Community taxon algorithm tweaks

2 incorrect IDs and 1 correct ID wouldn’t create a maverick ID.
I think! (unless my memory is failing me :slightly_smiling_face: )
so your description (“to simply disregard IDs marked as maverick as a disagreement entirely”) wouldn’t be impacted in this scenario.

It would take 3 incorrect IDs and 1 correct ID to create a maverick.
In which instance the correct ID already has no power - until someone else seconds it.

However, in the exact inverse of the original post we would see some loss in power.
e.g. at present if we have 3 x incorrect superfamily IDs and 1 x incorrect species level IDs and someone adds a correct ID which is from a different superfamily or order then it bumps it back to superfamily. If we disregard mavericks as you describe, then it wouldn’t bump the ID back to superfamily as it does now - until it was seconded by someone else.

I think if this is the only trade off to this aspect of the algorithm though, then the optimal solution lies heavily in favour of change. This use-case is relatively rare and low impact in comparison with what is happening at the moment, which is less logical, far more impacting / a regular occurence.

I’m not sure I understand what this looked like. I tried searching forum posts for discussion of change in algorithm but couldn’t find anything. Wouldn’t this change have involved a recalculation of all observations site-wide as @pisum describes?

Thinking further on this, I just don’t think optimisation of the algorithm should ever be subservient to general user-understanding.

I think most users expect there to be an inherent logic to the algorithm and act in line with this expectation more than the actual detail of the algorithm provided in the “whats this” section. Most users simply wouldn’t expect a fly ID to hold sway in the instance originally posted, as it’s illogical - so (arguably), fixing this would simply conform to existing user expectation and be less confusing for most.

It would only require recalculating for observations with an existing maverick ID wouldn’t it?
(which would be about a million observations, but most would require no actual community taxon change)

I went through the first page of most recent mavericks to take a look at potential impact.
For 47 of the 50, disregarding mavericks completely would have zero impact to the community taxon - just a digit shift in some of the “whats this” disagreement count numbers.

For two of the three it would have the intended impact I originally posted about :
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/103520727
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/103485365

For one it may have a less positive consequence - similar to that discussed above - where it would no longer bump it back to a higher taxon :
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/21365663
In this instance it actually returns the observation to RG.

These are recent mavericks though. I expect it to be different for older obs.
I would expect the number of positive impacts to far outweigh the negatives across a larger/older dataset. I tried to check the oldest obs to see how they compare, but couldn’t get the URL to work.

In terms of numbers though, if it actually shifts community taxon in 3 of every 50 out of a million, that would be about 60000 observations in total with a visible impact.

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I agree with this. I think at the very least, something should be changed so that if there is one fine ID, several agreeing coarse IDs, and one disagreeing coarse ID, as soon as the Community Taxon becomes the agreeing coarse ID it should automatically be bumped down to the finer ID. E.g 1 species or genus spider ID, 2 “Spider” IDs and 1 “Insect” ID should put the Community Taxon at the level of the species or genus ID rather than “Spiders”. However, the possible downside is more confusion around disagreements. It would not be possible with the current system to disagree with the species while adding a coarse ID, because the Community Taxon would be at Arthropoda. But as soon as enough spider IDs were added, the Community Taxon would be the species ID and disagreeing with it would require adding a new ID. We already have problems with this sort of thing, so I’m not sure if adding more is a good idea unless the explicit disagreement system can also be reworked.

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No, this particular change wasn’t retroactive. It looked like you ided it as crow, I ided it as birds and it was a disagreement with no other options.

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below, i tried to modify your original example a bit to make it more complex and then lay it out like the algorithm summary does. in terms of modifications, i added a lot more IDs at various levels, including some new disagreements (beetles, narrow-waisted wasps), as well as a branch disagreement (at typical sawflies):

i think the adjusted figures in columns G and I are the hardest parts to do technically, and there are probably a few different ways ways to implement the calculation of G in particular. (the numbers i used above are based on a more complex potential implementation.)

