@cmcheatle I think others have basically already answered your question to me, but: if I am going through all the observations of a particular taxon in a particular place (in my example Orthoptera from Florida), I add an ID on every single one. If it was incorrectly identified or only to Orthoptera - then nothing has changed of course - I simply add my ID. But if it is already correctly ID’d - such as with most of the Romalea microptera observations - then I ordinarily would just look at it for a moment, hit ‘agree’, and then click to the next observation. Now in those cases I have to type in ‘Rom micr’ or whatever, arrow key down, hit enter, and then click on to next observation. It might not seem like much of a difference, but when you’re going through hundreds of observations, that added time piles up.
I don’t use the ‘reviewed’ button on its own since a) I won’t get notifications if someone makes a differing ID (which may make me come back to re-check my old ID), and b) adding my own ID gives it my personal stamp of approval (whatever that is worth!) and makes it such that anyone who looks at the observation in the future will see that I looked at it already and gave my opinion.
I think most of us who feel affected by that change were not involved in that conversation - this came out of the blue to me, for example.
I had been involved in discussions about clarifying the language on the agree button (which have seemingly been going on for years), but did not realize there was discussion about removing it entirely.
So, when I first saw the news about the Agree button being removed, I thought it was related to one of the first things I posted about on this forum, removing the “thumbnail” agree button which is problematic imo for several reasons (including enabling ease of leaderboard gaming) that I wont rehash, see https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/agree-button-on-identify-thumbnails/1597 for example
To my amazement the change has been made on non-thumbnail agree but not on thumbnail agree?! Is this a change that has been planned along with the rest but just not enabled yet, or all y’all actually going to leave that thumbnail functionality there?
Like a bunch of people here, I’ll add my two cents.
I think this update might be nice for some occasions: I will sometimes post a bird and it will get like 10 agrees within the same day. That can get frustrating, since even I knew what the bird was. On the other hand, I’ve come across obs like this one https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7592948 where a bunch of people came together and made it research-grade, even though it was a false ID.
Furthermore, as an entomologist, I find that people will all too often just agree with the common species–for me, Buprestis aurulenta, which is a very common bup in the west US–even though there are about 6 or so species that look very similar with untrained eyes. I’ve carefully gone through nearly all 700+ observations of this species to make sure none were B. adjecta or striata or something else, and have found dozens of mistakes. The whole agree function helps me be able to go through those and agree on the correct ones and disagree with the incorrect ones.
The easiest way to make this not happen seems to be just staying caught up with the taxon I identify, therefore only adding 30-50 IDs in a day, rather than 2 or 300 a day.
Originally I wasn’t going to say anything, but after IDing since this change has been made and reading all the replies on the journal post and here I decided to give my opinion. At first, I was neutral about the change. Despite IDing casual, Needs ID, and RG for a lot of species, the 2-3 letter shortcut worked pretty well for IDing. Then, I decided to start going through monarchs (since that was next on my list of something that I wanted to go through), and that’s when I felt the affect of the change. In order for the letter shortcut to work efficiently, one has to type ‘mona’ for monarch to appear second on the list. Most of the time I ended up typing ‘monar’ because of how slow the drop down box updated. Going through just 1 page took a little longer than what I would have liked; and since there are over 200 RG pages, I can see how that time difference can add up. And I’m sure there are species that lack a good shortcut because of others with similar shortcuts. And I only add IDs if there are less than 3 agreeing IDs (mostly so people didn’t/don’t think that I’m trying to ‘rack up leaderboard points’). IDing tonight took me even longer, and I didn’t even do everything that I normally do.
Now, I have very real experience with an overzealous IDer and I can say that it is extremely frustrating to deal with, especially when they are basically unresponsive (only occasionally replying to tags). I can understand why the site staff wanted to fix this problem, but I don’t think that this was the right approach. As @lotteryd said, I really think the best solution is to remove the agree button on the thumbnail (and I’m pretty sure that’s how the person whom I’ve had experience with IDed things). I also like the ideas of removing the agree button only if there are 4 agreeing species ID (not 2) and adding it to any ID that is different (ex. subspecies or a disagreement) and changing the leaderboards so that it only shows leading IDs or show the different ID percentages. I also think that the idea of suspending IDing capability of someone who has a ton of maverick ideas is interesting and might be worth looking into (although it could potentially make blind agreeing worse). (Also, sorry for not remembering who originally suggested these ideas)
All in all, I guess I could live with the change if it were permanent (although it would make me far slower IDer (which means less IDs in general- both Needs ID and RG)) and I honestly think that the originally journal post could have been worded a little better (it seemed a little angry? to me and I can see how it seems to give off a general dislike of any RG IDer).
