How do you inspire shy observers (getting suggested id, but not clicking "share")?

General
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@joemiller If you’re still reading this thread that has gone off topic, you’re probably still hoping to get ideas to inspire your students, rather than to scare them off.

First of all, do not actively recommend that they engage in the forum. As others have pointed out, they are more likely to feel judged and vulnerable here, than on the main iNaturalist site.

Share the process with them, as you have experienced it, by using observations that demonstrate the give-and-take nature of the process, including IDs that started out tentatively, and have been refined by other IDers. And observations that were IDed wrongly at first, but subsequently properly IDed with the help of others - with no judgement implied in the process.

Also, I suggest you don’t try to encourage them to be “more vulnerable,” but reframe that as being more curious, or more engaged, or a similarly positive outlook.

And finally, please let us know what you do try, and if you have any success at all in getting even one student to become an iNaturalist. I wish you luck!

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I will add: Try find observations where someone who was disagreed with left a comment when they changed or withdrew their ID; especially if the comment has to do with something they hadn’t known about before. You can use that to illustrate that being wrong sometimes is part of the learning process. Be sure to emphasize that there is no adverse consequence for this.

This is important because I believe that one factor in people’s hesitancy is that the structure of education often includes adverse consequences for being wrong. The kind of judgment that we have seen in this and similar threads is one example of that. But it is counterproductive to expect expert-level performance from beginners.

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Heck, I’ll throw myself on the grenade, @joemiller, and share one of my recent observations: what I thought was an American Barn Owl. Nope, juvenile Great Horned. The only penalty involved in walking back the ID was one less entry on my life list. But now, I know that juvenile Great Horned begging calls sound a whole lot like adult Barn Owl calls.

To further agree with both @danly and @jasonhernandez74, I like the idea of emphasizing the facts that everybody starts at the beginning of the learning curve somewhere, and it’s okay not to be an instant expert. Since these are university students, the hesitancy might be a little harder to break through; as @jasonhernandez74 pointed out, fear of academic failure is baked into the system, and by the time you hit post-secondary, it’s pretty well ingrained. I don’t believe that the task is impossible, though.

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Also, if people are scared of being wrong, there is always the option to go higher on the tree. I don’t generally mean Life, except if you really can’t tell what kingdom it’s in - but mostly people can tell ‘it’s a plant! and it has flowers!’ = flowering plant. (I’d give ‘8 legs = spider’ as an example, except that I’ve been caught out with harvestmen too many times… so maybe it’s not quite as simple as one would like.) But generally if you go high enough you can be pretty confident. If that’s what people need to be comfortable, fine.

PS Maybe avoid mosses vs liverworts… or slime moulds vs fungi. Okay, so perhaps people do need to just be encouraged to be willing to be wrong. :-)

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Yes! This is all I have been encouraging people to do from the start.

For example, if the CV tells me an observation is an Eastern White Pine, but all I can tell from my own judgement is that its a pine tree, iNaturalist guidelines say I should upload this as the genus Pinus, not as the suggested ID.

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In 2023, I identified an uncommon grass that had only a dozen observations. I looked at other observations in iNat, looked at the key and even on line resources. I wrote my reasons in the comment.
I was wrong. A year later I actually saw some in the field and realised my mistake - tried to correct it but the incorrect id already spread.
I adopted a rule for myself that if I haven’t seen it, I would not identify it, with only a few exceptions.

I don’t think anyone can get the balance right before using iNat for a length of time: some will be too cautious and others not enough.

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The trick is to get them to think at that level rather than assume they “have NO IDEA what it is” because they can’t put it to any species they know. I constantly see “Unknowns” that are easily taken to kingdom or even phylum or class.

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I saw someone once propose that in order to better facilitate users choosing an ID at the rank they are capable of identifying, the CV should default to placing the next highest rank above species (such as genus, subgenus, section, ect) in its top suggestion instead of the actual species. I like this idea a lot.

As is stands now, someone using the website has to 1. Click “suggest an identification”, 2. Click the top suggestion, THEN 3. Modify that suggestion to the lowest rank they are comfortable identifying (which for most amateur naturalists isn’t actually the species level rank the CV suggests, but the next above, at least for things like plants and insects).

In the current UI (for most users) “choose what the CV says” vs “leave it unknown” are the most obvious choices they have, since they may not understand taxonomic hierarchy at all. This creates a non-optimal situation where the behavior in iNat guidelines requires (“Add identifications at a taxonomic level that you are confident of”) is buried until additional non-intuitive clicks and a prior requirement of taxonomic understanding.

I think we should find a way to make the behavior required by the guidelines to be the most intuitive one available in the user interface, instead of the least intuitive.

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Yes, great points, thanks!

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There is an open request to show (on the website) the taxonomy levels, so we can easily pick the confident one. The new Next app displays this ?

