yep, just responding to a prior comment equating maverick with misidentification (and withdrawn maverick with withdrawn misidentification, despite IDs of now-inactive taxa updated by taxon changes also being categorized as withdrawn mavericks)
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Well - sometimes the opposite is true - I have seen experts (people who have published on a taxon) make mistakes and subsequently numerous people agreeing just because they blindly trust expert IDs.
Noone should ever agree just because an expert suggested the ID, you should agree if you yourself know how to identify this taxon (or you educated yourself having done some research prior to agreeing and trying to verify the expert ID).
If your Id is soundly based on experience and knowledge, then explain it in the comments pointing to the idetifying characters, putting up a link to a key etc, but donât refer to any expert status.
BTW: âExpertsâ on iNat are most of the time probably correct with their IDs, I donât want to discredit them in any way.
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Depending on the location, I sometimes find one personâs observations predominating. I end up doing a lot of their observations even though I was not specifically singling out that person, simply because they are the most active observer of that taxon in that place.
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I just used that URL of @vreinkymov 's, and that was half of my mavericks. In fact, several of them were because I added a Maverick ID after a consensus. Those Maverick IDs have comments explaining my reasons, and remain the most recently added IDs for those observations.
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This helped me with several taxon changes I had missed, thank you!
So we are to stay strictly on-topic. Got it.
Here is my one disagreement with an expert story:
Once upon a time I posted a butterfly Observation, which I felt quite comfortable identifying to subfamily.
I commented that I was not an expert so was not sure I ought to put it further but to me it really looked like a particular subspecies. One of the MX butterfly experts came and said it was a completely different species in the same family.
This was confusing, because the species he indicated is not known in this area.
A local credentialed expert but with a different specialty area @ commented and asked the butterfly expert if he was sure, noting to him as well it looked like the subspecies I had indicated and gently asking about range but without offering an identification.
There was no response, which I attributed to the volume of @ mentions the butterfly expert likely received and/or his workflow and/or his device.
At that point the system did what it ought to, and multiple persons came in and identified it to the subspecies I originally suggested, so that it reached 6 subspecies identifications to his one Maverick, which remains.
Since that day he has corrected my identifications on my own Observations multiple times, which he is extremely well qualified to do. (I do not yet feel qualified to ID butterflies for others, since a lot of what I know is experiential, how they move and act, etc.)
I am grateful whenever he offers an identification, confirmation of my own identification or correction.
The End.
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How do you come to this interpretation, someone makes an ID (only ID without any comment) and for you it is clearly an aggressive act. ???
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This thread seems to be based on a very specific disagreement between two users. Additionally, the original posts borders on a violation of posting unconstructive complaints/grievances. Ultimately, you cannot control othersâ behaviors on iNat; you can only control your own. The forum would be a mess if everyone made a post every time they had a disagreement with another user. Use the tools available to you to counter bad data (e.g., adding your own ID, tagging other users, DQA votes when appropriate, blocking) and flag/submit a help ticket if someone is violating iNat rules.
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Iâve been thinking a bit lately about how internet communities change as they grow. iNat is growing steadily, and we need to be braced for change. We were once named âthe nicest place on the internetâ by the NYT. I really hope we stay that way, and one of the most important pieces is assuming people mean well. Amplify the kindness and be gentle. Try to let the annoying behaviors roll off your back like an Anas spâŚ
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If I were to identify something, and many other identifiers in the field disagreed, I personally wouldnât feel targeted. Really, all IDâs are opinions; some may be more justified than others, but still. Iâd say a community with many perspectives is better than a community where everyone has the same thought process and perspectives.
Really, if many experts disagreed with an ID of mine, I would either re-evaluate, or provide my thoughts and start a conversation. A lot more people (including myself) would learn more that way.
Basically, I view disagreeing IDâs as more of a âI have a different opinion than yoursâ rather than âYouâre bad at identifying and made a mistakeâ
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I think this is really important, along with
The iNaturalist Community Guidelines do ask that we assume others mean well, and I agree that doing so can really make life easier and make the internet (and iNat) a better place. Much easier said than done, though, and itâs something I frequently remind myself to do.
