Also, there are a lot of curators, and i think it is curators who are primarily adding the names anyway, isn’t it?
If the inconsistency of common names is irritating, it’s easy to configure the site to show primarily scientific names.
This keeps on getting mentioned as a reason why common name frustrations shouldn’t matter. I also have my account set up to show scientific names first, but we need to remember that many many many casual users never bother to dig into their settings and do this. The default is to show common names first, so we should assume that’s what most people are seeing.
I saw a case this summer where this caused a lot of confusion because the user kept on talking about their identification using an obscure common name that somebody had recently added but which has no actual traction among robber fly enthusiasts. So that user was talking about the fly in their observation using a vague adjective (“friendly”), and the experts were explaining why it was or wasn’t that taxon using scientific names, and it took several rounds of back-and-forth before I realized that the whole issue was common name / scientific name cross-talk. Somebody had added “friendly robber fly” as a common name to that species, but robber fly identifiers all have their settings prioritizing scientific names while the observer had hers set to prioritize common names and so each one’s eyes had glazed over the other type of name and assumed the other was thinking in the same nomenclatural framework as themselves.
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They’ve started showing up more frequently in robber flies this year. Here’s a recent example: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/545394. Some people are way too literal with their interpretation of “is this name being used anywhere else on the internet” and miss the spirit of the law in their focus on the letter of the law.
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There is a posibility that ten different organism get the same common name. So the chaos is complete.
How far is Wikidata ? The Netherland and Belgium are standardizing their common names…so there is one common name in both countries. I would only use lists from WIKIDATA and from published standardized lists, otherwise you get useless observations. Is it possible to use Wikidata as a check ?
Birds indeed have 1-2 standard checklists.
eBird ?
https://www.worldbirdnames.org/new/
Only curators can change default common name, but everyone can add them, it can’t be only a curators’ task, I am not a curator and I had to add hundreds or probably thousands of common names, because nobody else did.
Are there not annoted lists available ? You should have add them to Wikidata
- https://twitter.com/andrawaag/status/1131879815420637184
- https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-do-i-see-some-taxa-in-my-native-language-and-others-in-english/5428/15
- https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/reliable-sources-for-common-names-on-inaturalist/5579
- [Poa annua - Wikispecies (wikimedia.org)](https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Poa_annua)
Most of the other stuff comes from Wikispecies which allows uncited entry of common names. It’s kind of illustrative of the circular sourcing of data these days, EoL sources from Wikidata which sources from Wikispecies or other imports etc.
Last week i checked wikidata and there was a link from Wikidata to inaturalist (!!!)
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Unfortunately scientists also don’t check if that Genus is a plant before they use the exact same word for a spider (or was it vice versa)
Erica for example.
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Frustration is valid and often unavoidable, but the option to do this is more being mentioned as why we shouldn’t diminish the importance of common names to the ‘casual’ users. They aren’t going to engage with scientific names at all. These sorts of disconnects between ‘amateurs’ and the academic community are just going to happen. At least we are having this conversation at all. If we make iNat totally inaccessible to these users, we won’t be having the conversation any more at all.
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This was one of my conclusions on another thread.
We need a nomenclature for nomenclature itself really.
I see terms including :
- standard English
- common name
- vernacular name
- colloquial name
Elsewhere I’ve also just found:
- trivial epithet
- country name
- popular name
- farmer’s name
Even if these terms don’t describe distinct concepts, there are certainly distinct concepts floating around in these conversations which (ironically) it would be helpful to delineate. As well as doubtless many other new approaches which one could acknowledge and define such as @charlie suggests with
- in-community name
One of my favourite new approaches is the :
- crowd-sourced name :
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Use a common source like a newspaper or blog which mentions the organism by the common name, with a picture, or if you can, with a scientific name alongside it. Either works to establish the link in a popular usage; that’s what I did to add some common names through the taxon curation link.
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Well, I’m not a casual user and I would hate having scientific names as main ones, doesn’t matter that I do know them, so dividing people by how they use names isn’t really effective in this case, people may just want to see common names.
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Yes, I wanted to list this as an often suggested nonfunctional workaround in the original post but I did not want to inflate it too much.
They will not, particularly if iNat will continue reinforcing the unrealistic expectation that common names are common language alternative to name any and all organisms. I did not propose to use only Latin names. My specific suggestion is to use hybrid names when necessary as the default names: is there a fly without established common name? Do not let us, iNat users, to invent new names at our will. Instead, use the established common name for the lowest rank taxon plus the latin name. In worst cases it will be “Fly Misotermes mindeni” if there is no established common name below the order taxonomic rank. I think public can swallow this. But very often, it will be more specific, e.g. “Humpbacked fly Misotermes mindeni”. I believe this is pretty good for public. And where established species common name exist - and these will remain to be a large part of observations - the common name will stay the default.
They surely do or are strongly encouraged to do so, but sometimes they do a sloppy job. There are stupid, non-unique, plain wrong scientific names but I think it is not possible to argue that the quality level is the same for scientific name and a common name invented by a typical iNat user.
I study termites. I do not know what is a carton nest termite. Many termites build carton nests so the name is not helping much but that’s ok - it is misleading but the name is not expected to be self explanatory. It is a bit difficult to understand why newly invented name has to be obviously misleading, suggesting that this is the carton nest building termite group but at least it is not offensive - if that is supposed to be the criteria. So I check scientific literature but I fail to find it. Next I google and I finally find that it is used on iNat and a South African personal blog which might be the original place where the name was invented. My expectation is that the purpose of common names is to give public a tool to understand biodiversity around them and “Carton Nest Termites” are not helping - they are confusing. Some people keep repeating that inventing names on iNat is not a big deal - but it is - because the invented names on iNat are more likely than not to confuse rather than clarify.
