Clear reference to the use of 'Human'/'Homo Sapiens' as a taxa for casual grade/non-use

General
1

I am looking for a clear reference where it is described how iNat uses the Human/Homo sapiens taxa to create a casual grade observation that is not used by academia. Is there such a page available?

I searched the forum for humans and homo sapiens and I looked at the curators guide too. I couldn’t find it there.

2 Likes
2

And in extension of that, I see people posting beautiful waterfalls and rocks and whatnot. But these are non-organic. So I mark the observation as no organism present and it then becomes casual grade. I also leave a comment for the uploader. However, how do I identify it? Is there a taxa for this so it ceases to be an unidentified observation, and no one will find this observation again trying to ID it?

3

This page mentions it in the section about flagging observations of humans: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/flags#human

4 Likes
4

Using No evidence of life to make it Casual, means most identifiers will not see it. Applying relevant DQA is a courtesy to the tiny pool of active identifiers.

Identifiers (like me) who will glance at Casual can Mark as Reviewed, along with everything else which doesn’t interest me.

4 Likes
5

For just a rock, “no evidence” is a good DQA without any label, since it’s not “Life”. For things like waterfalls, ponds and mountain ranges in their natural settings, some folks will just use that same DQA, some will label as “Life” because of the general setting, some will label as say, “Tracheophyta” since that typically covers the nonspecific visible life in such a setting.

Once labelled with any ID, the record can become casual with 1 other person adding an ID, and typically 1 person adding the “good as can be” DQA. I have a project where these can be added temporarily, for the notice of others who can add the extra steps: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/variable-species-and-other-life

Edit: On the subject of Homo sapiens records, people should avoid using a captive/cultivated/not wild mark on these. Please countervote if you see one of those marks. There have been unintended consequences to the database from that DQA misuse, in many geographical regions.

3 Likes
6

That’s useful to know! I always leave them; I feel like while I’d prefer to just let the system do its thing they aren’t wrong per se. Do you have an explanatory link I can hand out if asked?

7

Handily, when I tackled the issue myself recently I elicited a staff response, quoted in https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/wild-vs-captive-cultivated-gray-areas/39882/24

2 Likes
8

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.