I work with conservation related university interns and suggest learning about and using iNaturalist to nearly every person I encounter! Over the years have discovered an issue: there are lots of bashful iNaturalist or Seek app users who consistently load photos, gather the suggested ID, then fail to click “share” for various reasons (mainly fear of being wrong, embarrassed, etc.). I too share an 'imposter syndrome" at times and understand their hesitance, so I am hoping to learn to connect with these shy observers and inspire them to be more vulnerable.
This year I have started giving a short improvised speech on day one of programs as a way to illustrate the value of incidental nature observations, even wildly inaccurate observations, and how they could inform research and conservation for many years to come. I am not really sure how effective my persuasion has been. I am curious if others have encountered this, and what strategies you might use with students of all ages to get them to commit to vaguely informed identifications in the name of science!
I’m not sure I’m getting what you’re saying. Do you mean there are people who use an app on their phone affiliated to iNat to ID a photo, but then don’t upload the photo to iNat as an observation? Or do you mean there are people who upload photos on iNat, but don’t add an ID, or only a very vague ID?
I’ve encountered this a lot too, and I even mention it in my profile. It’s fine if people don’t want to share and are perfectly satisfied getting some kind of answer without sharing. But if they’re afraid of being embarrassed, I remind them that no one is an expert in everything and there’s no shame at all in being imprecise (e.g. “birds” or “plants”).
My PhD advisor’s voice also echos in my mind. He liked to say (about science), “There’s worse things than being wrong—you could be irrelevant.” As a recovering perfectionist, I of course prefer to be correct (if imprecise), but I’d rather get a few IDs wrong than never try at all.
I’m curious what impression these observers have of who will be seeing their observations? This isn’t something I’ve heard of or experienced, but it sounds like a hesitation I experience about sharing on other social media platforms. But even on other platforms there can be benefit to sharing things I’m being too perfectionist about, and on iNat there’s much less at stake. Your family and acquaintances aren’t seeing your observations, they don’t reveal your private opinions about anything… I wonder if it’s because of communication about observations being identified by experts? Like the observers don’t want to waste the experts’ time?
In my mind there’s not much distinction between “a plant ID expert” and “just some guy who’s really nerdy about plants and likes identifying them” but I’m not sure what the best way to communicate that is. Like sure, said guy might get a bit frustrated about the garden plant observations he has to filter through but ultimately they’re not that much of an inconvenience. And someone who’s hesitating about their observation quality is probably putting in more effort than the average student observer.
I used to be one of these people! I was introduced to iNaturalist by a friend of mine as a way to identify plants and such, and I used to make observations to see the CV suggestions, but then I would delete the observation instead of uploading it. When my friend caught wind of what I was doing, he urged me to start uploading observations, and I’m so glad he did. I’ve now been using it for years and it’s a major part of my life.
Some reasons I was so hesitant:
I was scared to be wrong about identifications. Even though I didn’t know anybody who uses iNaturalist (besides the friend who introduced me), I was scared I would somehow create a reputation for myself as an idiot. I’m still hesitant to use eBird for this reason, since in my mind you have to be an absolute expert to use it and I’m not fully confident about bird identification.
I was scared to ‘do iNaturalist wrong’ or make people upset. This was made worse for me because I was making my observations in areas with no cell service, so I would plan to add IDs when I got back home and could see the CV suggestions to help identify things. Instead, the app would automatically upload my observations as soon as I got some cell signal, and I would return home to many (very polite) messages about adding identifications before uploading. Polite as they were, they amplified my fears about doing things wrong and making people mad. I’ve also met others afraid of making people mad in other ways, like making too many observations of the same species (I assured them it was okay).
I have very little online presence and no social media, and I was scared to put my name out on the internet. I’m no longer nervous about that, but to this day I occasionally get nervous about the location data- I had abusive parents and they’ve been trying to track me down for years (and they’ve occasionally succeeded, but I move around a lot), and I pray they never discover iNaturalist. Of course, users don’t have to attach their names to their account, and can always obscure locations.
I realize that Forum users are a minority of iNaturalist users, but the impression created here is exactly the opposite. There have been comments on the Forum to the effect that inaccurate data is worse than no data at all. Spending too much time here tends to foster that Fear of Being Wrong.
I agree this is one of the biggest obstacles to getting people into iNaturalist. Different people have different motivations and concerns, so there’s no magic argument that will convince everybody to hit “share.” For some people, though, it works to show them how they’re making a personal record of their finds. I ask them “How many times have you looked something up and later couldn’t remember what you learned? If you submit this observation, it’s there for you to find any time later.” And other people are making their own records. This makes the public aspect a little less intimidating (and really, chances are most observations won’t get much attention from other users).
It is a reasonable assumption that whatever content one loads to a public site could be found by friends, family, potential employers or clients and colleagues.
I think the caution is warranted.
A less than perfect or even bad photo would have no negative effect on a students future prospects. I would encourage adding a description and identification to the level they are sure of.
I was able to get around that issue by switching off a setting in the app which automatically uploaded observations. I personally think it should be the default to allow users to upload their observations when they choose instead of it happening automatically (and maybe it is now, that was several years ago).
Keep in mind that the ID they upload on iNaturalist should be based on their judgement of the what the specimen is, not based on the judgement of the CV. Mass uploading observations that merely say “plant” or “insect” is preferable to uploading based on the CV. Because adding an ID this way misleadingly implies that you’ve taken time to determine the identity, when you actually haven’t.
People’s hesitation to upload IDs that are wildly incorrect, or based solely on the CV, is a correct one. What’s better than being “wildly incorrect” is not putting an ID at all. IDs that are essentially randomly guessed, or worse based entirely on the CV, are indeed detrimental to the project IMO.
In my opinion, they’re only detrimental if identifiers blindly agree with them. In general, it seems to me that starting off with a ‘closer to correct’ ID tends to work better, however it’s achieved - people then correct it if necessary, and hopefully the observer is willing to change or withdraw their ID. I would say that too much blind agreeing on the observer’s part tends to happen, but I think that’s true whether they start with ‘plants’ or a species-level ID.
The CV is far from flawless but can help put observations in front of the right identifiers - who may never even look at high-level IDs.
A powerful feature of iNaturalist is the ability to attach identifications at any taxonomic rank, but it is also one that takes some learning. I get why @Masebrock is encouraging kingdom level identification, while @DianaStuder would rather observers be more specific. Still, for the people @joemiller mentions who are worried about “being wrong,” it is better to share with a vague rank than to not share at all.
I think maybe keeping newbies off the forum where they read so much controversy about who’s right and who’s wrong might help.
Being encouraged to engage with nature and share that photo without being judged on everything might go farther than smushing that aspect.
I joined the forum much later than when I started observing and posting on iNat. I quickly found out I was offending others by photographing my hands and fingers with the subject, as well as some other offending sins… and I promised myself to keep on offending those folks!
This was designed for other purpose than providing resource information for “science”.
I’m with Diana - my hands are always holding some plant sill in the wind. If someone told you you shouldn’t have your hands in a photo, then they just want to see “pretty” photos and can go look at Facebook or wherever. And let’s face it: everybody uses iNat in different ways. A few of those ways are wrong (spam, bullying people), but most of the time, people are trying their best.
A wrong ID added in a random/misleading way merely “jumps the line” for the observation in question. It doesn’t make identifiers job any easier. In fact, it makes it harder. Because now identifiers have to weigh judgement of a new ID against the judgement of the person who added it, with the incorrect assumption that we are contradicting a reasonable human-made determination.
