Oh I agree with this so much. I’ve seen a few instances recently where an initial ID was changed with no explanation. Coming in later, I offered a short explanation why (wing shape, flight dates, whatever). These comments have been well received, and might help the user learn some things. I see this site as an educational platform as well as a data collection platform. Pointing out where someone may have gone wrong with the idea is part of learning.
And I don’t particularly like the ‘leaderboard’ - it can be useful to call on some expertise, but as I’ve stated before, just because I’m on top of one species or group does not mean I have special knowledge about that group. It also leads ( in some instances) to competition - I know of a couple of users who seem to add id’s to any research grade observation that they may recognize.
I don’t think competition is necessarily a bad thing, and I would guess that it’s a major factor in eBird’s success. It can motivate people to get out more to see more species or make more observations. Even IDs on Research Grade observations can be helpful in case a user deletes their account, although it is a bit annoying to receive yet another notification for an easy to identify bird observation, or if many people misidentified an observation.
Although competition can definitely have negative results if users aren’t following guidelines.
Fair enough. It doesn’t bother me that much, and I agree that it may prompt some folks to do a bit more. I have a bit of an aversion to competition, but since I’m not competing, it’s fine with me!
I like your idea of volunteerism very much. Could expand the concept beyond curators?
I ended being a curator somehow even though i have no credentials. So i try to pitch in doing low-skill-level housekeeping like flagging spammers. Volunteerism would be a more suitable role for me.
Maybe there could be a volunteer page with similar items of busy-work that need doing.
OK, so after discussion we won’t be adding a testimonial feature to iNat, but other ideas might be adding something to a users profile to show number of improving IDs, etc.
I’m not quite following the calculation here - aren’t there 52 weeks each year? if you honor one person a week, wouldn’t that be 52 people each year?
yeah wouldn’t that be ‘person of the half hour’? :)
I’m going to close this. We do need to start profiling top identifiers/curators on iNat (please message me if you have any nominees!) and perhaps showing more info on their profile page, but that will have to be part of an overall profile page revamp.