(Also, a little side note: recently I’ve noticed a decline in ID notifications that I get (IDs for my observations and those that I ID) and ever since this change they have plummeted even more (which doesn’t seem to be a good thing to me))
I think this would make the leaderboard extremely redundant, as it then becomes a “fight” to get the correct ID in first, if competitive interest is what is desired. Plus, removing “agreed” counts no longer credits people on the identification list for what can be hours and hours of verification.
A slightly better situation than what we have now, but I don’t think it would be compltetely satisfactory.
Perhaps someone has already mentioned this - but if not - removing the “Agree” button for RG observations is a major barrier to correct identification of taxa where the infrataxon identification is important. For example, 99% of the observations of Camassia leichtlinii are ssp. suksdorfii, because ssp. leichtlinii is a local endemic that is seldom observed. Observations that have 2 identifcations of the same species are given RG status, even if one ID is to species and the second ID is to subspecies. The “Agree” button should be available to facilitate a second ID to subspecies so that the observation is recognized as belonging to that subspecies. But with this change it is no longer possible to do this simply by agreeing, one must type in the species name. Here is an observation that is an example of this situation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/49161380. I would add this this is a particularly important issue where one var or ssp is of conservation concern but other vars or ssp are not. I would think that for conservation purposes we would want to do everything we can to ensure complete as well as accurate identifications.
You may already know this, but in case it helps others…
If focusing on a single taxon like this (definitely a good idea with this new change, when possible), there is a shortcut to get this back to virtually the same efficiency as having an agree button. (The following works on the web site with a PC and keyboard, but I expect equivalents exist on other platforms.)
Type out/select the taxon name completely once, using either common or scientific name – whichever gives you the fewest choices. So for Monarch, using “Danaus plexippus” may work best. (Or even better, a common name from another language that is unique to the taxon, in this case like the Ojibwe “Ashkibag” - all names can be found on the Taxonomy tab of the Taxon page.)
Before confirming, highlight that full name, and (on a PC keyboard) hit Ctrl-C. This is the Windows shortcut for “Copy,” and places that text on the Windows clipboard. (Or you can right-click with the mouse and select “Copy.”)
On every subsequent ID, where you would start typing Monarch, instead just hit Ctrl-V, the Windows shortcut for “Paste.”
If necessary, use the Down-Arrow and Enter to pick the right choice, then Enter again to save the ID.
Understood that this might not be everyone’s best solution depending on circumstances, but for me, it keeps me just about as efficient as I was before this change.
NOTE: if you use the Windows Clipboard to Copy/Paste anything else during the ID session, you’ll just have to repeat step 2 before continuing.
For what it’s worth, I’ve found that in (all? many?) circumstances where the Agree button does not appear, the ‘‘a’’ shortcut to agree with the leading taxon still works. Which I appreciate.
I agree.
Let me give you a concrete example:
There is an occasional tourist photo from distant mountains or deserts. The author of the observation did not give any ID. For identification by a non-specialist (like me), you need to do some work: find literature by region and taxon, find a binary key, or choose a species from among the possible.
If my identification is supported by a taxon / region specialist, it will be a good incentive for me. In addition, often I am not completely sure of my ID. I am much less reluctant if the author of the photo or an unknown user agrees to give RG status to observation.
iNat is 24/7 international. For those of us living in time zones on the wrong side of the world (Cape Town here) by the time I get ‘here’ the tentative ID and newbie agree, and has already moved an obs to RG. 4, or even 3 would give the rest of us a chance to engage. I would definitely like to see one (or even 2) trusted IDs added to a tentative plus newbie pair…
The slowdown precedes this change. Identifications always slow down in the northern hemisphere summer, with 70%+ of the user base there, many identifiers are out enjoying time outside and observing themselves leaving less time to ID, and this will be especially true over a weekend.