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I think many people here primarily disagree with the guideline not to invent new names on iNat and due to some reason they do not state it directly but only keep repeating that it is not a big deal, they do not see a problem, they like the new names filling the gaps where no common names existed etc. It is as if it was a crime to say that they disagree with the guideline. Therefore, the original specific topic is not relevant for them because it was supposed to address how to discourage and prevent invention of new names on iNat. That is the reason why the discussion drifted away. It is not off-topic for them because the original was no-topic for them. I’m being very blatant here. I learnt that there are other perspectives from which to look at the the common names so I’m not dismissing the discussion at all.
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I think this is the best point here; the name has meaning, and if it doesn’t refer to the whole group that it applies to that could be bad. It seems informative where it’s not.
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That’s great but completely different than iNat users giving names which are directly promoted to the main default name used by iNat (I do not say that’s what you meant - just want to relate this to the topic of this discussion). In the poster you shared, after collection of names, they are submitted to Entomological Society of America - so unless I misunderstand the process, this is an approval of new common names by scientists using suggestions from citizen scientists and public. I like that a lot - great way how to get people involved - but I find it unrealistic for hundreds of thousands of insect species. The current setup of iNaturalist encourages that every taxonomic rank, from subspecies to kingdoms, can have a common name which, once created, will become the main default names.
You would be surprised how often things like this happen, and I see them happen on here, like everywhere else.
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This is a very good point and thank you for correcting my lack of understanding of why that particular name has issues.
I guess if we could ensure that common names will still get added when curator oversight is added, I’d support adding that. But it seems to me that curators already have a lot on their plate. I do a lot of flags regarding auto-obscuration, particularly for introduced species and recently various common lizards that recently had a broad status change. The flags often take months to be reviewed. I don’t mean that to blame the curators in any way, only to point out that it seems like there is already too much work for too little curators without adding another thing to review.
The idea earlier in the thread (I don’t remember who suggested it) of requiring a source link for the name to become the default name could be a compromise, though.
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Asking curators to validate the names is indeed putting yet another task on their back and probably unrealistic unless they are given tools that will make the process semi-automatic or very straightforward. These tools would have to be developed on iNat which will be probably a big obstacle in implementing this solution.
Do you actually know if we can obtain data on how many common name suggestions for taxa without common names appear per day/month? How many are flagged and retracted? Such information might inform us what is the scale of manual curation we are actually talking about. Maybe it is not too much and it is easily achievable by curators. Also, if iNat will put less emphasis on invention of new names, e.g. by defaulting to hybrid names consisting of common higher taxon name plus Latin species name where no common name exists as of now, I’d assume the number of invented names will drop sharply which will limit the amount of work for curators. It will, however, not stop implementation of common names which are well established but were missing from iNat database which is important as established common names should be available on iNat.
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I agree that requiring a printed source or website when adding a common name is not workable or desirable for many reasons as @cthawley and @earthknight have laid out. But I can see a requirement making the name creator add some sort of text being possible and perhaps helpful. One could enter something like “Used by the [community] in [place]” if there wasn’t a “real” source to point to - just so that the person adding the name can provide context and would add an extra burden to a bad actor.
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Sure - I am just noting that there is space in my opinion for new processes in the creation of names given the shifts in the socio-cultural landscape we are all navigating. This is why I have limited issue with invention within iNat, as I see it as another new alternative way of names being born. It is certainly different to crowdsourcing under ENTSOC… and I am not saying its perfect … or saying anyone should invent names here at present (as its not within stated guidelines of iNat). But I do not necessarily see it as better or worse in this instance. Personally, I don´t see that a society like ENTSOC should be the arbiters of what makes a good “common” name (although it´s great they are exploring crowd-sourcing as an approach).
Here is the full list and the ones they then offered to the public to finally choose from. They basically took out the ones which are actually the most memorable/fun in my opinion… and then they stuck to the ´safe´ options for the final public vote.
On iNat at the moment you have a natural tug and play of people stepping over the line and others reining them back in. This actually sounds more organic and natural to me. But I could totally imagine this tug and play being more democratic in the future. Perhaps there is an issue with the design at present as you say - in the way the common name once created just becomes the main default name. I don´t think that locking it off for example for curator-only control would be a viable option but I agree there could be a more nuanced approach to the design here. Perhaps there could be checkboxes similar to the DQA ones for people to cast votes for and against different default names. Perhaps names would have to achieve a certain number of votes to be visible whatsoever. Personally I would appreciate being able to have more localised control - for example I would rather flies I see in the UK were not called by US geographical names (whether a sourced name or not).
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Thanks for addressing this topic! I think following two design aspects of iNat can be relatively easily modified to deal with iNat-only common names:
-
As you and others said: requirement for citing a source when submiting a common name. This does not have to be a web page or research article - just enforcing iNaturalist to think and write a bit more before hitting the button might limit the amount of made-up names. Then, should this field be evaluated completely automatically (i.e. checking the field is not empty at least:)) or curators will be expected to check the reasoning? Probably completely automatic evaluation is necessary to minimize the burden on curators - therefore, a smart automatic check has to be implemented.
-
Currently, organism without a common name is labeled with Latin name only. This makes the name label look incomplete and I believe this is encouraging people to add a name. It could be tweaked by modifying the way these taxa are shown:
In the modified label layout, the lowest taxonomic rank for which a common name is on iNat is displayed together with an indicator of what taxonomic rank it is (to prevent confusion with species names).
I can submit it as a feature request(s) but it might be still a bit premature so perhaps with the help of the community the concept can be polished here and submitted later as a separate feature request(s).
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Suggestion #2, automatically using the lowest taxonomic rank for which there is a common name, seems reasonable to me at the moment.
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