You can only disagree by proposing something else, as far as I know? The OP suggests that it is possible to just disagree (that’s how I read it anyway).
In fact that would be great, because often one sees that it is wrong but does not know what it actually is. I have been told off more than once for just suggesting ‘plantae’, because apparently once you do that, the observation can never get to research grade after that.
By the way, it would also be not a bad thing to be able to suggest ‘no ID possible’ (if there are no features visible, don’t add pictures to an observation).
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That’s not true. But it is better to choose something lower in rank like vascular plants or flowering plants because some people only ID those groups and don’t look at everything in Plantae.
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You can’t just disagree if you add an id, you can add a comment if you don’t want to add an id though. No id on iNat can prevent from getting future RG, but each disagreement disagrees with all taxa between it and initial id, so it takes more ids to change community taxon, so yes, don’t disagree with Plantae if you can id it further than that (which is most of cases).
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I’m always happy to explain my reasoning to anyone who asks, but if I had to explain it every time, I’d do maybe 1/100th of the number of IDs I currently do. Sometimes it’s something so obvious an explanation would seem over-the-top (how do you explain that the squashed fruit on a sidewalk 500 miles from the ocean is not, in fact, a sea slug, no matter what the computer suggestion may be?)
And so many users are inactive or just disinterested, it feels like a waste of effort anyway. If I’m correcting something that’s easily confused and I know the observer is pretty active, I’ll sometimes take the time to write an explanation.
But I think the first course of action should be for the uploader to pull up the pictures and descriptions of both species, compare them, and if they still aren’t clear, tag the IDer and ask. If you think the ID is wrong, you can also tag other top identifiers for both species in question and ask for a confirmation.
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There are actually several ways to do this, depending on the type of situation.
It’s clearly an organism, but you can’t tell what kind: Add an ID of the lowest rank you think anyone could ID it to (not just the lowest rank you personally are sure of) which could be “Animalia” or “Life” for example, and make sure to explicitly disagree with the previous ID by selecting “No, but I’m sure it is _” on the popup. Then scroll down to the DQA (Data Quality Assessment) and select “No, it’s as good as it can be” under “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon be confirmed or improved?” This combination will bump the observation taxon to your ID and make it Casual, so only use it if you’re absolutely sure the ID cannot be refined further.
It’s clearly not an organism: Go to the DQA and click the thumbs-down next to “Evidence of organism”. This will also make the observation Casual, so be sure there’s no chance that it is actually an organism before you mark it.
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Thank you! I don’t think it is possible to just disagree without another ID, even ‘plantae’. In a case like that I would leave some sort of note. If enough people agree with you, it will eventually reach research grade.
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In my opinion, that mavericks link is mostly for saving face; it does little for the identifying process. The link detects IDs which have already been outvoted by enough people (3 or more depending on the situation) to render them moot. The ID has already caused all the inconvenience it is going to cause, and withdrawing it now is polite but won’t effect the comunity taxon.
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Yes, I’m not concerned about my maverick ID’s, if they’re wrong, they’re not causing a big problem, but right now all of my mavericks are because I disagreed with 3+ people who mis-ID’d before. I wish there was a quick way to check all of observations where someone disagreed with my ID after the fact, chacking/withdrawing potentally wrong ID’s when they’re causing the observation to be imprecise are the ones I want to fix.
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but from my own selfish view - if I know I got that one wrong - I can try harder to get mine right in future. And perhaps prevent other fresh wrong IDs as I work thru my target lists.
Each little wrong put right, can have ripples out across iNat. Always a learning curve for me here.
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I frequently disagree with species ID’s without making a species-level ID, in many cases without even suggesting a genus or family. Sometimes I go the whole way up to a broad category like flowering plants.
I always give reasoning, and I think it is best practice to give reasoning (and perhaps sometimes even rude? not to) but I would not want to require the person to make an ID.
In general I want us all to exercise more restraint in ID. Moving things up to a more general or uncertain category, in my opinion, is preferable to a wrong ID.
The reasons I disagree with ID’s without making my own ID’s, include:
- It’s a species I know well and I’m absolutely certain that the ID is not correct, but the species pictured is something I’m completely unfamiliar with and I have little clue what it actually is.
- It’s a species that is far out of range and/or in near-impossible habitat, like someone posting an eastern-ranging, moisture-loving species in the desert in New Mexico, or a frost-intolerant species in the north. So I might not be 100% sure the ID is wrong based on the picture, but I’m sure it’s wrong based on easily-verifiable information about that species range and/or habitat.
- The photo is so blurry that I don’t think a species-level ID can be made at all.
- I think the ID may be correct, perhaps is likely to be correct, but the given data is too poor or scarce (blurry photos usually, no habitat info, etc) to ID to species level with much confidence. I.e. I cannot exclude the possibility of a false ID. This sort of thing is common when people take photos that omit the key characteristics used to distinguish certain species. I do this a lot for instance, with people taking a single photo of an oak leaf, especially if the leaf’s shape looks a bit atypical for the species they are identifying it as.
