off-topic but symmetric issue: the ‘Agree’ button, and ease with which some users click it).
Of course, one could still argue that “such things do happen and will keep happening, some people are like this, there’s no way to really improve or repair that, deal with it”. One could also argue that there’s already a sledgehammer solution to both confused-but-well-meaning and picky-know-nothingist IDers pushing back IDs unduly… opting-out of community ID at the obs or account level.
Not a really pleasant direction though, is it?
I’ve been thinking - based on the fact that the “orange” button is used in two different ways (to indicate “it is NOT that species” and to indicate “this can’t be ID’d to species”) and some folks can’t even tell it’s orange (see discussion about red-green vision issues here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/questions-about-how-id-disagreement-works/59211/52), maybe there really needs to be three buttons. They could be arranged maybe like a traffic light: 
- Red on top meaning “I know this is NOT this species”
- Yellow in the middle meaning “I know this can’t be ID’d to species without more evidence (because you need microscopy/DNA etc.)”
- Green at the bottom meaning “it could be this species, but I don’t see enough evidence/don’t have enough knowledge to confirm”
I know this would flip the order from currently green on top and orange on the bottom to green being on the bottom, but using the traffic light analogy may make it clearer what each option says by borrowing from a signal most people are familiar with from everyday life.
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in short:
-there are cases where someone should be able to bump back ID based on not enough evidence, rather than thinking it is specifically wrong
however
-some people use that too broadly, for instance disagreeing with blurry IDs of trees without realizing it’s the only tree anywhere near that area with that canopy shape and is easy for someone else to ID.
(for example a Joshua tree, setting aside that unnecssary species level split… with a blurry picture of a multi branched spiky thing on a trunk in the Mojave desert, doesn’t matter if it’s blurry, you know what it is. Same with a puicture of a house-sized tree in Sequoia National Forest, you don’t need to see cones, etc.)
I think the orange button needs to exist, but some people need to use it less. And it should NEVER be about not liking a blurry photo or whatever. There are many reasons people might have a blurry photo. Don’t be part of the problem by gatekeeping. https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/charlie/74717-please-don-t-harass-people-over-blurry-photos-or-photos-taken-from-vehicles
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I agree with those who have noted that regardless of wording, there will always be cases of overconfident disagreeing (as with overconfident agreeing). On the other hand, maybe there could be some tweaks to the current language that would help bridge the gap between “I am confident it is not species X” and “I am confident no one can confirm this as species X given the current evidence.”
For example, the text displayed under the disagreeing ID could be changed from “* [user] disagrees this is Genus species“ to “* [user] disagrees this can be confirmed as Genus species“ (though maybe that tips the language too much in the other direction, and is a bit more wordy).
The biggest issue with the current wording is that it describes ‘leading disagreement’ but is actually ‘branch disagreement’. If I disagree with Vascularplantus wrongus but don’t know what plant it is and just put Plant, then by clicking “No, but it is a member of Kingdom Plantae,” I would think by the wording that I am affirming that it is a Plant, and only disagreeing about the particular species. I would not at all expect that by clicking “it is a member of Kingdom Plantae” I’m actually saying it’s not the vast majority of the species that most people think of as plants (i.e. vascular plants). But that is in fact what happens. Effectively, I think I’m saying “I’m certain this is a plant” when I’m in fact saying “I’m certain this is a non-vascular plant (moss, algae, liverwort, etc.).”
I actually think the proposal at the end of the blog post on Clarifying Ancestor Disagreements is great:
But that was over five years ago…
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Five years ago, so what? Let’s go with it!
Btw that scientific name is almost in one of my native languages. «Je fais pipi sur gazon pour embêter les coccinelles.» (I had to look it up, I thought the verb was “ameuter” when I heard it as a kid, and wasn’t sure what it meant.)
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I like the wording of the green in this - very clear. However I dislike the wording of the second. I still think it should refer to the taxa being disagreed with: e.g. “Yes, because I think the evidence is insufficient to confirm that it is C. septempunctata”. As it stands if leaves you with nothing to click if you don’t think the species can be confirmed and you’re unsure whether the genus can be confirmed.
And I agree that the top one should be redder. I like the traffic lights idea.