(i’m not trying to demonstrate any particular algorithm here. i’m just showing how many more components i think you would need to keep track of in this kind of calculation.)

relying on the existing maverick calculation is one way to go about getting the adjusted value in column G, but you’d still need a way to get the adjusted value in column I, i think. so i don’t think you can just recalculate needs ID observations with a maverick ID, although maybe you could recalculate based on a set of needs ID with any disagreement.

i think “optimization” can mean many different things, depending on your priorities. i tend to think the existing algorithm is fairly well-optimized for speed (technically) and for user understanding (few parts to keep track of).

i think when you’re dealing with algorithms like this, i think “logical”, like “optimization”, again just depends on priorities. because your example is relatively complex, honestly, i don’t think all users would have a set expectation for what the end result should be. i bet many would just follow the existing logic of the current algorithm to decide what the output should be.

anyway, as i noted before, i think, given your priorities, there is some merit to thinking about an alternative algorithm like you’re suggesting. that said, from my perspective, it seems to me like your use case is valid but relatively niche. so i personally don’t see a clear case that the existing algorithm needs to be changed.

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@sbushes I think that there’s been some really interesting commentary from the community around your idea. A lot (though not all) of commenters think that there might be some improvement to be made in the algorithm for the cases you identified, though there are open questions about whether the additional complexity would be worth it in terms of effort/time as well as potential confusion. I think feedback from staff might be worthwhile here (they may be able to say that there’s no way to make this happen or have some creative ideas) - so you might consider making your initial post into a formal feature request and link to this thread?

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I already logged a version of this as a feature request but it was declined by moderators unfortunately ( before I started this thread ).

I will try and return to this thread later to comment in full on your points @pisum.

But one thing I would say for now is that I don’t believe this is a niche issue.
I guess if you weight all observations equally perhaps so, as this is doubtless a very limited problem in birds for example where we have ample expertise. But in inverts trapped at higher levels it’s certainly an issue.

For a visible example of impact, look at Opiliones observations trapped at order in Europe. We have two active experts, but not three, so the issue with the algorithm is quite well displayed in this particular instance. Basically any obs which have 6 IDs are affected here - which is 14 out of 30 observations on page 1 :

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Just to do a little more number crunching – on page one of https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?order=asc&verifiable=true&place_id=97391&taxon_id=47367&lrank=order, there are 12, not 14 observations with 6 or more IDs. Of those 12, only 3 have a species-level expert ID (i.e. in most cases the expert identifies above the species level). So 3 out of 30 on page 1, and the search returns a total of 348 observations. For comparison, Europe has 31357 NID/RG Opiliones observations. Assuming the 3/30 ratio holds true across all 348 observations stuck at Order, that’s around 35 observations which have a species-level ID by an expert but are stuck at Order, out of 31357 total Opiliones observations (~.1%). Even using 12/30 as your metric, that’s ~140 out of 31357 Opiliones observations that you think have unfairly weighted IDs (~.4%). Even if all 348 observations stuck at Order have unfairly weighted IDs, that’s 1% of all Opiliones observations in Europe.

The expert IDs aren’t usually going to species, but I think the point @sbushes is trying to make is that those experts are providing a more refined ID (e.g., to family or superfamily) and it’s not paying off because it gets hung up at just Opiliones, because of the maverick spider ID. So it’s a bigger fraction than 3/30. I count 16/30 that are affected currently (i.e., have an expert ID below Opiliones but also have a maverick spider ID that is keeping it stuck at Opiliones no matter how many people agree it’s Opiliones).

Is this “niche” compared to the firehose of observations that iNat gets? Of course. But that doesn’t mean the algorithms can’t or shouldn’t be improved.

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Here’s some iNat history from 2013: https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/88#issue-16489792

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I’m not sure why one would only factor in those affected which have species-level IDs?
But as @tristanmcknight says, this was not my intention. There are 16 trapped at incorrect rank due to this issue…so about 50% at that rank for that taxon, so likely ~170/348 observations impacted here.

The issue with this algorithm doesn’t only affect IDs trapped at order, it’s just a single particular rank and taxon where it’s visible, so I’m not sure why one would take 174 or 348 as a portion of 31357 either?

With an inverse but parallel logic I could assume that the issue with the algorithm has impacted 50% of all 31357 obs… so 15678 obs… just some have been since resolved to RG… and others have had support to a finer rank than the level of order. I do not believe this to be the case in Opiliones. I also do not assume that the distribution of the issue is in any way constant across ranks / taxa / Needs ID / RG. But assuming the problem doesn’t exist at all in other ranks/in those which have since been resolved to RG is clearly not correct either.
e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/3720578

I am not sure how one can easily define how “relatively” niche or not this issue is due to this lack of constancy. But say it was indeed 1% on average across all obs…that sounds low… but given there are 90,000,000 or so observations on iNat, this would still approach 1,000,000 total impacted. And crucially, we are talking about the time of expertise here - a scarce resource, particularly in complex taxa where this is doubtless more prevalent.


