Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other: web
URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant: any observation page
Description of need:
Staff have elaborated multiple times that the “Evidence related to a single subject” DQA item is meant for observations with multiple photos and no subject in common between all these photos, going as far to make this item not available for observations with a single photo. Many (most?) users who have not seen these explanations on the forum seem to misinterpret it as applying much more broadly, for instance to “landscape photos” with no clear single focus. Sometimes this even gets abused in a way that seems quite excessive, e.g. being ticked in cases where an observer has made there intended subject perfectly clear with their initial ID or observation notes, for instance.
Feature request details:
Clicking the little information icon next to the DQA provides further description for all the items.
Many of the comments are quite detailed, e.g. the “doesn’t present accurate evidence of the organism or scene” is I think particularly clear, and addresses potential misinterpretations directly. The evidence related to a single subject one, on the other hand, is quite brief and does not address the ambiguity between the intended use for this DQA item and the one we often see instead. I have no idea how many people actually read this, but I hope it would not be too much work to just add a clause like “this should only be used for observations which contain multiple photos containing completely different organisms, a single photo containing multiple organisms is OK”. Maybe renaming this DQA item to something like “subject appears in all photos” would be even better, but I understand if there’s a desire for stability in the names of the DQA items.
This was originally in Feature Requests but I moved it to General as it’s more about wording than specific functionality.
I’ll note that it’s not possible, or at least shouldn’t be possible via the web, to vote on this if the observation has only 1 piece of media evidence, so that at least covers that situation.
We should maybe add tooltips to each votable DQA line, so that if you mouseover it and hold for a second, you’ll see a definition, similar to annotations. Not everyone will see them, but it will increase the number of people who do see them.
Yes, and I think that is a very helpful feature I’m grateful for! but I’ve still seen that DQA on observations its not applicable to that just happen to have multiple photos of the same collection of organisms, so I think it would still help to have it explicitly stated.
We should maybe add tooltips to each votable DQA line, so that if you mouseover it and hold for a second, you’ll see a definition, similar to annotations.
Why only votable? If a user wants to give a DQA but can’t it’s a particularly good place to give them a helpful hint to understand the behaviour.
In this case, if there is only one picture in the obs – you cannot vote against a single subject – so the text would serve no purpose. Unless you want – you cannot vote FOR this, there is, only one photo. But maybe that would help avoid the circular arguments.
PS – yes we need to see a version of – this is greyed out, cannot vote, because only ONE picture / audio
In this case the purpose of the text would be to explain the reason why the user cannot vote for this. For users who see more than one subject in a photo and want to use this DQA item, it would educate them on the correct usage.
Appreciating your intention to clarify for people in what circumstances to use this DQA. Just wanting to add inclusion of audio evidence to any elaborations. For example, if an observation contains one photo of one or multiple organisms and there is audio that does not include any of those organisms, wouldn’t that also be appropriate to vote “no” to this DQA?
I have just fixed heaps of observations with a single image that had this DQA vote applied. Most were landscape shots, and mostly one user involved. Since I can’t see the timeframe, I can’t really tell when this happened, but is there a chance it’s buggy and allows single-image observations to be voted on every now and then?
I admit it, I think I may have done this in irritation at landscape shots. But what is the official approach if everything’s too far away to identify? This isn’t a repository for people’s holiday snaps (however scenic). They’re not just posted by new users. They’re surely not uploaded with the intention of anything being identified. Do you put ‘life’ and move on?
I usually identify such photos as Plants (assumning there’s at least one plant) and move on. Maybe as Vascular Plants, because I can imagine that another identifier could then agree with Vascular Plants, mark the DQA “As Good As It Can Be,” and we can all move on. Of course, the observer could come back and ID the observation as, say, Pines, but then at least we’d know the observer’s intention.
Good advice, Lynn. Perhaps we should all be a bit more bold about using the ‘as good as it can be button’ (I’m often tempted to think… but perhaps there’s someone who can identify this blur… as sometimes I can identify a blur if it’s a very distinctive blur. But I guess that person can untick the button if they can discern something better than ‘vascular plant’ can’t they :)
And I should make better use of the ‘mark as reviewed’ button, which I rarely do
I’ve been interacting with a user who wants to submit single photo observations of multiple plants, sometimes over a period of years, but usually in a general location on a single day. It’s often not clear if they are even the same species. Not being able to select the ‘not a single subject’ item in these cases is restricting. Example:
If he had submitted separate photos for each flower – then you could use the DQA.
They are all the same sp ?
Picked with a permit ? Or is that not needed.
I don’t understand: Why is this a problem? You can identify one of the plants in the photo, or if the observer intends the observation to be for multiple species, choose the lowest common taxon. Or click “reviewed” and move on if you can’t be fussed with it.
If the photos are in separate observations, what is the problem? You can ID each observation based on the photo in that observation; the photos in other observations are irrelevant.
Well, yes and no. They can untick the button if they see the observation at all, but when you mark something “cannot be improved” and it’s at a high enough level (family and above I believe) it goes into the casual category, where far fewer identifiers ever see it.
This isn’t to discourage you from using that DQA, just that you should reserve it for times when you’re fairly sure no one can make an ID.
