I don’t know how many students you are talking about, but if it’s not a large number you could perhaps offer to check their observations, and offer your own IDs when possible, within the limits of your own knowledge. When I first (timidly) started observing, I got excited the first time my observations were IDed by other people. (I still do)
Also, share some of your own observations with them. Maybe an observation that you were only able to ID to Family or Genus, but other IDers got to Species, to show that you don’t have to know exactly what something is, to post it.
Or an observation in which another IDer wrote helpful (and polite) comments, to show that there are actual humans involved, and most of them are nice.
I have to say that I was accused of blindly choosing and I was mighty upset by it.
Because I did not BLINDLY choose the cv suggestion AND because unless I missed the ider sitting by my side there’s NO chance that person knows my choice process.
And I think at this point we’ve discouraged every newbie reading this thread.
iNatters really are, mostly kind and helpful. Even on this thread.
This - people are blindly / maliciously accepting CV suggestions - comes up, again and again, like a hamster on a treadmill here on the forum. I would guesstimate a substantial chunk of my IDs are ‘maliciously accepting’ ‘what the CV said’. CV is a tool, and lots of us use it as an efficient way to add the ID which we know.
I have never seen any use of CV that appeared to be malicious; hasty, blind or injudicious, yes, but intentionally malicious, no. Have any examples of such sabotage ever been given?
I think the thread is actually still somewhat on topic, because fear of being wrong / fear of criticism / fear of causing trouble for identifiers ARE some of the reasons that prevent shy observers from clicking “share” after they get a suggested ID.
Another way that I know that this thread is on topic is that multiple moderators have read it, and no one has swooped in to announce that they are closing the thread, starting a new discussion, etc. We haven’t even received any warnings!
I’ll repeat what i said before: I see no conceptual difference between the CV and the pictures in a field guide. If my evidence is, “I compared pictures and picked the one that my organism most resembles,” by what reasoning is this less valid when referring to the CV vs. a printed field guide? Must I have been able to write the field guide to validly use it?
Incidentally, this kind of thinking is exactly the source of the problem the OP expressed: people being hesitant to add their IDs. Or, as Thunderhead put it:
I’ll repeat what i said before: I see no conceptual difference between the CV and the pictures in a field guide. If my evidence is, “I compared pictures and picked the one that my organism most resembles,” by what reasoning is this less valid when referring to the CV vs. a printed field guide?
A field guide cannot make a decision for you. The CV can. If you’re using the CV to gather suggested species, examining the images and making a reasoned determination of which one is most likely, then you’re not using the CV as your sole source, but your using photographs and your judgement. In this case, the CV merely offered suggestions. No one is saying you can’t use the CV’s suggestions as a gateway to examining photos.
In contrast, simply clicking the top option without being able to confirm it yourself (as some people have advocated for in this thread) means the CV looks at the photographs for you and chooses the species for you. These are fundamentally different. The first use is in line with the purpose of iNat. The latter is highly detrimental.
The difference between a field guide and a cv is that with a field guide you are naturally forced to compare features as you look through the options, the cv gives you top recommendation and by including a button you can click to ad an id it makes it extremely easy to not look at other options.
A better comparison that I actually see on the platform would be a tour guide/park ranger(or even a sign in a park) tells you what something is vs the CV, often the tour guides get it wrong (wrong species/outdated name/ misremembering the spelling and etc) which is totally normal as we’re all human and people trust the tour guide and make an observation without comparing other options. I have seen many cases of this while identifying on inat since people often mention in notes or in comments after their id is corrected, and there are probably way more that are missid’d that I cannot attribute bc I don’t have that information.
Let me offer you a hypothetical question. Would you say that someone who intentionally IDs something as a very rare species (without knowing what it is), or as something that is far outside its known range (again without knowing what it is), in order to draw attention to the observation and get it more quickly identified is acting maliciously?
Did you ask the identifier if that was their motivation?
One of iNat’s ground rules,often repeated by @tiwane is - presume people have good intentions. The rare, or out of range, is much more likely to be - I am new, I’m learning, I’m interested. Offer a friendly, helpful comment - if you can’t do that, Mark as Reviewed and move on to a ‘better’ obs.
Look, it might be reasonable to call that malicious - but there’s no way to know that’s what they’re doing. If they know it’s rare, it seems at least as likely that they are just desperately hoping to find something rare and interesting! And if not, your suggested motivation can’t apply anyway.
Besides, if it’s a rare species, there seems a reasonable probability that either (a) no one will have the expertise to identify it, or (b) they’ll just kick it up to a higher level - both of which defeat your supposed purpose.
A sensible attitude to have - if hard to maintain when one gets frustrated (or is that just me?). I seem to remember a quote along the lines of ‘Never attribute to malice what can reasonably be attributed to incompetence’ - and it seems generally reasonable. :-)
As I said, I haven’t seen any maliciously misidentified observations. I enquired about actual examples of such, not hypotheticals, but cases where the malicious intent is clear.
Of course I have seen off-the-wall id´s, but I take them to be innocent errors due to inexperience or undue haste. I have done it myself - for example, clicking on bird’s nest fungus (Crucibulum) instead of cup and saucer limpets (Crucibulum) because I was hurried and not paying enough attention.
In this hypothetical, assume for the sake of argument that we know this is their intention, because they have announced this is what they are doing somewhere on the forum.
The purpose of this hypothetical is to help lead you all into understanding why I believe actual examples of malicious usage exist.
Why do I need to be convinced of malicious identifications when you cannot offer any examples?
How does your belief in malicious or even the blindness of agreeing with CV encourage new users to post anything?
Yes, there are a small number of users who have admitted that they have intentionally misidentified their observations as rare species in order to get specialists to ID them faster. The community here has disagreed that it is acceptable to do that.
Anyway, 1) future posts here should be relevant to the original topic. Off topic posts will be flagged. And 2) I’m going to set this to slow mode to encourage people to be thoughtful with their responses.
IDs that are assigned to observations without regard to whether they are true or not…that is…without being them being independently confirmed by the user (for example, “confirmed” not by the user, but by the CV instead, with the user having no input into whether the CVs decision was the correct one) are anti-constructive.
To do otherwise…such as to “load photos, gather the suggested ID, and click share” as the OP encourages…is not only against this policy, but significantly undermines the value of the project.
Overall, the discussion highlights the need for a supportive community that encourages users to share their observations, even if they’re not sure of the identification, and to view mistakes as an opportunity for learning and growth.