Recently I posted an observation of a species not in the CV model. It has under 15 observations worldwide on iNaturalist. In my notes I mentioned I wasn’t confident on the ID and that I wanted to return to the site to take more measurements, which I indicated in my notes. The first sentence in my field notes, which I meant to be visible to people running through IDs is, “Please only agree with ID if familiar with this species as well as [tricky cousin].”
The City Nature Challenge is going on and somebody who is definitely not familiar with either taxa confirmed my ID. We have a few folks meaning to be helpful running through ID queues quickly agreeing with things. This has happened before with a handful of well-intentioned but misinformed identifiers and it’s frustrating to say the least. I spent a long time with the loupe and ruler and keys to get to where I did with this observation.
Hoping iNaturalist would remove the “research grade” label, I pulled my observation out of the community taxon. I don’t want this data being ‘formalized’ unless one of the few experts on the taxa agrees with me, since my ID is best guess. However, the research grade remains in place.
Is this by intent? I thought from my reading that opting out of the community taxon would keep an observation from becoming research grade, but perhaps I am incorrect.
I also can’t find any way to withdraw from community taxon on the desktop version, only my phone app, which I’m not using for uploads.
Perhaps I need to adjust my thinking and only upload this at the genus level but chances are that it will be IDed incorrectly altogether if I do that, given the high community confidence on “it looks like this common weed.”
Just wanting to make sure I understood what opting out is meant to do, since I thought it would prevent research grade. I’m not keen on making this observation casual either.
I had some trouble trying to get an answer for this when looking around - apologies if it’s right in front of me and I’ve missed it.
Sorry I don’t have the direct answer to your question on the logistics of opt-out, but from what you’ve described, you would probably benefit for now from instead marking “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” as ‘Yes’, to keep the obs at ‘Needs ID’ until you’re satisfied with quality of the identifications on it.
That is wonderful advice. I mistakenly thought that would move the observation to casual. It did not - thank you. Very happy to know that is how it works.
There are some cases where that is true, but I don’t think that can happen when you press ‘Yes’. If you mark ‘No’, it can either go to RG or CG depending on what taxonomy rank the community taxon was at. If the community ID is too broad (and can’t be improved), it will go to casual.
Opt out only ignores disagreeing ID’s, so the observation will go to research grade if you made a species level identification and someone agrees with it. Whereas if you made a higher level taxon ID, for example genus Varanus, and somebody refined it to Varanus giganteus, that ID would not change the observation from “Varanus” unless you agreed after the fact.
Opt-out will remove research grade if, and only if, the following conditions all apply:
-Your ID is different from community ID
-Community ID is a taxon level that qualifies for research grade
-Enough support for community ID exists that it is currently research grade prior to opt-out
As for a better solution to your problem, others have already answered. However, I’d suggest tagging experts on the ID involved so you don’t have to manually keep track of which observations you marked “can this be improved? yes” on. These can eventually become Casual grade I think if enough people identify on it and you have left it checked? (edit. according to Max, this is not the case specifically)
(observations will remain needs ID indefinitely if “can the community ID be improved? yes” remains checked [and isn’t outweighed by a “no” vote], regardless of the number of IDs added or the length of time since the DQA vote; situations involving that DQA item that will shift an observation to casual grade include if “no” is checked and the community ID is at family rank or above, or if “no” is checked, the observation is opted out of community ID, and the observer’s ID and the community ID are inconsistent—but there shouldn’t be any situation where a “yes” vote would shift an observation to casual)
I would say that the one problem with this is that it may accumulate more and more potentially wrong IDs in an attempt to make the observation RG. So yes, you’ll stop it going to RG unless someone works out why it isn’t and clicks ‘no’, but in the meantime you may end up with even more IDs that will make it difficult or impossible to correct the ID if you decide it was ‘the other species’.
The reason for this is because it is not supposed to be possible to opt out on individual observations if your ID and the community ID are the same – there must be at least one ID that is different from yours.
Opting out means that the observation will always be listed under your ID, regardless of whether the community agrees with you; if people agree with your ID, the observation will become RG as usual. Opting out only affects the status of the observation when the other IDs are different than your own.
So it is not a way to get more eyes on an observation if you think someone has agreed with your ID too quickly. I agree that tagging someone who you trust to evaluate the observation is the best way to deal with something like this.
I also suggest tagging the user who agreed with you and explaining that you appreciate the sentiment and realize that they are trying to help, but that they need to make sure they are actually able to evaluate the ID rather than just agreeing with it. Agreeing with IDs without understanding them is unfortunately not particularly uncommon among newer users, and it is important that they be encouraged to change this behavior as soon as possible because it can negatively affect the quality of iNat’s data. There an article in the help section you can refer them to.
Situation: You’ve posted an observation and made an ID. Someone agrees and the observation goes to RG. You think the agreement was premature. What to do?
I wouldn’t recommend discouraging the person who agreed. Instead, withdraw your own ID. That will put it back in Needs ID.
I think it is important to let new users know that the agree button is not the same as a “like” button. If one words it carefully this can hopefully be done without discouraging them or being accusatory – i.e., one can ask whether they are familiar with the species and note that iNat guidelines ask them to refrain from IDing if they do not; this avoids assuming that just because they are a new user they lack expertise. I admit that I have not always managed to walk this fine line as well as I could, but users are unlikely to change their behavior if they are not aware of why it is not desirable. So not communicating this may spare hurt feelings in the short term, but it is probably not in the interest of iNat in the long term.
I have indeed occasionally withdrawn my ID if I have reason to suspect the person agreeing with it agreed without knowledge. Generally I will only do this if it is someone else’s observation and my ID was beyond my level of confidence. But if I went to considerable effort to consult keys and made my ID in good faith, it does not seem to me that it should be my responsibility to withdraw my ID for my own observation just because I want the assurance of knowing that it has been looked at by someone else with knowledge about the taxon (which is, after all, the purpose of iNat requiring a second ID for observations to become RG).
Sorry. I was reading this as a case where I posted a tentative ID, hoping to get feedback, and I got an agreement I don’t trust. That’s totally different from the case where you’ve looked into it and you’re certain of the ID.