It seems like the best general solution (in my opinion) would be:
-allow captive-marked observations get research grade the same as other observations, but give them a slightly different icon or tag instead of ‘research grade’. Differentiate them from other casual observations such as those that are mapped wrong.
-make it possible to filter them out of filters including the Identify page but don’t make it default on (most people who don’t want to see them are able to work the iNat filters). Have a robust help feature/documentation to help people figure that out.
-Cultivated plants mess with the range maps so for the maps it would be best to either leave them off the maps, give them a different icon, or make a sticky on-off toggle.
-Don’t export the cultivated plants to GBIF, CalFlora, etc.
I think this all makes sense and from what i can see seems to be in general what the most people want. But… remember iNat is growing exponentially and most of the development and admin time has just been with managing this. And it isn’t growing because of a big marketing push or anything, it’s organic, so it’s something that will probably continue for a while. It’s a good thing! But it also means there will be continued scaling and adjustment for the forseeable future. I don’t know what is happening with the inner workings of iNat so I can’t say for sure exactly how it is unfolding but I do think over time this will get worked out.
Nice, that solid tweak probably covers the needs for most people wanting to dig into the Casuals. But as I survey the larger pile some other non-wild, “glitched but fixable” items are showing up to me. It’s harder to find and fix those without some of the exclusions I mentioned. (I expect I’m in the way-minority for that level of crate-digging though heh.)
Features are not independant from each other and part of the solution for “users not marking observations as cultivated” relies in this already approved feature request: Notify observer when another user marks something in the DQA section. DQA notifications would help beginners to learn about the “Wild”/“Captive” distinction and about the DQA flags, without too much work.
I understand that @erwin_pteridophilos is tired of always explaining the same thing.
With DQA notifications, just flag the observation as “Organism is wild”/No and let the observer get the explanation.
When I was a total newbie, I posted 60 observations from a botanical trail. It is sure that all these plants are wild, despite the labels reminding a botanical garden. Someone (I still don’t know who, I would like to tell him/her) flagged them as “Organism is wild”/No and, without knowing the existence of the DQA section, I believed that some AI changed the observations status because of the labels pictures. I was disappointed because I didn’t know how to correct that, still seeing that I did not check “Was it captive / cultivated?”. Much later, I noticed the “Organism is wild” DQA flag, I checked it the other way, so that now it shows 1/1 votes and the observations are not “Casual” anymore.
Observations of “Cultivated” plants from botanical gardens are useful. A few of mine were the first ever observations on iNaturalist of some species. Such observations, assumed to be reliable, are helpful for identifying observations of wild individuals. (This user story is more likely to happen with regard to endemic species on an island).
Replying to myself (please remove if that is not allowed), these are the categories of the Casual section that could be broken down usefully in different IDing scenarios if a url could be built that excluded or includes the flag info. If even one more of them were broken out along with the Cultivated, that would be a good extra sieve. Preferred first choice to exclude from my perspective: Unknown place or date.
-Unknown place and/or date
-Cultivated (fixed, see thread)
-marked date and/or location Not Accurate
-marked No/No recent evidence of organism
-marked Can’t be improved
-Unlabeled records by users who have opted out of Community ID
Speaking of flagging, with enough filtration we could find things filed in Casual that are actually valuable to ID, like the bones in @lizardking 's post.
I can understad your feeling after seeing these observations flagged as casuals. Here I don’t want to paly the devil’s advocate but, maybe, something written in the description box stating that those plants actually are wild could have prevented this issue, maybe…
I’ll be brief. I have read many important contributions. I do not know if what I am hoping for if shared among the majority of those who feel taht this issue must be addressed.
Of course we cannot blame too much if a newbie uses not so properly the site for the first observations. It would be more important to understand why they join the site without being well informed on how to use it properly. As regards, and as already written elsewhere, I would put some efforts in informing the potential new users on how to use the site. This is patricularly important in the case of unexperenced users who wants to start a project.
A different case is represented by those users who post photos of unflagged non-wild organisms again and again despite having been repeatedly informed not to do so. I know the site rules do not provide for the suspension of these users but I am pretty convinced that we could take in consideration if we really need these users.
Not new. But from reading the forum I continue to learn more about how and why iNat works. We have a range of users from interested to deadly serious - and that can make for misunderstanding.
From my experience of identifying the unknowns many new users seem to become aware of the site, are interested in learning about nature, and then look around for something that interests them to send in. I doubt they have any idea about wild/cultivated. So if their first few observations become casual and are never identified, how will that affect their use of the site? I have no answers to this issue only questions about what the creators of iNat want the site to be. I think you need to fully answer that question before you can know what to do about issues such as this.
I admit that I have read the description of the app on Google Play only this morning and now I can say that a potential user cannot be aware of what iNat really is. I can understand why many people take the app just as an automatic identification tool and not as a door to a community with a precise scope ad its rules.
I use the app for iPhones only occasionally and, browsing through its features, I agree that it might be difficult to really understand what iNat is if all you use is the app … as some users do.
My understanding of iNat and its various features, requirements, etc. – which is still rather incomplete – comes almost entirely from using the website on my computer and what I read on this forum.
I’ll add that I love the idea of a two-tier identification system. I agree with not wanting to mark new users’ observations as captive/cultivated because it feels like “rejecting” their first contribution and means they won’t get the ID they’re interested in. An ID flow for cultivated organisms could also help attract more identifiers to iNat - particularly those who are knowledgeable about garden plants, like the community on http://www.reddit.com/r/whatsthisplant.
For myself, I’d love to add appropriately-flagged observations of, eg, native plants in city parks or areas that have undergone revegetation. I feel these may be relevant for research because they support birds and insects in the area even if they are technically not “wild”. It would also be a valuable chance for me to learn to ID native plants that I get few chances to observe in the wild. As it is, when I’m making observations in a park, I’ll ignore all the lovely (planted) Australian native shrubs and zero in on an invasive weed I haven’t seen before - which feels sort of backwards!
This is a really good point- I wandered over here from that subreddit after seeing that people were great at calling the many cultivated plants that go through there, but not as much the wild plants that I’m more interested in.
Ok for keeping casual observations visible for subsequent identification but there must be the necessity to mark or flag them, otherwise there won’t be the possibility to filter them.
It is important to politely explain to users who post unflagged observations why they have been flagged.