If you were planning this algorithm from scratch, as they do in @muir’s link, would you choose to
retain this aspect or to fix it? Because regardless of how niche this is or is not, fundamentally this aspect of the algorithm makes zero sense. From the original conversation on Github it seems likely this is just an oversight more than anything else.

Say you are outside at a bioblitz with a group of people and you spot something moving.
Bob says, it’s a spider!
Three people come along and say… no this is a harvestman actually.
Then two harvestmen experts come along and say yes, this is not only a harvestman but it is Mitopus morio. But nevertheless, Bob insists!.. it is definitely a spider!

If you want to create an algorithm to represent this group of people’s identifications, do you believe it to be more logical to :
A. take everyone’s opinion into account and weight all 6 IDs equally
B. take just Bob’s spider ID and the 2 x expert IDs and weight them against each other equally, ignoring the other 3 people also stating that Bob’s ID is incorrect
?

I don’t see a justifiable logic in B.
When you say it “depends on priorities”, what priority or situation would justify choosing option B over option A?

just to clarify, the current algorithm is doing both A and B in your example. it’s doing A at Order, and it’s doing B at Species. the logic is effectively taking a poll at each rank. at Order, it’s 5 Harvestmen vs 1 disagreement. at species, it’s 2 M. morio vs. 1 disagreement (3 abstain).

your proposed approach isn’t A vs B. you’re really asking for some sort of funneled or adjusted approach. for example, in a funneled approach, you would say that since the 5 Harvestmen win at Order, you will consider votes only among the 5 Harvestmen at lower ranks.

again, i’m not saying that yours is a conceptually bad approach. it’s just a more complex approach which is both less technically efficient and harder to represent to someone who wants to understand how the algorithm arrived at its result. it gets especially tricky when you have many branches / types of disagreement. (in my example, there are a maximum of 4 branches / types of disagreement, and there would have to be some thought into how best to handle that, i think.)

the question at the end of the day is whether the added complexity provides a net benefit?

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This whole thread is about the impact at the finer level.
My question was only intended to refer to the finer level, not the coarser one.
At the finer level, the only “poll” being taken is a bizarrely selective one.

Abstain is a strange term to use. This implies there is a decision on the part of the identifier, which there clearly isn’t. The algorithm arbitrarily discounts the opinion of three of the identifiers.

Hell… we could even have 1000 people add IDs at level of order attesting this is a harvestman not a spider, but with the current algorithm, the opinions of all 1000 would be discounted at the finer rank in favour of weighting the single spider ID against the finer species level Harvestmen IDs.

How does that make any sense?
How is this representing any real world situation or sense of democratic decision-making?

If you agree that arbitrarily discounting a portion of the poll makes no logical sense, then it’s a question of how to fairly represent all the IDs in the algorithm at all ranks. I would say that the funneling option you mention (discounting a single outvoted ID ) would make more sense than discounting a random portion of the vote. Though doubtless there are other approaches too which would also make more sense than the existing algorithm.

Externally to iNaturalist, I disagree that this is the more complex option. Weighting all IDs equally as best one can, and adhering to a real world logic as closely as possible is to my mind the simpler, fairer option. But I presume when you talk of complexity you are just referring to implementation within iNaturalist, not in terms of real world logic, is that correct?

In the iNat implementation you illustrated it certainly adds complexity, but I’m not at all convinced this is the only approach possible.

My experience from grappling with these sorts of IDs, is that the vast majority of people don’t look at the “whats this” section or even take the algorithm itself into account. They just intuit what they consider to be sensible (comparing to real world scenarios). So imo the nuts and bolts of the representation within the algorithm is much less important than the intuitiveness of it for users on the page itself.

