I’ve been looking for observations where the community ID is split and I recently started on a certain taxon that is apparently very prone to joke IDs.
The vast majority of them do not appear to be mistakes. For some of them, the user continues to jokingly defend their ID in the comments.
If it matters, I would say the majority of these observations are captive/cultivated.
Overall I’m wondering if I should flag these IDs, or just leave a comment with a gentle reminder that joke IDs are against iNat policy? Or neither? Does it matter how old the ID is, or if the user has multiple incorrect IDs vs just one?
I don’t think it’s necessary to post a link as we aren’t supposed to call out specific instances of bad behavior on the forums.
In general, I think it’s fair to flag bad faith IDs (whether joke, insult, anything intentionally incorrect).
If the ID is just a joke (not an insult on a human observation) and isn’t affecting the CID (ie, the CID is already correct) and the user is long gone, it may not be worth flagging, as hiding it is work and it wouldn’t have a major impact. Otherwise, I would probably flag.
I think it matters how old the joke IDer is. You see a lot of this on various social media platforms (not just iNat). I say this for iNatters who might not be users of Reddit, Facebook, etc.
We were all young once. We said stupid things to try to get a laugh, and to try to impress our peers as we tried to adapt to the social fabric.
The thing is, our mistakes vanished. Today, everything is tracked digitally. We “have the receipts” of stupid behaviour. It’s a more challenging world in that way!
If the certain taxon is human - flag them. We need the IDs hidden, and also the pictures - if the victim is clearly irritated, or trying to avoid a photo.
A joke ID needs 3 to counter it. And more if the jokers gang up. Nobody on iNat is laughing at the ‘joke’. People come to iNat expecting to avoid toxic social media. If the NotAJoke bothers you, flag them.
I see your point. I was referring to the age of the ID itself (for example, a joke ID that was posted a week ago vs a joke ID that was posted 5 years ago). However, now that you point it out, a fair number of the joke ID’s I’ve seen are from users who appear to be younger adults, or parents of school-age children (i.e., maybe the kids got ahold of mom or dad’s phone and decided to upload some random pics to iNat).
I don’t think it entirely excuses the user going against iNat policy, but perhaps a little extra patience might be warranted (although personally I try to give everyone a little extra patience since I never know what someone’s circumstances might be).
In general terms, I notice more of them on domesticated species, mostly pets (or humans - people take pictures of themselves or their friends/classmates and ID themselves as all sorts of things)
Do you know of any iNat policy or other opinion/guidance you would cite for a photo if the subject seems irritated or trying to avoid a photo? I agree that most photos of humans should just be hidden, but I’ve noticed some differing opinions on what should be hidden.
I know I have a pretty low tolerance for people taking other people’s photos and posting them online without consent, which I’m sure influences my opinion.
Absolutely, flag them!
A curator will hide the ID so it no longer impacts the community taxon, and warn the user that joke IDs aren’t suited to iNat. If they make a habit out of it, they can be suspended, but we’re generally pretty liberal with warnings first.
If the person seems upset/unwilling to be photographed, feel free to flag it. Curators are allowed to hide any photo of a human that gets flagged, at our discretion. I generally hide pics of:
someone trying to hide their face,
sleeping people,
unhoused people just trying to go about their day,
photos that seem to be focused on someone’s rear / crotch / breast area,
apparent strangers in bathing suits at the beach
etc, etc
Thanks! This helps. I definitely don’t want to get anyone in undue trouble, but it’s also a little annoying to see someone messing up data.
Do you hide photos of strangers in a crowd if anyone’s face appears especially prominent in the photo? (I ask this since I know people who have had issues with stalking by estranged family, exes, etc… I know iNat is probably low risk compared to social media though)
Dealing with observations of humans is a problem. (Yes, you sometimes tell if the person wants to be photo’d – a happy smile vs. putting their hands in front of the camera, for example, but many observations are ambiguous.) I wish we had a simple solution that wouldn’t get rid of harmless and mildly fun things like lawn flamingo diversity. (Once we had a long discussion of their generic classification; I’d misclassified them.)
For other joke observations or ID’s, I suggest just putting a correct ID on it and moving on. Most people who do this won’t stick around long. I did finally call out an observer who was putting ridiculously wrong ID’s on his observations, but mostly it’s more trouble than it’s worth to flag the observations or deal with them some other way.
I probably wouldn’t hide those photos unless there was some kind of personally identifying info posted along with it, or the person depicted in the photo requested it. Now that observations of humans are automatically location-obscured (thank goodness!) it doesn’t seem like a high risk.
