I frequently filter a search to all Unknowns in an area and give a go at IDing them. I’m really interested in plants and very frequently I run across casual observations. Someone’s potted plant, very obviously cultivated gardens, heck, even sometime a random sticker or picture of a picture. So often in my normal search areas (Atlantic coast of the US) I find instances of Unknowns which have already been reduced to casual by another user because of their clear signs of cultivated/captive status. So someone has come along to click “Flag as Capitve/Cultivated” or thumbs-down’d the “Wild” status without saying or adding anything else.
I understand the importance of clarifying wild or not, but I would like to petition anyone out there reading this to please give someone a guess when you do this. I know there’s a lot of debate and annoyance sometimes over random guesses that end up wrong or misleading, but when you know you’re going to reduce this submission to Casual anyhow, what’s the harm? It seems inconsiderate* to me to jump onto an observation simply to mark it as Casual and then never provide insight, even a computer-vision driven whack at the thing. Maybe you’re not confident, or you don’t feel like its worth your time trying since it won’t reach Research Grade? I’d like to say that I think it is worth your time to even give a very course guess i.e. Aves, Gryllidae, Magnoliopsida.
I think we often get caught up in the strongly emphasized goal of Research Grade that we forget that one of the beneficial parts of iNat is it’s cultivation of curiosity and enthusiasm for the natural world around us. I do not know this for a fact, but I speculate there are kids using iNat, they could be driven outside by their urge to know the names of the shrubs and trees and bugs and birds around them. They are not pressed with the goal of a purist “wild” only dataset which will support biodiversity studies down the line, they just want to go do the thing.
This is only an example, I don’t think it is somehow a childish thing to be in this mindset using the website/app. I just want to point out that there are members among us who are just now wandering into the great wide world enamored with everything and some could be so impressionable that they are discouraged by how often user 123ABC decrees their work casual without even providing any more info.
We have so many chances everyday on this site to try and help someone learn just the littlest bit about the things in their backyard that I think giving someone a rough guess while you mark the submission casual is the least one can do, especially if you’re already on the post.
*EDIT: earlier on this post I used the phrase “in poor taste” here. I realize now that this may read as a sort of moral high-ground type argument, which is not what I intended. I have changed this to “inconsiderate” but mean it in the broadest sense – as in to be forgetful or absent minded of a broader impact or effect. I do not mean to say ID’ers who do not add IDs to Captive/Cultivated observations are bad ID’ers or deliberately mean, are inconsiderate people, or do not take their “job as ID’ers” rightly. I am only referring to the action in and of itself. I just am trying to say we might be forgetting how we provide value to the others around us BEYOND just Research Grade. I hope this makes better sense
If I give an ID (‘animal’, ‘plant’) prior to demoting someone’s umpteenth pet cat or potted cactus to ‘casual’, I will then get notifications every time others provide finer IDs (‘Felidae’, ‘Opuntia monacantha ssp. thisus var. thatus’). Or else, I have to (1) remember and (2) chase under some link or button somewhere the hidden function to opt out of further notifications, each and every time.
Until a proper onboarding step aimed at cat-lovers and cactus-growers makes the life of us poor overburdened IDers easier… and until it is eventually possible to manage notifications properly (for example: automatically and selectively opting out of notifications according to personal taste, for example after ID’ing an obs to a broad rank, or if an obs is casual, or if blah blah blah)… thanks but no thanks.
Strongly agree (with the original post). I have many years of experience in teaching a wide variety of subjects in a wide number of venues. I always think encouraging curiosity and seeking answers to questions is a good thing.
Maybe that first time user won’t ever return after posting a picture of a house plant. Or that youth might never return after posting a picture of tree in the park during an after school event.
But I’m pretty sure they won’t when the get no response on an observation or maybe just a short one about how they didn’t do it right.
Working to advance Unknowns, I try to add something to these types of observations. If I leave any comment, I try to keep it encouraging towards future engagement. If it’s a house plant and iNat’s CV doesn’t recognize it (usually not), I’ll use Google Image search or Google Lens. Then explain how iNat was developed to encourage interaction with the natural world and therefore focuses on wildlife but it doesn’t usually recognize houseplants or garden hybrids. I’ll explain I’ve used Google and it thinks it’s “X”. After suggesting an ID I’m comfortable with (I used to work with house plants so I’m often comfortable with a genus or family ID), I’ll reassure them that it’s okay to post houseplants but it’s important to mark them as cultivated plants or “not wild”.
I will often spend the bulk of my time identifying on these types of observations that mostly get ignored. In my area, we’ve got a good cadre of identifiers for spiders, wild plants, galls, amphibians, bird songs, animal tracks and signs, and aquatic plants.
