This class project just popped up in my area, as usual there are tons of observations flooding in, about half of which should be captive/cultivated but are unmarked as such. I’ve been marking them for the past few days but more just keep popping up. Anyone else want to help?:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&project_id=85108&subview=grid
Have you messaged the project’s creator? If not, I can. That can be a good way to get correct info disseminated.
thats such a relatable title…
im going through it now, i know how hard those can be
Messaged the project creator.
Ahhh the bane of all class projects in my area. 90% of observations being cultivated plants. I can’t keep up at all lol.
Direct link to the identify page: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?project_id=85108
Only 90%?
I feel this, because I’m also furiously marking observations as cultivated. I was even a participant in one of these class projects. Many of my classmates did not listen. I even clarified what a cultivated plant was more than once with no results.
It’s sad to me as a person that is observant of plants. Beyond “plant blindness” is “landscape blindness”. We are not taught our impact on the world and how to read it, from that a blue spruce in a park was planted to how eroded urban stream banks are.
other 10% is split between everyone observing the exact same individual, and selfies
In fact it is a good topic regarding class activities, Inlurked through observations of one of Hong Kong class “party”, children focused solely on planted trees and bushes, the main wild thing were Tree Sparrows, so they made distant pics of planted stuff while there definitely were a lot of much more interesting smaller plants right at their feet and still there were none of them. I’m thinking why many teachers don’t care at all about checking what pupils submit.
I’ll jump on board :)
I almost never mark other people observations as cultivated.
I think we need a new feature to detect these observations (or most of them) and to automatically notify the observer.
iNat actually does have a system for automatically marking some observations as captive/cultivated right away, but it’s a highly flawed system. If the smallest standard place an observation is in has at least 10 observations of a genus or species marked as captive/cultivated and over 90% of the observations of that taxon in that place are marked as captive/cultivated then all observations of that taxon in that place will be marked as captive/cultivated. It’s not a very good system for a multitude of reason but I can’t think of a better one.
maybe a low estimate 
Yeah, my feeling was that they are restricting their find to within their school premises, so unless you have a keen eye and is interested in that stuff the majority one will find would just be cultivated plants. Also if the teachers are not engaged they cannot feed the encouragement to the students. I feel it would be good to take them on a small field trip to the nature and then actually show the creatures we find just to pique their curiosity a bit more. I remember one time I crashed a small night-time safari and I was showing kids and their parents all the little insects and spiders etc that I find.
I empathize with you but consider the possibility to press the creator of the project to begin to flag what must be flagged.
Interesting why teachers are pressed to do it at all, there were enough activities to do with children pre-smartphone era, if teachers are not interested in the system they shouldn’t do it at all. I know this year universities had to use iNat because of covid as there should be a practice time in distance, and they had to participate in many Zoom meetings to understand what the plantform is and how to look after submissions, in my point of view if the teaching organization can’t provide the needed supervision then teachers and classes shouldn’t spend their time for nothing (ofc only if a teacher doesn’t feel own willingness).
I didn’t suggest to mark observations automatically.
I do frequently – although I try to be nice about it by adding an ID first, since that’s why they posted it.
Even more fabulous: there’s at least one student there that uploaded many photos that aren’t their own.