That is good to know, thank you for sharing. Please let us know if you remember where you read that.
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Thanks.
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I’m not sure about the overall rate, given the links posted, but as an anecdotal example I just came across somebody marking a number of observations all over the world as one species, which are both clearly not it and as far as I can tell is not found in any of those places. So it may be more the “Wikipedia effect” where a small number of overconfident people have a disproportionate impact, especially when combined with auto-ID and people confirming without knowing themselves.
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So from reading this discussion, a rough consensus might be that we should feel confident about confirming common, easily identifiable species, such as dandelions or mallard ducks, but we should be careful of creating a feedback loop by confirming rarer or less easily identifiable species?
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I think that also depends on your personal experience, there are rare and uncommon things I am comfortable doing an identification on because it is an interest area of mine. But I would never do it on something like plants where my knowledge level is low to pitiful.
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For each obs, only confirm if you are confident - doesn’t matter whether is common or rare. You, must be sure.
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What does “confident” mean?
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The guidance on the site is that when you are confident you can exclude any other possibility.
I used the I know / I think rule. I know it is a bird, I know it is a sparrow, I think it is a white-crowned sparrow. My ID should be sparrow.
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Don’t get me started on dandelions!
I thought I knew what a dandelion is. Probably one of the first plants I knew, back to early childhood. Then I joined iNaturalist and learned that there are Common Dandelions and Red-seeded Dandelions here.
Aaarrghh!
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I was thinking the same thing! Dandelions are varied enough that they are a lot harder than you might think! Lol
Be careful of confirming less easily identifiable species, yes. Whether it is rare is irrelevant. It’s just more likely that you know one of the common species well.
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As mentioned already dandelion taxonomy is messy (especially in North America). On the one hand identifying them to species won’t make things any worse since that’s what’s generally being done, but not going further than genus would probably be most accurate.
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I study fungi primarily and they can be challenging even when I have them “in hand.” Often the photos are of one view when several are usually needed. Another drawback is that taste and smell are very important for many genera and species, hmm, can’t do that from a photo. Staining reactions from handling and the use of reagents help a lot and are often not included (I have yet to see a reagent stain).
That said I’m conservative on whether I ID to species. Genera are easier from photos.
When I see an obviously wrong ID I comment that genus or species x be considered. Trying to get observer to observe more salient features that help in ID.
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@mnharris
If uncertain you can put an ID with a ? or maybe
and then keep following the notifications
so you can withdraw yours, if / when you are no longer certain that it is that.
Those ongoing discussions are how we learn what we don’t know, yet.
Withdrawn IDs also show what ‘this can be confused with’
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I just withdrew an id I made on my own observation because I learned of a name change for the species.
If it is a formal change of the taxon name, iNat graciously does that automagically.
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Nice but we have misapplied European names from early American mycologists that are still valid there. When we’ve been using the European name and a new American name is coined (usually due to dna work) both names are valid. The European name is not yet circumscribed in iNat to its actual range and either can be used here.
The species should be split and the IDs reassigned to genus. https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#taxonsplit Can you flag it for curation?
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Just went to flag Fomitopsis pinicola and it had been flagged with the same citation I am using. I added a link to the source.
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