To start with, I hope I am posting this is the right place.
OK HERE GOES…
It’s my understanding that iNaturalist is a website which uses citizen science to “help” the genius scientists living among us (plant, fish, critter, bird, microorganisms people). Because, the more eyes out there the better.
IMHO (rarely humble) I think it’s a genius idea and I love participating. I also love recruiting more people to join the fun.
I know some science people are stickler for details (understandably so) and some don’t like it when a person posts “UNKNOWN”
Recently I have read a couple of observations where someone commented typing that a person who chose the UNKNOWN shouldn’t ever pick that option because it will not get their observation identified right away but may take longer to get a proper identification.
What’s your thought on this??
Be honest because I truly am interested in what your opinions are.
My thoughts on this is that it saddens me.
To me it’s as if the time, energy, money and thought the person has put into the experience as not only fun but helpful to science but as a “citizen science” participant, it’s just not good enough.
As I see it, there are a good many people who love nature and love the idea of being included in something so majestical, inspiring, educational and pretty easy to participate in, even without a higher degree education.
I have chatted with a couple of my buddies about this and asked how they would feel getting a comment that basically they are choosing the incorrect option on their observation, even though the option is there to be chosen.
Some of my buddies shrugged it off as a poor design and that’s on iNaturalist not on them, some said they would feel as if their efforts were not appreciated but that they would just keep plugging away until they learned more and were one day able to post knowing they may or may not be correct but they would continue.
Some said (this breaks my heart) that they wouldn’t feel great about the interaction. Feeling they had been set up by following the guidelines and then being told their efforts were not good enough, not appreciated and they wouldn’t post any more.
I want to be clear. The comments were not mean sounding more the person appeared frustrated at the UNKNOWN option being chosen more than once by a participant who honestly had no idea what to put.
So what do you think…
*Have you come across an observation with UNKNOWN or LIFE as the option to identify an observation? If so how did you deal with it? Did it irk you? Irk you enough to comment on it? Have you ever been at a loss as to what your observation was? How did you handle it?
I imagine as a scientist, naturalist, botanist, microbiologist etc that there are more options other than UNKNOWN which can be chosen but I refuse to just assume things…which is why I ask.
I did feel compelled to leave a positive comment to the person who made the observation which had the paragraph of correction to not use the UNKNOWN option and hoped they would continue to post observations. I did not write anything negative to either party.
Thank you for taking time out to leave your thoughts on this topic, I appreciate it and I
hope your day is majestical, your travels are safe and your photos come out just the way you wanted.
I am on the - leave it at Unknown if you don’t know, side.
I object to iNatters, most especially the newbies, being bullied into Add An ID, any ID, who cares - even if you just write Something. And they do.
Make the effort as an observer to take clear photos. Crop if your subject is small. Give the identifiers as much info - in pictures or notes - as you reasonably can. Then you have done your share. Follow your notifications so you can both, respond to any questions. And learn as you go, as we ALL do, even the crabby commenters.
Adding an observation as unknown is better than not adding the observation. Remember that the mission if iNat is to connect people to nature and adding obs is connecting them to nature even if is is unknown
I often filter by unknown when doing IDs and if you are irked by them then just go through them and add the finest ID that you can.
Honestly, as someone who does leave notes about unknowns, my notes are intended as friendly advice (they are phrased that way and often come with well wishes about enjoying iNat), not scathing criticisms of the people’s selections. It’s my understanding that choosing unknown or life can have an observation lost in the ether of iNat for extended periods of time. New people generally are expecting IDs (that’s why we submit in the first place–or at least that’s why I submit). Not getting an ID for months and months might dissuade the new user as well. There’s no guarantee, of course, that choosing a slightly more specific ID will help, but I have found that birders, for instance, are more likely to ID an observation if I at least note it as a bird. I only use “unknown” if I’m completely mystified. I’ve never known anyone to take offense, but I can certainly leave the comments out.
I will echo those who have said, and those who will continue to agree, that adding an observation as unknown is better than not adding one at all. Personally, unknowns don’t really bother me. However, there are also a few practical considerations here that may lead to comments about adding IDs (I’ve left some myself, always intended as well-meaning advice and not criticism):
Many unknowns are uploaded accidentally. I’ve often added a broad ID along with a comment explaining why doing so can be helpful and caught the eye of the uploader, who realized that they had simply forgotten/overlooked adding the ID themselves (often a much more specific ID than I was capable of adding myself). As a side note, I tend to include the comment explaining why adding a broad ID can be helpful because it avoids complaints like “well duh, I knew it was a plant” (in which case, why was it left unknown?)
