Hi Curators!
I am wondering if y’all could talk about what you do on a daily basis as a curator. I am interested in becoming one (especially interested in salmonid taxa), but am unsure I have the qualifications to do so. I read through the curator guide, but am wondering exactly how frequently y’all need to edit taxa and address flags. Is it something you devote a section of your IDing time to every day? I’m currently picturing myself taking 15 minutes or so every day to address flags and maybe some fish taxa if it comes up, but if I need a reality check on this I would greatly appreciate it. I should also note that I am a high school student, if that changes things at all. I read a bit of this thread and am in favor of a ‘jr. curator’ role or something of the like. There are a few other salmonid nerds who are already curators and I’ve been talking with them a bit about the taxa, but they definitely have more experience with me both on the website and with the taxon. Also just to be crystal clear, you can apply for a curator to primarily moderate behavior? That was the impression I got on from the Curator form but I wanted to be sure. I also applied for curator status way back around the start of the year when I was much newer to iNat and wasn’t as familiar with the platform or the taxa, I hope that won’t cripple my chances of becoming a curator now?
Well, I log almost everyday and spend around 1 hour here on iNat most days (not in one sitting) when I’m just checking new sightings of insects and Phasmatodea for Brazil, correcting IDs and responding those who tagged me and solving quick flags. But I also take a day every 2 weeks to work extensively in more complicated flags, add new taxons to the database, work on taxon changes. Usually in these days I stay logged for hours. And also there are the days that I’m actively working on my research field, so I stay mostly focused on changing ID’s, exporting data, etc and I usualy don’t deal with flags or anything related to that on those ocasions.
When I applied to be a curator I was recently graduated and had published my first paper, but don’t let this be an impediment to you. I have several colleagues that are curators and are not from the academic field, and all of us started fresh here on iNat, learning a lot with pratical experience, talking to other curators and being avid users.
Certainly! Curators aren’t required to try to curate/moderate every section of the site. If you aren’t interested in going through all of the copyright infringement flags (as an example), but you are interested in moderating behavior, you can choose to curate the behavior portion of the site but not the mountain of copyright infringement flags.
If one of the boxes in the application form don’t quite correspond to what you are interested in curating, you can put “Not applicable” in the box
As a more of a specialist (I mostly curate flags marked as Spam and patrol new accounts (and other content) for spam-like behavior) curator myself, I had put not-applicable in all of the boxes except for the “Why do you want to be a curator” box, where I put my reason of applying was because I wanted to reduce the number of accounts that get falsely flagged as spam.
I’m generally (currently) too intimidated to do much with taxonomic issues, except for the odd adding of missing taxa or small corrections. I primarily focus on photos - flagging copyrighted photos, and warning and then suspending the accounts who continue to post them, as well as hiding inappropriate photos and identifications.
I generally spend at least a couple hours a week on it. Sometimes I do a lot more, sometimes less, depending on how I’m feeling and what else I have going on. I don’t think there’s a lot of pressure to spend any particular amount of time on it - if you can only do small amounts, that still helps to spread the work around and lighten everyone else’s load a bit.
I mostly do taxonomic work, but it’s pretty specialized (Oaks mainly but also Viruses). When I’m not curating I’m usually answering questions about nomenclature and clarifying what species make up a nothospecies.
I think the expectations for curators may have changed over the fairly long time that I’ve had that privilege, but here’s what I do with the role.
Primarily, I use the taxonomy rights to try to improve and clarify iNat’s taxonomy for the genera where I have some knowledge and interest. I’m already reading the research for these groups, so I try to do what I can to have iNat reflect scientific consensus. A whole lot of that is taken care of by the fact that iNat has a pretty comprehensive taxonomic authority for vascular plants in Plants of the World Online. But sometimes there are reasons to add species to iNat before they get picked up by POWO, or to disagree with POWO’s taxonomic decisions. Often, I’ll try to make the case for a change directly to POWO and once it’s accepted then adjust iNat to match.
Because iNat supports intermediate taxa (sections, subgenera, etc.) that POWO does not, I have sometimes worked on trying to incorporate these into iNat. Generally, I’ll only do this where there’s good new phylogenetic research delimiting these taxa and it seems like it can really help in the ID process. In one case, I broke out a genus of 150+ species into 10 sections and I feel that has really helped improve the overall ID quality.
Once in a while, I’ll try to assist on a taxon flag. In these cases, I probably won’t have much background in the relevant taxon, but I can assess the argument being made and how it relates to iNat’s curator guidelines and decide if there’s some action I can take with confidence. One of these ended up with me creating six new genera and 10 new species to reflect a major revision of a tribe.
Once in a while I’ll try to assist with a copyright violation or user behavior issue, but TBH the “reward” I get from fixing these doesn’t really outweigh the work required.
I feel that iNat could benefit from having more people involved as curators, especially if they approach the role with a willingness to check policy/guidelines and do their best to follow them.
Do curators have to respond to flags specifically?
I’d be interested in working through my local red list of endangered species and adding all the conservation statuses. I’ve noticed that for many species (especially insects) they are missing on iNat (at least in Germany).
Editing them of course requires curator rights. But apart from that, I neither have the confidence and expertise to address taxonomy flags, nor the patience or willingness to address spam, conflicts, and misuse.
I use my curator rights almost exclusively to update taxonomy or add missing species, as I come across those issues while using the site. Often these issues arise without a flag, for example if I see that someone added an identification as a comment because the species was missing in the database.
As someone who also works with insects in Germany, I’d very much appreciate if you added the red list status! I guess it is quite tedious.
For those of us who have added more than 5 flags, it might be more efficient to apply for curator instead of flagging every time.
In the screenshot posted by @plantman4 , I note that if applying to edit the taxonomy, you have to provide an example taxon and source. This makes it feel like I’m competing with anyone else who might just flag it before I can include it in my application.
Hey, nice question. I’ve just become a curator so I’m really interested in this too.
I applied because I’ve been using the platform since 2016, I’ve watched it grow and get better and better, and my interest hasn’t waned . I think it’s a really important platform and I promote it all the time. But managing it is an enormous task, and I have gratitude and respect for those that do.
My field probably didn’t need more curators (Australian mammals, specifically koalas) but I figured I would learn a lot about taxonomy and maybe be able to help a bit. So I’m just reading the forums, guidelines and flags and seeing how other curators handle things before I tackle some taxonomy.
Sounds like you have the right intentions, and if you think you can help, apply when you can. I’m sure others will help and guide you.