I’m pretty sure we even have one or two people that regularly check Unknowns.
But I’m not sure if anyone is dealing with those less ‘attractive’ observations of cultivated plants, blurry photos, or just of uncertain intention. So I don’t mind focusing on those.
My hope is that a positive response to one of these observations will spark something in someone and they’ll come to fall in love with the power of iNat to bring joy to life like it has for me.
@dianastuder and I did this recently for a new user from a different part of MX who uploaded potted plants inside a school. We waited a week before casualing/offering IDs to see if her photos were part of an assignment since they were taken inside a school.
She came back to iNaturalist the day we gave IDs, presumably to see what the identifications were, so likely that is the info she was after, and maybe next time she will use the application for wild organisms.
Interesting, I’ve never met someone who feels so burdened by ID’ing things on iNat. I’m sorry it is a stressful or exhausting experience (I’m being genuine here, this isn’t sarcasm). Of course you can do what you want with your life, but in the spirit of your dismissal I could say maybe just don’t interact with the post then?
I cannot speak for everyone and every post, but I do not have anything like the experience your describing with an ID on a casual observation. In fact I think nearly every ID I’ve provided to Casual, or what I have demoted to Casual has ended there… In my part of the world at least, people don’t spend energy refining casual IDs… I am curious if this is an thing you have directly experienced or just some frustration you anticipate?
Again, genuinely sorry the experience of providing IDs is so frustrating.
Yes, notifications are a burden to busy identifiers. I unfollow as soon as I can, but first I would like to see ‘what that is’ Stripes AND spots on fur
I agree we should identify captive/cultivated observations if we can because the observer probably wants to know what the organism is. Doing the ID is a service I feel I should provide if possible. For a long time, my personal rule was not to mark an observation as Captive/cultivated unless it already had what I considered an adequate identification. I’ve been criticized for saying that because some very good identifiers feel that non-wild observations don’t belong on iNaturalist, are a waste of time and resources, and should be banished as fast as possible.
Recently, I’ve become more likely to rate an observation non-wild quickly. This is not because of the criticism but because of helping identify for bioblitzes and classroom exercises where the percentage of cultivated plants (sometimes multiple observations of the same individual cultivated plant!) is high and eventually annoying. I will aim for more patience. After all, no more big bioblitzes to frustrate me for a few months. In any case, identifying the observations is important unless it was posted years ago.
As a “power identifier” for local flora I monitor:
local ‘needs ID’ plants of course, daily and carefully and happily
local non-‘needs ID’ plants (already casual’d/ID’d/RG’d by others) regularly
local ‘unknowns’ a few times a year (…to fish some wild plants out, if any)
On those days when I skim through the pile of ‘unknowns’, what to do with the obvious potted cactus?
option #0: mark ‘reviewed’, move along → not helpful, no notifs
option #1: ID it as ‘cactus’, next → help a little, get notifs
option #2: ID it as ‘cactus’, mark as ‘not wild’ (… and educate the user if feasible), next → help some more (… maybe), get notifs
option #3: mark as ‘not wild’, next → help a little, avoid notifs
Sorry for routinely choosing #3 – deliberately not giving a guess even though I could. However, I really loathe notifications about a potted cactus chiming in months later, due to some cactus specialist being on an ID spree – just because I once forgot to click ‘unsubscribe from notifs for this obs’ as I was going through dozens of unknowns. Still, your concern and goodwill is appreciable. Actually, whenever circumstances (and the user’s responsiveness) seem suitable, I myself can spend time and energy on the occasional garden rose or pet parrot.
Still, IMHO, the ‘be extra welcoming and educate newcomers so as to retain them’ should not rest solely on the (few) (overworked) IDers. Hence the dire need for a better onboarding process to be designed by iNaturalist webmasters, and for long-awaited features to make IDers’ (not just observers’) life easier.
I’m not a power IDer because I lack the time, mental energy, and patience to look at many records in a day. Those who are able to review hundreds of records in a day are superhuman, in my view.
Also, I tend to fall back on the philosophy that some teachers adopt: I won’t put more time and effort into reviewing your work than you devoted to creating it.
When I see an “Unknown” potted plant, I’m gone in a second. Others might take time to review it. We each choose how we spend our limited time in life.
I agree that it is important for new users to get feedback and making their observations casual without an ID or an explanation is going to be disappointing for them and not help them to become better iNat users.
If I am looking at unknowns (I generally find my skills are better used in other ways), I do try to find at least one observation by that user where I can provide a fairly specific ID along with a “welcome to iNat” and some general feedback on using iNat (why it is better to upload with a general ID, please mark cultivated plants as not wild, etc.)