As already noted by others, in most cases adding even a broad category like “bird” or “plant” can help the observation get identified much quicker. This is why the “Frequently Used Responses” page on iNat has pre-prepared comments addressing how to add an ID (https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/responses). I wonder whether the paragraph mentioned in the OP was one of these? If so, it’s worth noting their primary purpose, as noted on the page:
I have occasionally added an unknown when I didn’t know what kingdom the organism was in (e.g., is this a fungus or a slime mold?). That being said, it is otherwise best to add an ID (even a coarse ID) to the lowest level you can confidently ID.
I see nothing wrong with identifiers politely pointing this out to new users, though I have certainly seen people do it in a less-than-polite manner (not necessarily rude, but could have been a little softer).
For my part, I add “General ID to get the ball rolling.” on any previously unknown observations that I can only identify coarsely. This is to prevent the “I know it’s a bird, but what TYPE of bird is it?!” response. If I notice a user is adding a high volume of unknown observations, then I will add a more detailed comment explaining why it is best to add coarse IDs, linking to the iNat help page about coarse IDs.
I ID a lot of Unknowns. I rarely comment regarding the person not adding an ID. However I do when they complain that I add a basic ID - such as “birds” or “snakes”. Sometimes people say that they know it is a bird, but they want to know what sort. Then I explain that if they had IDed it as a bird in the first place, a bird expert would have found their observation and IDed it quickly.
I’m in the same boat. I do leave friendly comments encouraging observers to leave any kind of ID that they can offer, to ensure it gets in front of the right people.
I am an environmental educator, and I do a lot of work to make people (mostly kids) feel like whatever level of knowledge they have is valuable. I think some people must believe, “I don’t know what species of tree this is, so I can’t offer anything important, ID-wise.” But they know it’s a tree, and most people know that trees are plants. So they can identify it as a plant, and it’s that much more likely to be found by the right identifiers.
Sometimes people may just be baffled, and sometimes it might be a mistake that they left it as Unknown. In either case, I don’t think a friendly comment and my best effort at an ID is going to harm or offend anyone.
I used to add a comment to the effect that a very general guess is better than nothing but I no longer do this. Instead I look at an unknown as an opportunity for me to learn something new. I just dive right in, give the best ID that I can, and move on. Actually, I now seek out unknowns. I am more likely to click on an unknown than an observation with an ID of something I already know.
I am not bothered by observations identified as Unknown, because when I am IDing I always filter for Plants. I often come across Obs. that were originally Unknown, and the first IDer has IDed to Plants, with one of those comments about how making a broad ID would be helpful. The comments generally also say something like “welcome to iNat!” so they don’t seem discouraging to me.
However, your question has made me realize that in fact I have never posted an Unknown, partly because I am afraid to get a comment that made me feel like: “duh… that’s a genus X, how could you not know that?”
I’m thinking of a few things that I couldn’t even ID to Kingdom, like fuzzy stuff on the underside of a leaf (Insect? Fungus?)
I know there are IDers who like a challenge and filter for Unknown, so perhaps I could give someone a thrill by posting that fuzzy stuff after all?
I want to point out that if you have absolutely no idea what something is, it is possible to ID it as “life”. This is different from “unknown” (no ID at all), even if they are treated the same way by some of the search filters.
It seems to me that IDing as “life” in such a case is probably useful even if iNat conflates it with “unknown” in some contexts, because the IDing skills required for unknowns (many of which are reasonably easy to ID more precisely) are not identical to the IDing skills required for life (observations where it is not immediately obvious what kingdom it belongs to).
I’m a teacher too. I often see the comments as a way to help a new user. The only time I’ve received negative feedback from a user is when I’ve broadly placed an observation (EG plant) and NOT left a comment about why. I received a comment that said, “I KNOW it’s a plant. I was looking for a better ID.” Then, I had to explain anyway, and then I tagged experts to try to get the person a faster, more precise response.
My gut reaction was to blame the platform design for even allowing “Unknown” as an option and causing these sometimes fraught or confused interactions; but on reflection, I think “Unknown” does have one specific use case where it makes sense as a deliberate choice (as opposed to a connection/technical/time issue), and that’s where you don’t actually know if the thing you’ve photographed is a living organism or an inanimate object. I’ve seen photos of lichen, fungi, or colonies of microorganisms that just looks like paint/rust smears, for example.
That said, I think it might be an improvement if the platform defaulted all observations to “Life” if no ID was provided, and required “Unknown” to be an explicit choice that users can select, whether because they’re uncertain the subject is indeed living or because they want to leave it blank for some pragmatic reason, such as to remind themselves to come key it out later.
