Going back to your baseball analogy, is the baseball game the point, or is people watching the baseball game the point? See where I’m going with that…?
People stop watching baseball when the baseball players are replaced with random people off the street who don’t understand or care about the rules and just sit around on the field liking each other’s posts.
I actually think the percentage of power users who came from contests or class assignments is really low. I can think of maybe one or two?
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Not talking about just power users, but all regular contributors to iNaturalist. I agree, the small slice of power users probably came to it by other routes.
I guess where I’m coming from is that the “point” is both – people observing nature. And if we manage that well, one major outcome is great data. But if we start de-emphasizing either one over the other – good data or attracting new contributors – then it fails.
I would rather find ways to better manage the “noisy” contributions from duress, challenge, and bioblitz events (via account types or whatever), than de-emphasize either one.
oh i agree. I am not saying we should stop advocating the people, i just think it’s gone pretty significantly too far towards only that. Like to the point where people are outright saying the data doesn’t matter. As someone who put a lot of time and love into my data andw ho thinks it’s important - for people now and in the future - that kind of bothers me. And i hear it again and again from iNat and CNC affiliated people. People who i like and respect, so my point here isn’t to criticize them. But i kinda hope they stop.
If they are managed and kept away from the maps and data filters, etc, i don’t care how many people add bad data. I just don’t want it getting into good data. But creating a sandbox for fake data doesn’t seem in and of itself a good goal to me.
Hopefully we can find ways to make it a sandbox for draft data instead, and ways to encourage improvements to the drafts with promise, so that they can enter the stream of regular data (which as we all know is by no means flawless ;-)
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sounds good to me. but the one thing that we just can’t get past… if someone completely doesn’t care, and is just doing it because they are being coerced or bribed into it, i don’t think that data will ever be any good
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For a Duress User to produce a really deleterious observation, seems like 3 things have to happen:
- she posts a poor quality observation that probably can’t be identified.
- the identotron (Computer Vision thing) suggests something specific and wrong, and the DU accepts it.
- a fellow Duress User seconds it to make it RG.
It appears to me that the first two steps don’t cause a lot of havoc. Detritus like that sinks out of sight before long. It’s only when all 3 happen that you get a piece of supposed “data” that gums up serious functions until someone takes the time to correct it. So if we could block Duress Users from doing any IDs beyond their own, would that be a significant help?
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well the other problem is that for those who do ID help, it’s frustrating to wade through 100s of wrongly identified things made by people who didn’t really care about trying to figure out the real ID. They quickly sink to the bottom because of a bunch of hard work by a bunch of identifiers.
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Ha ha point taken!
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The really key issue has already been said but it’s this: profs/teachers need to curate their students’ observations very carefully. If they’re assigning iNat, they need to grade it like an assignment. I’m not sure how to communicate how critical this is to teachers, lots of work has already been done on this front.
Could there be some sort of positive reinforcement or reward system for student projects? Like we could assign them certain badges based on quality of observations or something? Just putting it out there.
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We’re doing some testing for this now. I think it will create a way to escape a contemporaneous flood of poor quality observations for those who don’t want to see them, and will conversely allow someone to focus on those observations if they want to be part of a welcome wagon.
This approach is actually promoted in our Teacher’s Guide due to privacy laws and to allow teachers the ability to curate observations.
I think the single biggest issue with iNat use in classrooms is that it is often used by a teacher who has not had a chance to understand iNat - what it’s for, what it’s good at, what it’s not good at, and most importantly, that every observation is not uploaded into a vacuum, but to a community that will be affected by it and may feel responsible for it. I know teachers (at least in America and I’m sure in many other places) don’t have much free time on their hands, but ways to make sure teachers understand iNat is, I think, a key here.
We link to the Teacher’s Guide in our introductory email, but I imagine most people don’t notice it. It can definitely be improved as well. I think some sort of threshold one needs to pass before being able to create a project, eg 25 RG observations or something, could prevent some inexperienced teachers from using iNat in their classroom, since they usually start projects. Then they would (hopefully) know whether iNat is even a good fit for what they want to do.
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And I think a fundemental point that is being missed is that problem users (might be teachers, students etc) are not going to use ‘student’ accounts any more than they’re going to try and understand what iNat is all about before posting observations … unless they can see that it is an advantage to choose this sort of account - as I said ask ‘them’ what they need.
Or unless that’s the default unless they choose otherwise. Or unless we put them there.
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I’ve had a bit of exposure to different projects used for students, and I would have to say that the quality of data absolutely correlates to the educators, not just the students. Many of the problems come from wholly unrealistic expectations of instructors and, frankly, poor instruction. These issues are fairly common whether the group of students are in grade school or university.
• expectations to submit large amounts of observations
• expectations to submit large amounts of IDs
• expectations to ID to species
• expectations by instructors that CV is always accurate
• no training in photographing specimens
• no training in identification
• no training on the existence of distribution ranges
• instructors do not help curate student observations
• instructors don’t consider student maturity levels
• instructors have never used iNat themselves
• users don’t respond to @-mentions due to only using the app
Many of the problematic requirements are in rather stark contrast to how my undergrad entomology course was handled. We had really fairly low requirements, all things considered (though we were just handling things in-house, not through iNat or similar platform).
