What if it turns out that it isn’t Life but looks like it might be?
DQA ‘No evidence of organism’, as at present. It makes no difference whether the observation was originally ID’d as Life or not ID’d at all. (or ‘human’ if it is an articifial product, all the current methods are not affected as far as I can see)
True, although there can be “honest Unknowns” … we don’t know how to classify it at any level.
Unknowns attract some identifiers. More for recent obs.
Life is where obs go to die unseen.
thus expending those noble identifiers’ efforts doing something the observer should have done to start with. The only reason the vast majority of ‘unknowns’ are in that category is because many new observers don’t know how to use the site due to the lack of an introductory tutorial. The few ‘honest unknowns’, which certainly exist, will probably be moved out of unknown into ‘Life’ anyway, which is where they belong, unless they are not evidence of a living thing at all, in which case they do not belong on iNat at all.
But I fear my opinion on the redundancy of ‘unknown’/‘life’ has generated a tangent from the point I was really trying to make, which was that any system that forces people to make a general ID (such as was proposed above) must also include the option to positively say ‘I don’t know’
…and that the problem of large numbers of ‘unknowns’ at CNC (and throughout the year), would be greatly improved if people did have to positively state that they don’t know whether it is plant, animal or fungus etc.
This particular point is both a measurable one, and an obstacle (albeit not an obstacle unique to CNC).
IF the goal of the CNC is to bring in new iNat users, there is an easy way to determine whether that is succeeding and it is in the retention of users - meaning, people who continue to use iNat in other parts of the year other than CNC.
All we have is anecdotes that some people continue using iNat, and a lot of disactivity and non- responsiveness from accounts after the event is done.
My personal inclination from identifying is that there is not a lot of retention. I am happy to be proven wrong. But until someone shows how many new users stay on the site, we aren’t actually going to know if the “CNC brings in new people to iNat” is actually truly successful compared to the strain it puts on iNat’s resources. And it’s not just a matter of identifiers. There has to be a content freeze on the website during CNC.
Personally, I think the ambassador program makes more sense as a mechanism for bringing in new people to iNat because it gives them someone to work with. iNat lacks an onboarding mechanism, and it has generally been considered to be too much of a barrier to new people using the site in the past. So, that leaves person-to-person work to manage that learning curve.
Overall, as several people have pointed out, CNC is an example of the challenges iNat is facing, that have been discussed in this forum, and about which some solutions have been offered but not implemented for various reasons (I am not intending to cast shade here, I’m just stating a fact.) There have been some good things implemented like the DQA for multiple organisms in a multiple photo observation, but we still have room to improve. Identifiers are burning out, and computer vision cannot replace human expertise.
When discussions earlier in the year occurred about iNat as an org, folks discussed the tension between iNat’s various goals. And I think this is again apparent here with the CNC. But it’s also an issue of clarity of goals, and whether we are measuring the right things to determine if those goals are met.
That sounds like a really bad idea. Incorrectly RGed observations are already a problem. Having a ranking by % RG will encourage more people to agree with IDs that they don’t know are right to get the numbers up.
That is exactly why Unknown should be removed and Life should remain but be made unselectable.
When an Unknown observation catches someone’s attention, it is usually because an identifier who normally focuses on specific taxa happens to check it out by chance. It means they just occasionally think of the issue, find themselves with some free time, and take a look. While the identification page they have bookmarked (or never even closed) remains set to their favorite taxa (me as snakes and spiders). If your assumption is correct, I think it’d be much better if those observations were seen by people who are actively searching for them.
Meanwhile, Life should remain but unselectable. It would only serves as a result when community ID disagree across kingdoms happen. If things go the way I predict, the number of these observations should be insignificant and easy to clean up whenever someone feels spontaneous and has enough free time to drop by and take a look.
В своём регионе я регулярно просматриваю неизвестные виды, что бы хоть до царства сдвинуть. И, регулярно, по этому фильтру вижу Agrobacterium radiobacter, и ещё 10 видов, даже уже исследовательского уровня.
I am a generalist. I am, one of the identifiers you rely on, to pick snakes or spiders, from Unknown and Kingdom Disagreement and ‘junk’ broad IDs above Family. Not all identifiers are taxon specialists, or you would have to resort to picking thru Unknowns for yourself.
Only for California - it is 12K - and that is for a ‘country’ with many active identifiers taking their CNC projects beyond the umbrella project’s 40% RG. Africa I clear every day, but it was a mission when I first tackled that, with problems going back 10 or 12 years - I have reviewed 918 obs.
I don’t try to ID in Thailand, since I don’t live anywhere near there and have never been there. I ID alternately in anywhere (which is generally from west coast of America to the date line), US eastern, and the Carolinas. In this process I often find audio observations of Eleutherodactylus (at least one was misidentified as a bird). I’ve heard this frog in its native island, so I know what it sounds like. If I find an ob in Hawai’i, I know it’s E. coqui, but if it’s in Puerto Rico, there are several species in the genus, and I’ve read that there’s another species that sounds very similar, and I’d need to know the altitude to tell them apart. I was in San Juan within walking distance of the beach, so what I heard was E. coqui.
I absolutely know how important your works are and undoubtedly appreciate them. But that process still can be taken on the specifying path of ‘from Animals to Snakes’ or ‘from Vertebrate to Snakes’. Starting as Unknown gives less chance to be recognized by many other people.
And to my previously stated point,
It’s the matter of user responsibility toward platform/community. The science of User Experience has shows us that the way platform communicates and positions itself affect its user’s perspective.
I talked about the scenario I proposed and limit only to Life observations (where it would only occur when there specifically are disagreeing across kingdoms, no user could manually put that label).
Another unmentioned benefit is that removing the Unknown status serves as a mechanism to gently force observers to specify their intended subject. This is incredibly helpful when a photo contains multiple organisms that we’re no more forced to guess what to focus (I’m pretty sure many ID’ers here have frequently been in such situation).
San Antonio is a model for other CNCs to follow. From my observations as an active moderator curator, almost everything has been done correctly in the San Antonio CNC, and there have been no major moderation issues In the area regarding the CNC to my knowledge.
The CNC is not an inherently flawed idea and can work.
Why or how would this obs - fungi or succulent or ? be better if the observer or I had chosen Life ?
I’m not sure if it is due to a miscommunication on my part but since it seems like what you think toward my scenario is being taken as offending against your work, I don’t think I can make any further opinion on this topic. I’m sorry.
No - I apologise. We are talking at cross purposes. The forum is a useful space to understand how others use iNat. And why my problem is MY (Diana’s) problem.
I’m sorry and let me go back to that obs, it looks fungi to me.
And as per my scenario,
- Obs owner can put fungi or plant or any other taxon.
- Just not Unknown or Life (since those options won’t be available).
- If it’s wrong, somebody will come to correct it.
- If it’s across kingdom, the overall community will be held back to Life.
- If you set the Identify page filter correctly (e.g. obs with ID in kingdom level or higher taxa), the obs will shows up as Life then you can give further ID.
The point is that the obs owner is actively engaged to the ID they suggest (which could bond them to the platform), the platform becomes less complexity, the ID’ers still can work as the way they use to do.
Why should I be forced to leave my ID blank instead of putting in “Life”? Putting “Life” indicates that I tried to put an ID but don’t know which kingdom it belongs to. Leaving it as Unknown has the connotation that I didn’t try.
PS: Or were you saying neither “Life” nor no ID should be allowed?
PPS: Not knowing the kingdom comes up a lot with plant diseases and galls