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That’s a good point, and an interesting way to look at it.

On the few occasions when I have made a foray into identifying Unknowns (rather than heading straight to Plants) I have been mystified by how many observations with perfectly good photos are languishing there. I usually assume that they don’t yet know how iNat works, or were coerced into joining by a teacher who didn’t give enough guidelines, or were simply “shy observers.”

But how do you get them to think that way? Some IDers write kind and helpful comments pointing out that a plant identifier is more likely to find something that is at least IDed as a plant. But often I find such observations that are years old and still just “plant” and I imagine the observers (who are sometime still active) thinking, “yeah, right, that helped a lot…”

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that is the iNat guideline, but it is not true. Botanists start at their family. There is a whole swathe of obs waiting in limbo, no longer labelled Unknown, but unseen and ignored. (We need more identifiers down ALL the taxon levels!)

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This is not true. Many plant IDers are are relatively generalist within a particular region and start at whatever level they feel they can be most useful – this may be family or this may be some higher level.

Observations that end up in “limbo” end up there for lots of reasons; it is more likely that they will be seen if they have at least a broad ID fairly soon after they are uploaded, because many IDers do tend to look first at newish observations.

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I think you inspire people to ID by assuming their motives are positive, by explaining why you disagree, by teaching them whatever you know whenever you can and by showing your own mistakes and owning them, so others know that mistakes aren’t irreparable and we all make them.
For those who already ID I think accepting mistakes as education opportunities is crucial. I took many chances identifying and made many, many mistakes. Without taking those chances, and having many people on iNat who were willing to teach and help, I would not have learned as much as I have to this point.
As for not clicking “share” I have never clicked share so I have no idea what happens or why it might be a problem.

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Yes, things are a bit scary here! I’ll probably not engage the forum myself much more! I do detail the importance of citizen science/naturalist to the students I work with often. It’s such a great “field notebook”, and an important tool every day. My original post may have seemed like I was a novice, but after reading through this form I must say I feel confident that I have been engaging students well, and kindly, which may be the most important. Thanks

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The iNat site and apps generally allow various behaviors that potentially annoy experienced users such as identifiers and researchers and that go against the best practices and guidelines. You are allowed to post without sufficient data and you are allowed to post without any ID. You are allowed to post a CV identification without confirming it.

Clearly the designers determined it was better to allow people, especially newbies, to post partial or incomplete information with dubious quality level, presumably because the goal was engagement with the wider community, reducing the barrier to entry, etc.

However this created a tension where experienced users are constantly faced with trying to educate and influence newbies on how to actually use the site properly, according to guidelines, and in a way to best benefit research and high-quality identifications.

The site could have been designed with high quality research data “quality gates” - and in that case, you wouldn’t be allowed to post observations without key data like location, or without a basic high-level ID. A more blunt way of putting this is that the site makes it very easy for newbies to annoy experienced users.

I wonder if the site and app designers are actually helping newbies or hurting them by making it possible to enter IDs that, without further work, are destined for a kind of junk heap (Unknown, or Casual due to lack of verifiability, etc.). What if the site helped users through the process more and allowed them go through a checklist to help them get to a reasonable high-level ID, for example, through a series of questions or forms to fill out. Then new users would not constantly experience this negative reinforcement of either having obs that no one sees because they lack crucial data, or having to be told by identifiers that they’re “doing it wrong” all the time?

Also, related point, if the purpose of the site is observation of wild organisms, it could also be helpful to have more up-front gatekeeping that helps discourage the observation of garden plants and landscape plants. The common experience with student plant observations is students go out and photograph the plants they see in the university campus, which inevitably are planted landscaping specimens. One my least favorite things to do as an identifier is deal with this. I know I’m supposed to mark them captive/cultivated and put in a polite note, but for newbies, this is another case of being told “you’re doing it wrong” and it does take energy to create a sufficiently polite note that properly accounts for the fragility of the young newbie uncertain about posting something at all, let along something slightly upsetting or annoying to others.

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How do you inspire shy observers?

I cannot tell who is shy or not. Here is how I approach this.

  • If I know the track record of an observer, I will adjust my tone; i.e. be serious or crack a joke they can relate to or include more/less verbiage.

  • If someone is new to the platform, I will automatically assume they are excited, nervous, curious, and possibly shy. So I will be in my best behavior; i.e. I will try to help them as much as possible and as detailed as possible. For a new member, the right start is critically important. They need to feel welcomed, comfortable, encouraged, and HELPED.

  • For all others, I will assume they could be 8 years old or 80 years old. If they posed a question, I will try to answer. If they tagged a Life/Unknown, I will try to narrow it to a Kingdom. If they are merely asking for an ID, I will try to get to the nearest level I am comfortable with, and/or possibly tag someone to come join.

I may or may not accomplish the above, but it sums up what I strive for.

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