No hypothetical taxon specialist or no specialist on iNaturalist? I often find myself seeing the same observation again years later with no further ID. If no one has provided a better ID by then, it’s not likely to happen.
It’s hard for me to rule out the possibility that some specialist, somewhere could ID some blurry picture that doesn’t contain any of the ID characteristics. But that has little relevance to the sorting of observations here on iNaturalist.
That said, I agree that this check box confuses people. I understood most of iNaturalist within a few weeks of joining but it took me a long time to understand what this was for.
Yet another task for reviewers/identifiers:
vote “Yes”, if it can still be improved.
I see in the project a yellow flower identified as Angiospermae and the CV makes a suggestion at rank species that matches the observation very well. For sure it can be improved.
If I find something that has been incorrectly marked as “No, it’s as good as it can be”, and I mark it as “Yes”, what effect will that have? Do the two cancel each other out? Or will my “Yes” stop the observation from ever becoming RG - because it will always think it needs a better ID?
Currently observations with only 1 ID don’t become casual if someone checks the No box. I think that’s a recent change though, so older observations with the No box checked still remain casual.
No – the votes cancel each other out. One yes + one no = observation behaves as though no boxes were checked.
It is no longer possible to mark DQA items that are not applicable to the observation; i.e., observations that only have one ID (and therefore no community ID) have this box greyed out.
However, there are some observations with only a single ID that still have this box checked from before the change was implemented. The checked box should not have any effect on the status of observation until there is at least one other ID.
I’ve been finding a few with no ID at all (Unknowns) with “No, it’s as good as it can be” selected. So I’m giving them an initial ID, and clicking on “Yes”, but am wondering if once they have 2 IDs they will still stay at “Needs ID” because of my Yes. But you think they will be OK, the two votes cancel each other? I hope so!
I’ve just started looking through some of the observations in that project and after a few observations I’ve already noticed a few other ways that the check box has (in my opinion) been misused.
First instance is when a user makes a disagreeing ID, then checks the box, and it gets stuck at a high taxonomic level. For example, user A might identify an observation as ‘Plantae,’ then user B might disagree and identify it as ‘Polyporales’ and checks the ‘good as it can be box.’ The observation would then get stuck at ‘state of matter life,’ even if user B meant that it can’t be identified past Polyporales.
Second instance is that the ‘good as it can be’ box is checked when another DQA option would be more suitable (‘Evidence of organism’ or ‘Evidence related to a single subject’).
I’ve also seen users add ‘state of matter life’ identifications then check the box in order to remove duplicate observations. I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong but maybe worth mentioning. I know there’s a lot of debate about how to handle duplicate observations.
I find it useful. My typical use case is on my own observations, where someone “agrees” with my initial ID without any apparent knowledge of the taxon. I add a Yes vote, and it stays in Needs ID until I am satisfied that others with sufficient knowledge have weighed in on the ID, then I remove my vote. Sort of a backdoor way to temporarily “opt out” of Community ID on a single observation.
Absolutely not! It is very useful and it would be a pitty if it would not be there. It helps get a lot of observations out of the pool and free IDers to get to observations that have not been reviewed yet, instead of each IDer having to go through all of those observations that cannot be pushed further anyways… a bunch of spider IDers use this button very regularly and I love it.
I don’t think the button is to be understood as
“Nobody will ever be able to ID it further”… because who could make such a statement about anything…?
I understand it as “at the current time with the evidence given here there is no official information to support a finer ID”
Of course, only informed IDers will be able to provide such a judgement
… that does not mean that no new information will ever occur. And in that case it will be super easy to use the right filter settings to find those observations again and update them.
I am presently updating the project The Community Taxon is as good as it can be and many observations are being removed from the project after reviewers/identifiers voted for “Yes, it can still be improved”.
Thanks!
That - informed use by a taxon specialist - spider cannot be IDed to sp without dissection - would have been the original intention from iNat.
But those obs are few among many that miss the point.
I find the box useful but I rarely check the box because I am never sure that an ID cannot be improved upon. Even the blurriest photos can be useful to an expert, and my own study species that I once thought could only be distinguished by dissection I am now finding can often be told apart by behaviour and habitat choice. So not only are there usually experts far more knowledgeable than I am, I also have to consider what future me may be able to identify! The only times I use it is if a species is known to be undescribed and the community taxon cannot be improved upon because no taxon exists yet for it.