How accurate should be date and location for research grade?

It doesn’t say there’s no value, it says science is not the main goal and allows iNat be friendly to new users and non-scientists. GBIF is still there and observations are easily found by any researcher. e.g. we have no rankings, everyone can be an expert, everyone can observe anything at any time, etc.

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The statement that “science is just a secondary purpose” makes it sound like iNat’s data isn’t actually needed. I’m here for two reasons: to be part of a community, and to contribute to science. The science part is important to me, so I don’t like being told that it doesn’t matter.

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But you are not being told that science doesn’t matter … or no one would be here except the just passing thru kids forced to do a school project.

iNat has to be one size fits all - from the excited newbie - Look a green Plant
to the scientist revising the taxonomy of those particular Green plants.

One size fits all, doesn’t actually fit anybody. We are here because we want to be, and trying to cooperate as best we can.

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Clicking on the question mark next to Data Quality Assessment yields some examples (although weirdly it’s missing a date example, that should probably be fixed):

eg

@loarie also wrote a blog post about location and accuracy: https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/44732-exploring-fine-scale-geographic-patterns-on-inaturalist

As for whether a date is accurate…I’d say it’s similar to the location is accurate examples. If the photo depicts a brown arctic fox in Canada, with no snow on the ground, and the date is in January, then you should probably vote the date is inaccurate and/or ask the observer to take a look and update it. IMO (and this is not policy), if someone like Greg posts a very old photo and says the date is within a few days, it’s not worth voting “no” there. The observed on date is close to the right one (or may be right) and the observer explained that it might be a few days off so anyone can decided on how to interpret it if they want to use the data.

Here’s the quote:

Our secondary goal is to generate scientifically valuable biodiversity data from these personal encounters. We believe iNat can achieve both of these goals simultaneously - in fact that they reinforce one another - but when we get pulled in conflicting directions, we measure success by our primary goal. If we connect people to nature without contributing to any specific scientific outcomes or quantifiable conservation results, then we’re still doing our job, but if we just contribute to science without helping people care about the natural world, we’ll be on the wrong track.

This is saying that iNat wants to achieve both goals and that they reinforce each other, but when making decisions and/or measuring success, the primary goal (helping people engage with nature) is the one that takes precendence. iNaturalist does not say science and rigor are not important, that statement is about decision making and relative priorities.

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Accuracy and precision, as you describe them, are right from a spatial/cartographic standpoint. Biologically, there can be problems with observations that are accurate but with large precision circles. For example, there’s a research grade observation in southern Alberta of a mountain plant species, occurring in the photo next to mountain lake, with a very large precision circle that has the centre in a prairie grassland far to the east. The mountain lake is within the precision circle but the lat-long location is misleading biologically. Some minimal standard/maximum distance could deal with this. If the observation can’t be located to a “reasonable” standard, then it’s usefulness is questionable, and if it’s misleading, it degrades the quality of iNat and other databases. I’m not suggesting adding another box regarding this but maybe “inaccurate” should include “not sufficiently precise.”

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But surely that is set/determined by the user of the data? RG designation doesn’t mean it CAN/CAN’T be used for research, just that certain criteria have been met. It’s a starting point that a user of the data would then go on to refine with “but I don’t want anything over 100m accuracy value, and I also want to include the non-RG that only are missing a confirmation ID”, for example.

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Like the terrestrial species located in mid-Atlantic ocean? With a terrestrial habitat visible around them?

Does the land really occur within the circle, in the cases of terrestrial species in the mid-Atlantic ocean? That would be a ridiculously large circle!

Indeed… if the circle didn’t cross land at all, and there was land in the photo, then obviously it was located outside the circle! Either that or it was photographed in an impressive garden on board a luxury cruise ship…

We had one recently of a spider, Latrodectus katipo, pin located inland with a fairly small accuracy circle. We know it to be a coastal species that only thrives in the dunes… so it was questioned… and i’ll stress… questioned… NOT flagged or marked inaccurate. Turns out the observation was at a freedom camping spot near a reserve, and the road that leads there comes FROM the coast, so not at all unreasonable to expect that someone picked up wood from the beach and then deciding they no longer wanted it, deposited it near the camping spot. A small and tenuously persistant population there is the result!

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