This evening I stumbled upon a class project which has uploaded over 3,000 observations, almost none of which have been identified using the CV but do have identifications- most of which are wrong. The vast majority have been identified to just four species. For example, so far 525 observations have been identified as indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans); fewer than 1 in 10 seem to be correctly identified, based on those I’ve gone through thus far. I don’t know why so few of the students have used the CV- maybe it was a misunderstanding of the app vs too much trust in a professor’s ID (e.g. any grass must be indiangrass because the professor said it’s here). I haven’t seen a class behave this way before.
One of my biggest concerns is that the creator of the project (presumably the professor or a TA) has just 2 observations- I thought the requirement for project creation is at least 50 observations? They also have no identifications, and they don’t seem to be interacting with their students’ observations. Has anyone proposed a way to flag school projects to temporarily block additions until the educator/project admin has a better understanding of how iNaturalist works and commits to curate the project better? I’m sure the professor had the best intentions, but I really don’t see what the students could be getting out of this, and I feel like my time and expertise as an identifier could be better spent.
I’m concerned that the scale of the misidentifications could negatively affect the CV in the area if they’re not fixed. Unfortunately they’re so numerous for one person to go through in a timely fashion (I have a day job!), and it seems that the students are still making observations as of just a few hours ago. Over 150 students have contributed to the project, so I don’t know how many more there might be before winter break.
Can I share a link to the project as a plea for help with correcting the identifications? I understand that links shouldn’t be shared to call out bad behavior, and that’s definitely not my intent here but I don’t want to do so unintentionally. I just want to get these observations corrected but >3000 will take me awhile (I have a day job!) and I’m not sure how to otherwise ask for help with something like this.
I’d already noticed some of their observations of Maclura pomifera. At least to these amateur eyes, all of the observations containing fruit are correct, and I’ll work some more on confirming those.
I can’t express an opinion about some of the other observations of this species, such as photos of just the tree trunks, taken after sunset with the help of a flash.
I get the feeling that tonight’s a class deadline!
I’ll admit most of what I’d looked at was the Sorghastrum thus far, though at least a few of the L onicera maackii observations seem to be morrowii/tatarica. I don’t know Oklahoma Solanum so I’m not sure if many of the observations showing just fruit are identifiable. Hopefully some of the other taxa have better identifications. Thanks for the help guys!
I’ve seen at least 7 observations of the same inidividual tree trunk labeled Maclura. Might be true and ID would be easy if we got one of them figured out. One, however, has the look of a Robinia.
The only way to correct observations is to do so one at a time, unless an observer is not abiding by the rules of the site. While large projects involving lots of incorrect and hard to interpret cell phone phones are hard for ID’ers to deal with, they seem to be a normal part of certain college classes now. At least they are all in one project and easy to find…
Well…at least a few of today’s army of observers have neglected to include their observations in the project, so far. I hope they don’t lose their class credit for that mistake.
It’s a collection project, not a traditional project, so the 50 verifiable observations restriction doesn’t apply. It automatically includes every observation by project members.
I’m not sure how preventing the observations from being in a project would have any benefit. In fact, it makes it harder to correct.
I want to commend @ciafre for a super diplomatic, empathetic analysis of this problem. With a little bit of backgrounding one can get a picture of a relatively new instructor in a high-volume course (possibly taken by a lot of non-majors), trying to spice up a lab session at the end of the semester by sending students to iNaturalist, having heard good things about it. I hope that the direct contact helps to prevent it happening again.
I know there are guidelines for teachers that exhort them to get familiar with the platform, etc. But I also wonder, might iNaturalist just have a generic “canned” simple assignment to suggest to instructors, with wording that would prevent the worst abuses? This could get wide circulation and recruit in more users without this degree of damage.
The project was created in late October, but there were more observations in the last two days than in all of November. I see that as a last minute reminder that the students had quotas to fill. Besides it being very late in the season, the weather turned unusually cold, this week, so good luck finding insects, for example, to add a little biodiversity to the observations.
And they’ve started posting some more observations this morning, so our job isn’t done.
I would love it if there was a way to flag projects like that. It would also be nice if people couldn’t make projects without a minimum amount of observations and ID’s, say, 100 observations and 500 ID’s.
I haven’t had much time to work on these today, and the students are still out making more observations, but we’re making some great headway. Thank you everyone for helping to identify and for the discussion here! I was incredibly frustrated yesterday when I made this post, but it’s been really encouraging to have so many folks helping out. This really feels like a community effort, and is one huge reason I love this platform so much. Again, thank you!!
I’ll resume my IDs this evening after work, and hopefully I’ll do even more tomorrow for IdentiFriday!