- Similarly to the scenario above, there is another similar-looking species that a person did not consider, like a crow identified as an American crow but the person didn’t know to check against Fish crow, or something identified as a Common dandelion but the person didn’t know to check against red-seeded dandelion. Then I move it up to the general category.
I always try to communicate my concerns as best I can, and I ask questions. An overwhelming majority of the time I disagree with research-grade observations, they are posts by only two users, and ones inexperienced with the taxon in question, so it looks like the agreement was a “reflex agreement” like people clicked “agree” on an ID casually (something I’d like to discourage) and if it looks like that is going on, I often ask: “How were you identifying this as such-and-such?” and then share my reasoning as why I think it is not that. Or ask: “Did you also check against such-and-such? It could also occur here.”
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@cazort your IDs are always helpful and I love that you write up a detailed explanation of your reasoning. I learn something every time you weigh in on an observation, whether it’s my own observation, an observation that I’ve contributed an ID to, or just one that I have stumbled across.
If there is a continuum between “lots of IDs” and “fewer IDs with detailed comments”, you’re clearly on the latter end. And I think we need both types of identifiers to keep iNaturalist working to be the best it can be.
I remember that there was feature request a while back that would essentially allow users to “like” a comment (or perhaps an ID with reasoning attached). The most liked comments would show up on the taxon page - which I think would be really useful because the best comments have really valuable information on what traits are necessary to ID a species, common mistakes people make, etc.
I think this would be a great feature because it would allow the work that some users do to provide really helpful comments be seen by more people, and perhaps reduce the expectation that “power IDers” provide an explanation every time they do an ID.
The only thing you can really do know is to “fav” an observation, I which I do if I notice a great comment attached to it, or sometimes if there’s an observation with two really similar plants right next to each other, highlighting the different between the two. It helps me find that observation later when I’m looking for it.
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No one is obligated to give a reason, just like you are not obligated to give a reason when you enter the observation.
When this happens to one of my obs, the first thing I do is take a very careful look at the observation. Next, I would research on my own to see if I agree or disagree.
I dare say that people using iNaturalist for research are not that interested if whether an observation if RG or not. The researcher decides which obs to use whether they are RG or not.
Things don’t always work the way everyone would like them to.
Lighten up everyone. Enjoy nature.
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I agree - it puts my answer and the agreeer’s answer in doubt. I reply and ask kindly why they disagree - all that I have asked have given their reasons :)
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Only if all of the IDs on the new taxon are at species; I see pretty often cases where, say, someone has ID’d ‘plantae’ missing a camouflaged insect that was the target, there is then 1 ID of ‘pterygota’ and 2 IDs to the insect species, in which case the plant ID is ‘maverick’ because >2/3s disagree with it, but the community taxa is only pterygota because >2/3s of IDs agree pterygota while <2/3s agree on the species, but it would snap straight to RG at species if the ‘plantae’ ID was withdrawn.
I’m not certain I agree that is the most sensible way for it to work; if there were one plantae ID, 15 pterygota IDs, and 2 species IDs the plantae ID does seem like it should just be irrelevant and not blocking RG at species, because everyone agrees it isn’t that. However it is how it does work as far as I can tell.
But you aren’t bumping it back to “Bees and Apoid Wasps,” and commenting only, “Not Bombus impatiens.”
There is always someone listening on the other side; if not the original observer, then the earlier identifiers, or others coming across it later.
Not necessarily, I have had on multiple occasions even when tagging the other identifiers in the observation had stone silence with no change in the observation for months until someone else came along, think those accursed student projects where none of the students or their professor have even logged in for months or years. If others coming across it later need a one sentence explanation about why one is wrong, then they probably shouldn’t be putting ID’s in that taxon.
I usually don’t have to bump it that high (usually correcting to another species), but I typically do say something like “Not Bombus” if I do have to throw it all the Family or higher, but not always for the above mentioned reasons. I put more effort in if my ID is going to be maverick because in that case the observation will still be wrong after my ID, while if my ID is Leading, then the observation is imprecise but not wrong.
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I know that people who identify like precision, but since iNat is principally designed to get people interested in wild Life, the “accursed student projects” are just something we have to live with. There are some very talented young folks out there, and perhaps one of those projects got them started. I also see identification as means of teaching, although I’m getting a little disheartened by that aspect recently. I remember that I have helped some people gain a better understanding of the taxon, so that gives me hope.
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True, but in this context, I’m more referring to the projects that are filled with stolen photos, friends agreeing with each others ID’s, and the professors who start projects on iNat that students use every year, but they themselves haven’t logged in in several years. Using inaturalist to teach about the natural world is great, I just wish some of these teachers had more respect for the platform and the legitimate data coming in.
I have had people who I explained the difference between two species and then later been tagged a few times by that person to double-check their ID, so the teaching moments are certainly there.
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They bug me as well, but I guess it’s like a drug side effect - it mostly does the job, but also comes along with some annoying properties!
It’s kind of like the holiday season, we all love Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years, but we don’t like weight gains and wallet losses that go with it.
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