This really is a huge, diverse community full of people who have had different life experiences and come from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, but pretty much all of us are here with the same ultimate goals and passions and we owe each other some grace. If someoneâs actions do cross the line, though, please flag the content and/or submit a ticket.
This is very true for me too! I think itâs important to know yourself and how you react to certain triggers and give yourself some time and space before reacting online. Itâs very easy to react quickly online, especialy when youâre not seeing someoneâs face and remembering youâre talking to a real person.
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Thatâs the fun part, there is always someone who knows more about something than you do.
By the way, I donât think most of us have a problem if you tag in another identifier if an ID wasnât precise. There are specialists who may know a given region or taxon better than I do. It only becomes annoying in the cases when someone is systematically tagging everyone in the leaderboard comment by comment.
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There are a few regions where thereâs only a couple of big observers and I end up hitting almost all their stuff. Never occurred to me that they might think Iâm following them around. Made me laugh a bit.
In a case like that, it may be advisable to send a DM. As you noted: high amounts of notifications can bury a request for re-review.
Some eyebrow raising mistakes Iâve made that I greatly appreciate when people let me know are: clicking Bombus pratorum when I meant to click Subgenus Pyrobombus (the one is right after the other on the drop down menu), or entering the wrong region in the filter (I put a bunch of bad IDâs in Labrador when I didnât notice that the region was for both Labrador and Newfoundland), entering a bunch of one common species, and then entering it one more time on something else through finger memory, and of course, sometimes just wrong.
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I absolutely agree with you, I simply was trying to offer some possibilities other than someone just trying to be a problem. Just offering thoughts that could perhaps result in a positive outcome for both peopleâŚand ultimately focus on the observation rather than feelings. (-:
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If you find âexpertsâ are making a lot of mistakes, they arenât really experts and you need to re-evaluate your criteria for identifying them.
In any event, my note was in reference to using iNat data for other purposes; and in that context no one has the time to independently confirm all the iNat data for all taxa. Whether something attains âresearch gradeâ is meaningless because it only means two random people have made an ID. The only reliable indication of data quality usable in that context is identification by observers with expertise and experience in the relevant taxon.
Providing reasons for an ID can be useful, but itâs easy to provide reasons for incorrect IDs as well. Regardless, in my experience 99% of ids donât give reasons. And for difficult IDs, experienced observers arenât going to be able to communicate in a simple comment what it has taken them years to learn.
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To include some extra nuance: no matter how good the expert is we will all have mistakes. Hereâs a funny one that all of us made https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/3715062
To add to that, there are renowned experts that arenât âexpertsâ at photo ID. I know a couple of guys that would run circles around me with microscopes and specimens, that I could get half drunk and out do them identifying photos. It is a completely different ID method that requires practice. So I wouldnât discount an expert who struggles with photo ID if theyâre not experienced at it.
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If a user leaves an incorrect ID after everyone else has changed their ID, it may not be due to spite but rather be simply due to negligence (notifications sure can pile up), and in either case the dissenting ID could be easily left as a maverick.
While I do agree that it would be wrong of the user to purposely hold on to their wrong ID after being corrected, I also feel like thereâs a lot of unnecessary irritation here. Even if they were indeed searching through your IDs for something wrongly identified, nothing about that goes against iNat policy or even common sense, as long as they are actually correcting you and not doing something like misidentifying an obs on purpose. The same argument goes for erasing their presence from an obs. As long as theyâre not purposely misidentifying something, does it really matter if they add an identification to agree with you or not?
In conclusion, there doesnât seem to be much wrong here, except that if youâre looking into these so called issues so deeply, maybe youâre overthinking the whole situation.
Also, what does being a full grown adult or a professional have to do with identifying things correctly? iNat isnât a platform meant for only experts, or for only âfull grown adultsâ for that matter.
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If mine was a mis-click, and is not part of a conversation - I do delete.
If I concede, you are all right, but I still think it could be confused as a Similar Species - then I withdraw, as it still serves a useful purpose.
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For one of my mavericks, I think that observer may have blocked me. I have tried several times to change or withdraw it, but I keep getting an error message saying I donât have permission to do that.
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Good point. I would assume this is rare, but it could be a reason that an ID is unchanged, especially in situations where there might be a conflict perceived between two users.
A reason to try to discuss differences and work things out and not just block someone immediately.
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