So, when identifying, it’s not uncommon to see a potted houseplant, someone’s pet dog, or the like, uploaded without being marked as captive/cultivated. I think this is usually an honest oversight as not all casual users know to do that, and it can be easily addressed in the DQA.
However, I’ve found a couple of users that upload things like potted houseplants, clearly landscaped decorative plants, and even fruits packaged at a market, and appear to have voted ‘yes’ in the DQA for “Organism is wild” to offset someone else’s ‘no’ vote. This seems pretty clearly dishonest to me, and I can’t see a good reason for it. If anyone does know of a good reason for this, I am open to hearing it, but I mostly want to see if anyone has any good solutions to address this, since they seem to know how to use the DQA to bring their observations of bundled bananas from the store back from Casual to Needs ID.
The only time I have voted preemptively for wild on my observations is animals commonly kept as pets but whom I knew to be living unkept on the streets (a problem here, and they are not long lived, unfortunately) and volunteer plants that for whatever reason might confuse identifiers moving briskly (volunteered in a container, commonly planted as an ornamental, etc.)
An example This is a plant, but as you can see, I also put info about it being a volunteer in notes. But this species is introduced here and commonly a garden ornamental. In this case, my neighbor across the street has it in her garden, and it pops up everywhere now.
There being apparently a different system in use for domestic animals here, my wild votes and notes/ comments about animals were outvoted by a group of users who marked all as cultivated. Having no response to my questions about where I might read more about this, I removed those observations and have decided I will no longer make any dog or cat observations.
edit to add: in the examples you cite, my first thought is perhaps they are new users? And do not quite understand the concepts?
It’s definitely possible it’s just a misunderstanding, I should not assume dishonesty. I just saw that they were not responding to other users telling them about the wild/cultivated options, and the upvoting cultivated observations as wild, and leapt to a conclusion.
For observations like these, I was just frustrated as it seems like there can be no doubt they’re not wild:
[links removed by moderator]
Edit: To be fair, I don’t know that it’s the observer voting for wild or another user
It’s conceivable that some fruits packaged at a market were collected from the wild. But that fails DQA on a different criterion - the location of the market does not represent the distribution of the plant.
These are good points. Sometimes, I also wonder if captive being automatically casual motivates users who want IDs to that the observation was of a captive organism too. This would help negate that.
We are asked not to link to observations showing what we perceive to be poor behavior (Forum Guidelines here), so you really ought to edit your post to remove the links.
That said, I looked and the first observation was made the day the observer joined iNaturalist, the second a few days later and the third sometime similar (it only denotes the month).
So I think it fair to say in this case it is new user unfamiliarity.
I think sometimes people are unsure of the mechanisms of responding (or if new, that they even have notifications) and there may be differences in language when people observe from different parts of the world.
To see who voted in the DQA, simply hover over a vote.
(!) Intentionally adding false IDs or DQA votes. We expect you to submit information that you believe is an accurate assessment of the evidence provided, and not intentionally false. It’s ok to make an incorrect identification or accidentally add an incorrect date or something, but it’s not ok to intentionally add an incorrect identification or add an intentionally false vote to the Data Quality Assessment.
So if someone is doing this, please flag the observation, so curators can track it. But as others have said here, it may not be malicious, and the guidelines also ask that we assume others mean well. Either way, if it continues after the user is given an explanation, it may be grounds for temporary suspension.
I removed the links in this post. Please don’t specify users or observations in a potentially negative light, when it comes to their behavior.
My mistake for the links, that wasn’t my intention. Maybe overall this issue is just a case of letting the DQA do its job, as it’s not really any one particular person or user. Nobody’s perfect and I’m sure I’ve made some mistakes with my observations somewhere too.
Edit: also, good tip about the DQA, it turns out my browser’s ad-blocker seemed to be blocking that feature so I never knew that was a feature.
That’s my bad, I did not think about adding the observation links being potentially harmful, I was only thinking about finding examples. As far as flagging things, it’s rare to see something that seems like more than an innocent mistake or oversight, but I will keep it in mind for the future.
This just means you are an iNaturalist, because we all have. :)
Glad you sussed out how to see the DQA info. There’s one more thing you may or may not know already (I did not): the system itself will sometimes automatically mark species as cultivated. You can read a brief discussion with explanation here. These appear as “iNaturalist” (I think) when you see them.
Thank you for your identification work, an area in which I am hideously behind.
I’ve been here less than a week and I’m still working my way around wild / captive or cultivated,some of my early observations may be incorrectly tagged.
Where I’m not sure is this. I can walk up the path onto the moors near my home and there are Rowans and Common Hawthorn which seem wild, but there are also examples of these species which are obviously cultivated and they might be ten yards apart.
One thing you can always do is look for little saplings coming up around the main tree or shrub. Even if the parent tree was originally cultivated, if it drops seeds and those seeds start to grow, that counts as wild. I am often able to observe trees in local parks this way, without having to worry about whether the parent tree was planted there or not.
If you are observing something you believe counts as wild under the guidelines, but it’s something that is very often cultivated, then it can be helpful to include a photo that shows the context, and also mention it in the notes. That way, other people can see how you made the judgment (and maybe discuss it with you if they disagree, which is a great way to learn).