I think some cases of “Unknown” in new users come less from pragmatic cases than from a misunderstanding of the way the platform and community work. I once ID’ed a bivalve that had been left as unknown, and received a dismissive-feeling response that “Well obviously it’s a bivalve, but it needs to be ID’ed at least to family.” This person didn’t seem to understand the incremental ID process that the community goes through.
To me, when I see unknowns, I think about how experts often filter by more precise taxa and get a little pang of worry that the observation will sit unidentified for a long time. It feels like a missed opportunity for knowledge shared and curiosity satisfied. That’s why I try to spend some time every so often ID’ing local Uknowns; I’d love for every observation to be ID’ed as precisely as possible, both for the sake of the project and its beneficiaries, and for the sake of the people who uploaded them.
For that reason, I also sometimes try to gently encourage non-power-users to ID things coarsely even if they can’t ID specifically. I hope to come across as encouraging, and as welcoming them into the community process, but I know we can’t really control how those sorts of comments are received.
I leave comments like that sometimes because it’s what I needed to hear as a new iNatter. Not getting IDs on my observations was discouraging. Getting IDs like “Bird” or “Plant” felt condescending. As I learned more about the culture and function of the platform, I came to understand what the deal was. Most experts don’t comb through unknowns. IDing something as a plant or spider helps put it in front of experts. But nobody tells new iNat users that stuff, and a lot of them leave before they figure it out on their own, or they @ me saying “I knew it was a bird, a****le, what KIND of bird is it?”
I thought that a kind, encouraging comment explaining that stuff could be helpful. But I am autistic-- I can be blunt and struggle to covey tone, I never thought that comments like mine could be discouraging or rude, but if the consensus is that they are, I’ll stop.
I am of the opinion that it is most helpful to the website, identifiers, and data that a broad category is chosen for the observation. Tagging it as “plant”, “fungi”, or “mammal” is hugely helpful for getting it to the right group of experts.
I work with mycologists who use the app and exclusively ID observations filtering for fungi. If the observation is in the unknown category, waiting for someone to ID it from the MASSIVE pile of unknowns will take a long time, or maybe never happen. Versus if it was tagged as fungi, a mycologist will have it in their filtered pile. I personally spend a lot of time tagging fungi as fungi just to get them to mycologists, when I could be spending more time IDing specific species that I know (this is my choice to use my time digging through unknowns).
For a photo like “goose”, it’ll be IDed from unknown fairly quickly, many people can ID it. But for more obscure groups like plants and fungi, they sit in the unknown pile for eternity because they aren’t captured by filters and never reach an expert.
I do comment often asking new iNatters to tag to a broad category- I try to be nice about it, it’s a learning experience
As a fairly new iNatter, I would like to point out that there is a post (or was a post) in the forum that requested assistance in IDing observations from unknown into the more general taxons, even if it is only at the kingdom level. I was thrilled to read that post, especially since I don’t know enough to take most observations past the Order level, if that. (Yes, I have moved plenty of observations from unknown to Plantae.) And, I was aware that the number of observers is significantly larger than the number of identifiers on iNat. So I am somewhat distressed to see all these comments about how people should not list their observations as Unknown.
Is it really better to list observations as Life, rather than Unknown?
Are you saying that I should not try to ID an observation until I develop expertise in a specific taxon? That would take quite a while, especially since I am really more interested in seeing what is out there - the incredible range and variety of the life around me! And, there is no easy route to taxon expertise. There are no academic classes open to the general public for becoming an expert in, for example, harvestmen of the Willamette Valley. I am mostly a birds and bugs observer. Birds very likely don’t need more observers since my bird observations are IDed within 30 minutes. Bugs are really difficult to ID to species and may need dissection and a microscope. Of course, I am trying to learn more, but, for me, it will be a slow process.
I have seen (on my notifications) how IDing an Unknown to Kingdom, Phylum or Order gets the attention of people with more expertise than I have. I don’t understand the point of these discussions about eliminating the Unknown category. It feels like people want to eliminate an option for me to “give back” to iNat with the rather limited knowledge that I have.
In my opinion, you should always aim to submit the most precise ID you are confident with that is possible for you to do at the time of uploading.
So, if you know something is a plant, you should add “plant”, if you know it’s a bird, add “bird”, etc.
If you really are uncertain of any ID, then you should leave it as unknown or ID as “life”.
I don’t think anyone is frustrated with observations being left at unknown (I’m not, at any rate), but I think if it is possible for you to ID further, you should, just “for your own good”. (That sounds more ominous than intend it to, but I don’t know how to phrase it better. Haha)
Additionally, a lot of identifiable unknowns drown out observations that are actually unknown (as in: Which kingdom do they belong in?), so those are even harder to find for people who may know more.