Naturing, a Korean citizen science site that I mentioned earlier in the thread, only has two identification options – “I don’t know” and species-level – but they do require users to put observations into classification bins as has been suggested here (and elsewhere in the forum). Here’s how that looks on the observation upload screen:
Of note, the second icon (선태류) is for bryophytes, 조류/algae is its own category, the jellyfish icon/기타동물 is “assorted animals”, and the cell-like icon/기타 is a final ‘assorted’ category.
Naturing also has a screen that asks users to select the environment where the observation was seen:
Similar to iNaturalist, identifiers can select from those icons when searching the site, so you could do separate searches for ‘sea molluscs’, ‘lake (freshwater) molluscs’, ‘marsh (wetland) molluscs’, ‘mud flat crustaceans’, ‘cave crustaceans’, etc.
There are differences in how making identifications is handled as well, but that’s for a different time/ discussion. I do prefer iNaturalist overall, but thought I’d share how another site handles a similar aspect.
I think Raymie is just saying SOML already means “I really don’t know”, without having to add something new.
I think the problem is that in the current iteration of iNat, SOML is rarely a suggestion, hence kmforum’s suggestion to have a popup forcing new users to choose a coarse ID & matthewvosper adding that “I really don’t have a clue” be included in that popup of coarse IDs.
I don’t see a problem with mapping the existing SOML to “I really don’t know” in the proposed popup. It’s just not obvious to new users that SOML is even an option under our current iteration (thus Raymie’s suggestion to add it to tutorials, rather than waiting for new features/functionality to be added).
Though you’re right that SOML is not that different from unknown in terms of the ID pile, which is why the tangent re: forcing new users to select a coarse ID (with the option of SOML included as an out for when even that is too much)
I think the observations that are there due to ID conflict are different than the ones which just need further ID. It would be very useful if we could sperate the two, not just in SOML but anywhere.
fair point. You can’t use &identified=false (like you can with unknowns), because obvs with 1 ID of SOML as “I don’t know” would be filtered out along with obvs where multiple conflicting IDs brought it to SOML.
Wasn’t there a feature request to distinguish those?
To be honest, there are observations that defy normality, such as a large solitary wasp in upper east Tn, and no, it isn’t a cicada killer. Very rare to see one, thus no pics available. Don’t dismiss it as a lack of info or something outside the algorithm. I have seen two of them in my entire lifetime and they defy all possible identifications. Of course many people observe a common creature and and perform a half dedicated research of it, but there are a few without explanation.
Large solitary wasp means pretty easy id can be added, there’re many species of those everywhere, I’m sure there’re many species where you live other than one famous.
But that wouldn’t be an unknown. It can at least be marked as order Hymenoptera. Or if someone suspects it is a mimic, then Winged and Once winged insects. Heck, even Insects, Arthopods or Animals would work; There’s no reason for it to be Unknown.
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