But there are plenty of cases where it seems likely that feedback will serve no meaningful purpose, because the user will not see or does not need it. For example:
the user created their account several months ago, either of their own violition or as part of a bioblitz/assignment, uploaded a few dozen observations, and has never been active since
the plant has a clearly visible tag or label, so the user does not really need an ID to tell them what it is
the user has already gotten feedback on multiple observations, and has not responded in any way or changed their behavior on future observations
The other difficulty with cultivated plants is that they are often exotic tropical plants or cultivars/hybrids and I am unlikely to know what they are. If I add a general ID, this is probably not much more useful to the observer than no ID at all, and once the observation is casual, it is much less likely to be looked at, so it may be a very long time before anyone refines my ID.
(The alternative – not marking as “captive/cultivated” until the observation has gotten an ID, strikes me as inappropriate, because all I am doing is making the observation someone else’s problem, and there is no reason to assume that the next person to look at it will be able to provide a better ID than I can. I fully support the proposal to stop lumping non-wild observations together with defective observations, but I also think the distinction between wild and non-wild is important to maintain, both for users of the data and for IDers, since expertise with local flora does not necessarily overlap with expertise with horticultural plants.)
I will confess that sometimes I mark an Unknown observation as cultivated (or captive) without giving an ID. If I have a good idea what the organism is (beyond Plant or Animal), I will usually give an ID - and I’ve been a gardener for a long time, so I know many of the common plants.
But here’s why I don’t give an ID sometimes.
I think of my fellow identifiers: if I can get an observation out of the Needs ID pile quickly, that’s one less observation other identifiers need to look at (unless they are into cultivated plants).
I get cranky at teachers who don’t understand iNat well enough to be able to help students learn about the natural world by using iNat. Sure, there’s a learning curve to iNat, but if I’m looking at observations that are at least a week old, that should be enough time for a teacher to give feedback (“Add an initial ID to every observation.”) to the students.
I get cranky at non-student observers who continue to add Unknown or cultivated observations week after week, even when they are given feedback. It feels as though they are taking advantage of a system where they get all of the benefit and none of the burden.
I get cranky at the sheer number of observations coming at me every day. Yes, I could just quit or I could ID just 100 observations a day or I could ignore Unknown or cultivated observations entirely, but I’m not that disciplined, unfortunately.
Bring me a picture - in focus, which shows information I can use, and I will do my best. Whether it is a ‘plant in a pot’ or not.
Murky smudge in dim light, backyard or underwater? No. Next.
I agree that it is kind to add some kind of identification before marking something as casual.
However, there is such an overwhelming amount of work to do, including marking obvious things as “not wild”, that there have to be some compromises between kindness and efficiency. For example, it would be very kind to do exhaustive research and figure out exactly what every single thing is, but no one expects every identifier to do that for every observation they happen across!
I do not think that it is actively unkind to just (correctly) mark something “not wild” and move on. In fact, it is helping the original observer to correctly label their observation! Although casual observations are often seen as being in the junk drawer of iNaturalist, they do not actually disappear into a bottomless void. Anyone who wants to identify casual observations can easily check that box when they are searching.
So, identify it first if you can, and if you have time, and if you are feeling particularly kind at the moment. But I don’t think there’s any reason to feel bad about it if you don’t identify it first.
Today while looking at Unknowns in one of the “Unknown Projects”, I found unfortunate examples of people marking things as Not Wild without having a good look at the observation. For example, a bird nesting in a hanging basket. Someone saw the hanging basket and thought, “that is a cultivated plant”, marked it as such and moved on. Meanwhile the placeholder on the observation included info about the species of the bird nesting there, but their observation has never been identified because of one person who didn’t have a proper look. Another similar one was a clearly visible bird in a garden shrub - but someone saw the cultivated plant, didn’t look at the placeholder which mentioned the bird, and marked it as cultivated. The observer has probably given up on iNat because no-one identified their bird even though it was a very clear photo and a very identifiable bird species.
So please, if you are marking things as cultivated without adding even a basic ID, have a closer look before you send the observation to Eternal Limbo!
that is why the placeholder project happened. Lots of good info skimmed over, and missed. While I am sitting looking at an obs - wait, what?? It is a relief to see the observer’s answer ready and waiting, even before I asked
PS @spacefatty what are you holding in your thumbnail? Or would it be what is in the mud??
I used to add a note about marking captive/cultivated observations as casual using iNats Frequently Used Responses. I stopped after one user was really nasty in their response, I can’t remember what exactly was said, but since then I just mark as casual and move on.
Research Grade 