Problem: Currently, users are incentivized to replace their original IDs by an agreement with any ID that happens to disagree with them. This is due to existence of at least four separate “warning signs” appearing whenever somebody does not agree with the original ID: 1) original ID turning red color, 2) label “maverick” appearing, 3) lightning bolt appearing, 4) message that somebody disagrees appearing. This redundant and relatively aggressive labeling of the original ID (red color, lightning bolts, comments with negative words such as “disagreement”) are unpleasant to anybody and the natural response is to at least withdraw own ID or even agree with any follow up ID. This is leading to proliferation of community taxons or even research-grade observations.
Feature suggestion tldr: iNat will display popup when I use “Agree” button or submit a confirmatory ID(especially) on my own observations (especially) when withdrawing my previous observation. Limit the number of times the popup shows.
Feature suggestion: When user submits a new ID to an observation where they already placed a different ID (either incompatible ID or more specific ID), a dialog should appear asking “Are you confident that your new ID is correct? It is OK to leave identification of your observation on others when you are not sure.” The options might be “Yes, I know that this observation is ” and “I’m not sure, but I believe my previous ID is probably not correct”. If the second option is selected, this could lead to withdrawal of the original ID without submitting a new ID. The wording above is a suggestion - the critical part of this feature request is a pop-up message when a user places an ID to observation which already has their ID.
This is only true if there is a majority of votes against the original ID, not if there is just any one disagreeing ID. In which case it is often, if not always, because an expert has IDed. I agree that iNat should be more inclusive and educating to new users, but I’m not sure how much this issue really pertains to that.
A pop-up would be more clumsy in my opinion…but even clearer.
I agree anything to help explain to people why this isn’t an intended part of the UI would be great though.
But yes, with the best UI it wouldn’t have this issue happen in the first place.
I think having a visible withdraw button could be that solution.
I still don’t understand why they feel the need to bury it on the UI.
The arguments against visibility on the other thread are v weak imo.
I agree that having a withdraw button for an observer’s own ID next to compare would be nice. It could even make an “are you sure” pop up.
I think this having this option visible would make it clearer that it is ok not to know the ID and that there are options other than disagreeing/agreeing.
Given the number of observations I encounter where the person who entered the ID does not change it even after multiple other people have suggested a contradicting ID, these warnings do not seem to be noticed or felt as aggressive by many users.
I have found that if I suggest to a user that they might consider withdrawing or revising their ID and that if they aren’t sure what it is, they can enter a non-disagreeing broader ID, the response is almost invariably to agree with one of the existing IDs – not to withdraw.
I also see many many users agreeing with every ID that is suggested even if the new IDs are merely refining their own broad ID and there is no conflict.
So I don’t think the impulse to agree is motivated by not being aware of other options or by feeling intimidated by being told they are wrong.
I don’t think it necessarily shows evidence of that though.
The agree button remains the quickest simplest fix to a disagreement for a user new or old. Previously there wasn’t even an option to withdraw on the app. Sometimes (rarely)… in frustration I would even blind agree when I saw a notification of disagreement on the old app …as there was no quick work around.
Whilst when I even try and explain to a user that the withdraw button exists in the browser version, its still really clumsy to tell them where to find it. When you explain they could withdraw, do you tell them where they need to go to be able to use this option?
I often tell people who have been using iNat a short while and they express surprise to hear it exists when they figure out where it’s located.
If the withdraw button was as visible and easily accessible as the agree button…and/or if the agree button was renamed to something like “confirm”… I don’t think you would see this behaviour so often.
I put a lot of observations from taxa which I don’t know well (that is, anything that’s not birds and mammals) with an ID from CV. CV is now pretty good so this is usually at least quite close. In any case, unlike making a very general ID, this is very good in soliciting the proper expert. Since the original ID is very tentative, I always withdraw it on the first disagreement.
I use the “agree” function less often, mainly for birds. I try to put all observations on iNat, but it’s sometimes a lot, so I may be sloppy - and when someone corrects me, I often look at it better and see “yep, that’s it” and agree.
I would quite enjoy if both of these actions did NOT create a popup for me.
I agree that there is surely many motivations for agreeing without knowing the ID. Popup would address some of them by double-checking with the iNat users that they understand what they are about to do. There is likely no mechanism that would work for everybody. Popup comes with its own major problem - makes the interaction with iNat less smooth - so an option to hide the popup e.g. as @DianaStuder suggested would be probably necessary.
I actually discovered only now - thanks to this discussion - that there is an “Agree” button :) It seems that the Agree button could be a major source of the blind agreements. An “Agree” button seems to strongly invite a general interpretation in the sense of “Sure, I agree with you that your ID is better than mine”. Some combination of adding visible “withdraw button” together with modifying the “Agree button” would be probably better starting point than adding popups. Perhaps the Agree button could change dynamically to read e.g. “I think this is Violet Oil Beetle”.
So if someone uploads a batch of 11 observations, then blindly agrees with whatever IDs are suggested, they’d never see the pop-up? I think I’d prefer either a higher number or a ‘make it go away’ tick box on the pop-up - maybe something like ‘I understand the system, don’t remind me again’ - which means that everyone who does agree with a new suggestion sees the pop-up at least once. (And like others, I’d love the ‘withdraw’ option to be a lot more visible.)
Some newbies dump ‘everything they saw today’ off their camera.
They need to be mentored till they can
delete duplicates
combine multiple pictures of one organism
split multiple sp
get the location right
remember Wild or Not, and know what that iNat jargon means
check that the ID you added is, in fact, the one you thought you did (beware homonyms or the glitch where I Would Never Have Chosen That, How Did It Happen??)
first obs in Africa?! Or the simpler - that is NOT found in Africa, try again.
I do not think that low number of observations explains the blind confirmatory IDing behavior. I never paid attention to it but I went now through the observations which I IDed recently and for which I think the ID is difficult enough to make it very unlikely for the observer to come up with this ID. The average number of observations these users had was hundreds, several users with thousands, minority with tens or less. This was sample of ca 10 different users. This might be specific for the group of organisms I ID and follow (rove beetles, termites) but I’d be surprised if for different groups of organisms the trend is completely different. In that case, not showing the popup to users with more than ten observations might make it quite ineffective. What about a certain number (5?10?) popups which would show up randomly (for the sake of simple implementation) every couple (tens of) “Agree” IDs particularly on own observations when I withdraw my original ID? After exhausting the popups they’d not show anymore but hopefully a seed would be planted.