Yes, I support separating Needs ID from Captive/Cultivated (feature request in the link above and in my initial post are the same), and am in favor of having a ‘RG-like’ status for Casual/Cultivated records that get the appropriate amount of confirming IDs. As you say, those parameters are unrelated—an IDer’s ability to ID an image has nothing to do with whether the organism in that image is Captive/Cultivated or not.
The main problem with the current setup is that it’s a classic case of perverse incentives, which is surprising because the reason iNat is so good is that it gets people with different incentives (one wants this thing IDed; one wants research data; one wants to share their nature photos; one wants high-quality public-domain images; one wants to connect with other herp-lovers) to be mutually beneficial to one another. As it is now, people are incentivized to
not mark their observations casual (takes longer to get an ID, if at all)
not ID things that they can ID (or only ID to genus) because they aren’t sure it’s ‘wild’ and don’t want it to reach RG
not mark other people’s observations as ‘Captive/Cultivated’ (doesn’t help me learn to ID, removes my ID (if I gave one) from the ID leaderboard, less likely to get seen by others, might well irritate the observer, etc.)
not make observations of of potentially interesting organisms that they aren’t sure are wild or not
not become a prolific IDer of garden plants (no way to search for those that are ‘Needs-ID equivalent’ or ‘RG-equivalent’), which leads to there not being a lot of IDers of garden plants, which leads to more IDers seeing those plants who don’t want to see them.
I appreciate that iNat wants its focus to be on ‘wild’ organisms, but I think it would (somewhat paradoxically) be better at that goal if it gave a few more resources to those who want to ID and get IDs on ‘Captive/Cultivated’ organisms.
I wonder if separating Needs ID from Captive/cultivated would, in the reverse of the situation you describe, actually incentivize more observers to upload observations of garden plants. Obviously, that wouldn’t be a good thing.
When I come across plants (or animals) that I suspect that are not wild I usually ask the recorders first if it was not wild and advice them to mark it as casual. Reason is that I have had people mark my records as casual when that was not the case. With plants especially I sometimes find specimens that are clearly naturalized escapes even though the species has not been recorded before as such in the area when I found it. Such records provide valuable data that would go unnoticed if the record was mark as casual. It is of course unfortunate that many people record many plants and animals that are clearly not wild and fail to mark them as casual. I wish that would not happen but it does.
greetings Bart
Good point, I think it would to some degree. The question then becomes, would such a change also incentivize more people to mark their own and other’s observations as captive/cultivated (and would there be more incentive to ID garden plants), in which case it would improve data quality and lead to IDers seeing fewer garden plant observations they’re not interested in.
A lot of the observations of cultivated plants that are uploaded as wild are made by users who are new to iNat and are not aware that marking their observation as “not wild” will make it casual and less likely to get an ID. A lot of these users probably just think “it’s a plant” and have never considered the difference between wild and cultivated or why it might matter to researchers.
A not-insignificant portion of these observations probably have little or no value for botanists and are at most of sociological or anthropological interest, because these observations are of plants that are destined to spend their entire lives under extremely artificial conditions, either as houseplants or in a greenhouse before being taken home and put in a planter where they will be discarded within a few weeks once they have finished blooming and are no longer attractive.
I am in favor of proposals to not put non-wild observations in the same pile as defective observations and to implement a “verified” status for non-wild observations. But it will not prevent people from uploading potted plants and failing to mark them as non-wild.
Of course, do it. Do not postopone marking such observations.
Maybe I am too insensitive but I would say: “who cares?”. I think that people should open their eyes, read what is written in the app and reason. Has that box been put there (I mean that to mark the observations of non-wild organisms) just by chance or because it must be used?
I understand that not everyone has the possibility to go in a natural area where one can see almost only wild organisms, but, on the other hand, also urban areas always offer wild organisms to be observed all the year round.
To answer the question in the title, I can say that from Italy more or less from 30 to 150 observations of non-wild organisms are uploaded. Few are marked by observers, a certain percentage is automatically marked because the threshold for some species has been reached for certain places but the majority are to be marked by someone else who is not the observer. As far as I am concerned, I mark those obs in which there are no doubts but also where there is no evidence the organism is wild but, instead, given the species and position and its accuracy, there is a good likelihood it is not wild.
What if? Instead of a default setting, we deliberately had to choose?
This is Wild
or
This is Not Wild.
We would still have issues, but for a given obs we would know that observer had made an active choice.
I leave a comment only when I notice that the user is a top observer of non-wild organisms and has the habit not to mark them. Sometimes it works and these users start using that feature, sometimes it doesn’t and you see these users going on doing the same as long as they are still active. With “casual” users and duress it is absolutely no use leaving a comment as they will quit using iNat soon.
You know, I’ve thought about the terrible observations like you’re describing, and I’ve often thought maybe there should be a sandbox period for new users. No idea how it would work, but there have been some truly useless observations at my nature center that I would love to just delete.
I have a comment that I usually use when I mark something captive cultivated. I just copy and paste. It does fast and it makes me feel that I’ve given the observer a chance to fix it if I was wrong to mark it cultivated.
In the iOS app at least, that option is near the bottom of the page, under all the date/time, geolocation and geoprivacy boxes (which usually get filled in automatically). Maybe the “Captive/Cultivated” box could be moved up so it’s a little more prominent?
I would only be in support of this if it worked like automarking of ‘captive/cultivated’ currently works (you only have to actively choose if, say, 50%+ of observations of the taxon you’re suggesting are currently marked ‘captive/cultivated’ in your area). It would be supremely irritating for those who mostly upload things that are rarely ’not wild’, like fungi and insects.
I noticed a very popular thread on this forum is “#IdentiFriday is the happiest day of the week”; maybe what’s needed is #CaptiviTuesday, for people to go through RG records to make sure they’re not ‘captive/cultivated! Though I’m not sure it would be an equally happy day…
This is related but this might be it’s own can of worms: at what point is there enough captive/cultivated observations of a species in a region that the CV automatically marks the species as captive/cultivated (e.g. it seems to do this for hostas)? I think I recall the threshold being at 80% of observations have been marked captive/cultivated in the jurisdiction, but at what spatial scale does that apply? Is the 80% threshold still real?
I ask because in my state (Pennsylvania), 2 soybean (Glycine max) observations are wild, while 91 are marked captive/cultivated- that’s 98% cultivated. Maybe the scale is too small, and neighboring states are throwing it off? If I use the Northeastern United States, there are 58 wild and 318 cultivated soybean observations- 85% cultivated. If I use the entire United States, it’s still at 81% cultivated.
Is this working as intended? It would be really nice if the CV could take over so I can turn my attention to other species at some point. I get that a human touch is more important for “native” plants common in gardens but not native to the regon and not spreading much (looking at you, Spigelia marilandica), but it would be really great if the CV could help out with the crops better.
For me, it is about accurately representing the range/distribution of plants in the wild. IDing cultivated plants without the “not wild” label distorts the range data.