Common names invented on iNat

General
123

No, that’s just asking for misidentifiactions - people will think the unnamed species is “the” beetle or whatever.

1 Like
124

Can you elaborate on that? I think I don’t understand.

126

Yeah, I can’t make sense of this either. In addition, if people “misidentify” at a higher taxon, I’d consider that much less problematic than the current glut of hyper specific but incorrect identifications.

2 Likes
127

How are they gonna misidentify on the higher level when this proposal suggests the reverse thing? They see name of higher taxon on lower one an easily choose the lower one because it’s family name written on it. Plus it’s already written on observation page (common name of higher taxon), if people want to name things, no family name can stop them.

1 Like
128

Just want to voice my agreement with @alesbucek - especially when it comes to arthropods, of which the vast majority don’t have legitimately common names because they are not common. The idea that potentially every species should have a “common name” so as to make iNaturalist more friendly to casual users does not sit well with me. This also causes significant confusion for observers as they will (apparently) search for potential matches using a description of the organism, e.g. “Fat House Spider” since the spider looks sort of fat and they found it in their house. Well, turns out that what iNat calls a “Fat House Spider” is some obscure species from Mozambique and someone on iNat just made that name up for some unknown reason. But now there are 30 observations of “Fat House Spider” across North America and someone has to monitor that taxon and correct each of those records while patiently explaining everything in this thread. I don’t think this is helpful to anyone, personally.

I can sort of understand this for things like plants and birds (although most common plants and birds already have common names that are accepted by some taxonomic authority), but IMO the vast majority of arthropod species legitimately do not have (or need) a “common” name and I disagree with the “what’s the big deal?” response to iNat users making up their own names for things.

I agree that providing some kind of citation/reason should be required for adding a common name, even (as @tiwane said) if it is just “This is what we call it in $place” - and a visible/public record should be created that shows who added the common name. That way, I can at least ask the person who created “Fat House Spider” why they added that name. As it stands, the process seems to be anonymous and arbitrary and just becomes part of the permanent record (further spreading out to the wider internet as people use iNat as a reference) unless someone flags the taxon and we try to figure out what happened… Which requires curation, which is what iNat is trying to avoid by allowing any user to input a common name for any species.

16 Likes
129

Not sure I follow. The word misidentify was in quotes exactly because I couldn’t quite understand raymie’s point either.

130

unconditional support!

6 Likes
131

Dear all,
I have a diverging opinion on invented names on iNat, and probably because I do that sometimes. I explain :

  • Common name are of course irregular name inherited from the vernacular use of languages ;
  • Common name generally don’t exist for inconspicuous living things and/or very detailed scientific taxonomy (all Taraxacum are named “pissenlit” in French, independently of the splitting or lumping taxonomy used)
  • Common name standardisation was impulsed some decades ago by ornithologists and progressively expand into other taxa, like vascular plants nowadays. For me it is a strange invention, because latin name were created for avoiding this problem in each language and dialect. But popular communication is not easy, or presumed not to be easy, with “latin” names…
  • So, when we want to use common name for the complex and complete taxonomy through iNat, we are stopped by the lack of a lot of real popular names, and then we are tempted to “create” adequate popular-like new names.
  • I think, if did with parsimony, like the work of curator on iNat about scientific taxonomy, it is very useful and supports also the pedagogic objective of iNat toward the amateur public.
  • Of course, with time, these “new” names could become really “common”, e.g. with the help of Google, but for me it is not a bad thing, just a normal consequence of the growing need to have “common” names for every thing, even thing that were not yet named until the recent past…

Errol.

1 Like
133

There’s no species currently called “Fat House Spider” on iNat.

134

Under the proposal there, all ants (for example) without common names would just have “ant” listed as their common name. That’s just asking for confusion. People will see this and think oh, Camponotus mus is the ant and start identifying all ants as this species.

2 Likes
135

I think this was just an example of what could happen.

I do agree that I wouldn’t want the default name to be the lowest level with a common name. I’d vastly prefer to simply display the scientific name when there is no common name as it currently does.

1 Like
136

This is hyperbolic. Unless the AI starts to suggest this species, nobody is likely to start identifying every ant as this species. If the suggestion is “Carpenter ant, camponotus mus,” or “Acrobat ant, crematogaster minutissima,” as suggested above, nobody will be tempted to call any ant the “Ant”.

Perhaps less facetiously, if one suggestion is “Carpenter ant, camponotus mus,” and another “Carpenter ant, camponotus brevis,” then somebody might be lead to call any carpenter ant, “Carpenter ant.” But that’s OK! We need more genus and higher level taxon IDs in cases where folks are uncertain.

4 Likes
137

If both carpenter ants have the same label, and a novice identifier doesn’t pay attention to the different scientific names, it doesn’t seem out of the question that they could mix them up based on them appearing to have identical names.

Even experienced users occasionally accidentally mix things up when two unrelated species have the same name (scientific or common).

5 Likes
138

This is one of the main issues I see with creation of common names within iNaturalist - unintentionally creating names that are identical with another taxon or very misleading.

An example was the creation on iNat of the common name “Oregon Junco” for Junco hyemalis oreganus, when that common name was already widely in common usage for a subspecies complex. This led to literally hundreds of misidentifications of birds as J. h. oreganus in the iNat dataset.

7 Likes
139

What was suggested here as i understand it was a scheme like “Next higher taxon with a common name, binomial name” exactly in order to avoid creating forced common names where none exist now.

1 Like
140

The problem I encounter regularly is that people who know virtually nothing about a species are creating names that do not uniquely describe the species, and in some cases don’t even accurately describe the species, and this leads other users to make incorrect assumptions resulting in numerous misidentifications. One example is that someone had given Sumitrosis rosea the common name “leaf miner beetle.” This is one of over 200 North American beetles that mine leaves; why should that one species have this name? And people were just randomly identifying any leaf mine they found as being made by that beetle; in fact, at the time I discovered that this common name was being used, not a single leaf mine identified as Sumitrosis rosea was even made by a beetle. Most of the other bad common names have been in the form of “[host plant] leafminer,” where the plant is one that is used by many different species of leafminers. Again, people start suggesting that ID for any leaf mine they find on that host plant, and they are usually wrong. I’m fine with common names that actually help with ID, like “locust digitate leafminer moth,” since Parectopa robiniella is the only leafminer on black locust that makes a digitate mine. When people make up new names that are similarly useful, I let them slide, but I have no tolerance for newly made-up names that are inaccurate or misleading.

15 Likes
143

I like the idea of requiring a source for common names. A while back, someone went through and created made-up common names for thousands of spider species and genera. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to clean-up since there is no way to tell which of the common names come from prior use and which were just created on iNaturalist because someone decided that all the spiders needed common names. For those of us who actually know the scientific names, this rash of made-up names just creates confusion.

7 Likes
146

Crowdsourcing names has a history of going very badly wrong.

You need to have a lot of controls and oversight over something like that, and after a point it no longer is really crowdsourcing as a result of said controls.

Given the documented history of problems with crowdsourcing names I’d be as skeptical of a crowdsourced naming process as I’d be of one that involves someone in their basement just making up names that makes them giggle.

5 Likes
147

I really don’t think the average iNat user pays attention to binomial names. I understand what they are and even know the binomial names for many common species in my area, but if two species have the same common name listed, I would get them mixed up. Just think of how it would be for the users who don’t even know what a binomial name is.

148

Just curious, if you are familiar with the scientific names, why does adding common names confuse you?