• observation numbers were low (50 preserved specimens, 25 photos - not in the 100s)
• IDs were only required at the Order and Family levels (and we still had a pain with beetles)
• IDs were mostly done in-lab where we could get assistance, not just at home
I think really a decent first step would be to more formally require that teachers demonstrate at least passing familiarity with the Teacher’s Guide since the majority of issues are covered there. Not too long ago, there was a problematic course project in Ecuador where one of the main issues was that the instructor based grades on the student with the most submissions and where the instructor had been away through most of the project. These are red flags that really should have been nipped in the bud on the early side when it came to creating the project. I’d also suggest that these issues detract from students’ experience and learning.
But, of course, student assignments involve students, and students don’t always follow instructions (mine certainly have fallen under that category). There are also some additional issues for non-university students in general that will differ from university students. As a whole, student IDs are almost always restricted to course projects, so some sort of “student account” could sort of be like training wheels. However, getting them to actually be used could be difficult unless that were also a part of the requirements for teachers to create course projects.
Maybe instead of separate student accounts, it might be possible to consider similar functionality to Discourse. There are tiers of account, where the initial tiers are a bit restricted until they complete the interactive tutorial. Since a lot of problems involve “newbie” accounts agreeing with each other, maybe some way to prevent research grade status with only IDs from such accounts? It needn’t require crazy requirements to tier up, just something that users under duress probably wouldn’t end up brute-forcing by accident.
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Of the two, I would opt for making IDs from new accounts not count towards the community ID, rather than adding yet one more thing for site curators to do.
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I think educators / teachers should pair up with local iNat power users, and be mentored in how to run their assignments/projects. I would volunteer!
I’m a fan of the idea of probationary accounts for all new users:
- Observations and IDs made under probationary period are flagged as “under probation”
- Probationary IDs don’t count to CID
- Optional “Mentor Account”, which can log in and make limited changes in an account (ie not able to view personal/direct messages, but can fix dates, pin locations, withdraw and apply new IDs, etc)
- Mentor account or a curator/staff can release the probationary account early, for keen and capable students or for experts/specialists signing up. Option to release all existing IDs/Obs from probation when releasing an account early.
- Individual probationary IDs or observations can be released, one at a time, once mentor/curator/staff have checked them.
- Other users can have an account setting to either include or exclude seeing probationary obs/ids
I would imagine that for a lot of users that show responsibility and capability from the outset, it would just be a simple release account and obs/ids, and by the time the probationary period is up (after which IDs and Obs made are normal), most duress users would have lost interest and/or requirement to be using the site.
Another possibility is to have teachers give US the ability to vote on whether the content/interaction from the student warrants a pass or a fail!
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Just initial reaction – I’m thinking this would be a bit heavy-handed.
What would you think of having the same probationary/mentor system, but have it be assignable by a curator, instead of be the default from the outset?
That way curators could visit the “recent users” link and look for a bunch of new sign-ups that appear to be from the same school, and give them probationary status. Or at least respond to flags and other user input with that additional option. It wouldn’t be perfect, but maybe not so onerous or off-putting to new non-duress users.
I would definitely support initial probationary status for some kind of special student or class account if that can be implemented. Then we just need to brainstorm the best ways to funnel student/class users into that account pipeline.
And I love your idea of being able to weigh in on student grades! (Would probably want to see the teacher’s syllabus first, though, to know what the initial expectations were…)
I’m not a huge fan of “probationary accounts.” What made me bold enough to try iNaturalist for the first time was an NPR article that explained what the site was for and how user friendly it was, and then, when I did try it, the ease of use and friendly tone established on the site made me come back. I never felt “stupid” for not knowing how to do something or that I was wasting any expert’s time by posting. People were encouraging. I realize students forced to use the site gum up the works (even as a teacher I find the blurry pictures puzzling–surely, someone gave better instructions about photos . . .), but I’d hate to put all new users on “probationary status” to weed out unhappy students. It just seems less friendly and open–it ups the “risk” for a new contributor–even if it’s only a small extra step because it presents itself as a test. If your background is not scientific and you don’t have experience photographing organisms, you’re going to make mistakes. I make lots of mistakes–and I’ve been here since 2016. I plan to make a lot more, but I would hate if someone zinged me for them because I’m truly making an effort to do something I love.
I wonder: Is it possible to have a teacher register for a school account and could observations on the school account have a “publish button”? (Rather like online grade books–you input grades but no one sees them until you hit publish.) The teacher could review the observations that have been uploaded and then “publish” those of acceptable quality to the rest of iNat community? Or is this too complicated? Anyway, just a thought.
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That was your first experience of the site. If all accounts are probationary at the start, then that will be their first experience of the site, and that first experience won’t be hugely different from what it is now, just that CID won’t be affected by your IDs and some users might have opted to not see your IDs and Obs… how would you even know the latter was the case? And for the CID, unless you knew it used to be different, how would you even know that was the case?
For a large number of new users now, their first experience of the site is getting lambasted by the hyper annoyed regulars for posting blurry photos and/or having a laugh by IDing their mates as baboons. Hardly a friendly welcome! At least with probationary accounts and them being filtered out by those that are bothered by them, it is just the cool-headed and patient regulars who get to interact with them! I’m just as concerned about losing the expertise of our regulars that are starting to leave because of the nuisance factor the duress users are presenting.
It is far more welcoming to new users to be granting them more access as they continue to engage, rather than starting at a level that then gets chopped back just because they are part of a school group. That would have the effect of detering the few amongst them that might go on to become regular and power users. Just look at this forum, and how it “opens up” as you use it more! I didn’t find it off putting at all… it just encouraged me to be more active!
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