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try to lay out the algorithm in a process flow diagram, and you’ll see what i mean by more complexity. the way it works now is much simpler than a funneled approach or an approach that adjusts the impact of disagreements.

i don’t know how else to explain it. (i’m not going to draw out the diagrams myself because of the complexity, but try it, and you’ll see… and make sure you try to handle the multiple branches / types of disagreements.)

there’s not really a distinction between the “real world logic” and the logic needed to implement an algorithm properly, except that i suppose in the “real world”, you could define an incomplete process upfront and then just arbitrarily fill in missing information or logic on the fly. (if you code an incomplete process though, you’ll just end up with issues when you run into all the unhandled cases.)

i understand what you’re trying to accomplish, and i can see how you’re wanting to handle a very specific circumstance, but i don’t see a clear way of generalizing the process without adding a lot of additional logic.

you liked the funneling approach, and it’s easy to describe if there’s just one maverick vote, but what do you do if it’s not clear which among many votes is an outlier? what if there are 3 votes for Harvestmen, 2 votes for spiders, 1 vote for scorpion, 1 vote for human, and 3 votes for cabbage?

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I like @pisum’s more complex example. As I’m understanding the discussion above, the current system would say that it’s 7 v 3 in favour of Animalia at Kingdom (so the cabbages are maverick), then it’s only 6 vs 4 in favour of Arthropods so the CID is Animals.

In the system proposed by @sbushes (appropriately called ‘funneled’ by @pisum) it would say
7 v 3 in favour of Animalia at Kingdom so cabbages are maverick and discounted,
then within Animalia it’s 6 v 1 in favour of Phylum Arthropoda, so ‘Human’ is maverick and discounted.
then within Arthropoda there’s unanimity (6 v 0) all the way to Class Arachnida
but at Order it is split 3 v 2 v 1, so no single option has >2/3s support and the CID is Arachnida.

I do think the latter is much better (Just imagine how many expert species ID’s you’d need in Harvestmen to overturn that lot!), I can see that it’s a little more complicated, but only because at each level you need to reference previous levels to know if any IDs need to be ignored in the calculation. I can’t comment on the computational aspects, or effect on the speed of the site etc. but if it’s practicable I’d be in favour.

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The funnelling system is basically just disregarding maverick IDs as disagreements entirely, as @alloyant suggests at beginning of thread right?

If so, in terms of what this looks like for users, why not just swap the “disagreement count” column for a “non-maverick disagreement count” column?

Or for simplicity… retain existing column “Disagreement Count”, but change definition.

At present it is described as :

" ‘disagreements’ - the number of IDs that are completely different (i.e. IDs of taxa that do not contain the taxon being scored)"

so change it to

" ‘disagreements’ - the number of IDs that are completely different (i.e. IDs of taxa that do not contain the taxon being scored) but not maverick ( i.e. not outvoted at a 3 to 1 ratio by other IDs ) "

(or however maverick is defined)


Computationally this doesn’t seem complex to me.
I don’t see how this is adding a lot of additional logic.
We already have a maverick ID state triggered… when that happens, it should just automatically be discounted from the disagreements column.
How would this be problematic?

At most, it would seem to me that behind the scenes you would need to retain the original disagreements count to calculate mavericks (in addition to the new non-maverick disagreement count). But in terms of presentation to the user, it can be the same, just redefined.

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“mavericks” has a very specific meaning in the system, and in a funneling approach, i don’t think it would be true that you’re just throwing out mavericks, even if you were to redefine your set of identifications / disagreements and recalculate “mavericks” (for just the redefined set) as you go down each rank in each branch.

ok. we’re making progress on defining an algorithm a little better. so the rule is that no single option has >2/3s support. great.

now let’s introduce a few variations on this:

  1. suppose we have genus G which has 3 species X, Y, and Z. Z is grafted directly to G, but X and Y are grafted to section S, which in turn is grafted to G. the votes are X=5, Y=2, and Z=3. what should you end up with as the community ID?
  2. suppose we have genus G which has 3 species X, Y, and Z. these species are each tied directly to G. the votes are X=4, Y=2, Z=1 and G=1, where the vote on G is a branch disagreement (which therefore disagrees with X, Y, and Z). what should you end up with as the community ID?
  3. suppose we have genus G which has 2 species X and Y. these species are tied directly to G. the votes are X=3, Y=1, and G=1, where the vote on G is a branch disagreement. what should you end up with as the community ID?

If a funnelling approach would not throw out mavericks, then we have crossed wires perhaps.

Ignoring whatever “funnelling” refers to for you, what is the problem with just discounting mavericks as I have above?