Oh no. My French might be good enough for that. My Spanish really is not. 
Scratch all of that anyway. The ficha (2009) mentioned the key being available in a particular repository here in MX (we have numerous ones) and when I went to find it, it was not there. So then I went on a deep dive, and it appears this Solanum was re-keyed in 2017.
A revision of the Solanum eleagnifolium clade
This one is in English.
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To be honest, I wanted to foist the Solanum eleagnifolium observations of on somebody else, who might know them. However, now Iâve looked them up, including reading the link @ItsMeLucy provided, Flora of the Great Plains, and the Jepson Interchange (California plants). I find that all keys start with the distinctively branched hairs and are of little use for IDing iNaturalist photos. However, . . . .
Solanum eleagnifolium is a relative tall Solanum (to about 1 meter) with narrow leaves that have +/- sinuous margins. The leaves are visible on the earlier photos from the class, but I think many students must have rushed to complete the exercise late in the term when the leaves are curled up or sometimes absent. Berries are yellow (or orange), turning dark brown with age but not splitting to release the seeds. This species produces much more fruit than some of its relatives, and the fruits tend to be in clusters, not solitary. Stems silvery, dying whitish. Flowers, rarely observed by this class, are a fairly dark purple and, of course, clustered. Stems are supposed to be prickly but the spines can be sparse or absent and in any case wouldnât be visible in most of the photos, which are taken from too far away.
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As a weed species (albeit native) Iâve often pulled by hand in my area, I can vouch for the spininess.
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You are right saying that there are some of such users. Anyway, here we are focusing on those users who have joined iNat not to add observations but just to create projects for the students, usually without caring for the results. Of course, preventing them to create such projects would not totally ensure that they will not organize activities with iNat but, at least, it could somehow discourage them.
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But a mechanism that would restrict functions for these users based merely on number of observations/IDs would also do so for users who have taken time to explore iNat but merely have not entered much content.
And it would not prevent users who have entered more content from starting such projects â there have been plenty of cases where active users organize bioblitzes without providing guidance for the new users they have recruited to participate.
I think using the number of contributions as a basis for determining eligibility to create projects is too blunt a tool to accomplish the desired purpose.
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Yes. Anyway, I think that the perfect solution could not exist and, in the case, we should try to find a more or less acceptable compromise.
Of course. Unfortunately I could cite some notable casesâŚ
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Some of my comments in this thread may have been less than kind, as I let off some steam about the absurd repetition of observations, but at least the ones that I reviewed for Maclura were correct. So I can say that, by one measure, I had a productive IdentiWednesday and IdentiThursday, last week.
Iâm left with a sense of sadness, that this instructor will likely never engage with iNaturalist again, after what must seem like an unpleasant experience stirring up this hornetâs nest. Of the hundreds of students who participated in this project (or were supposed to participate, but somehow never even started), I doubt there were many who thought it was worthwhile. Some of that may depend on what final thoughts, if any, the instructor shared with the class. Did they get an explanation for why the project suddenly vanished after all of that activity?
Iâd like to call attention again to the feature request @upupa-epops mentioned a few days ago, to âProvide more guidance when creating new projectsâ. That request appears to have been dormant for five years, until this thread prompted its return. It seems like a minimally intrusive first step we can take, while we continue to discuss other ways how we might improve the training process for new observers and new project admins
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Is that âsincere userâ still with us?
Can we retain the goodwill of that one?
That person just did a lot of IDâs, as of December 8. I wasnât on iNaturalist much Dec. 9, but I have sent a thank you.
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Terrible idea. People will be able to do so much damage by creating projects and adding observations to them/defining their criteria to include observations to make those observations casual.
And remember that this one was a collection project, not a traditional project. The truth is, students never added any observations to the project, as you donât add observations to a collection project. The students joined the project and their observations were automatically included.
If all observations in the project were made casual unless certain criteria were met, students would likely leave the project to avoid this penalty.
For collection projects to have this casual rule enabled is particularly damaging.
Iâm left to assume that you didnât read the thread, since I originally said that Iâd like there to be greater restrictions on making projects at all. My desire for a flagging option is due to seeing many projects that were set up by teachers and then never monitored. Like this example.
From my anecdotal experience, bad class projects are usually collection projects since itâs easier to get the students to join that. I know of a particularly annoying one in Connecticut that the professor just has their students upload blurry-too far away-bottom of the insect photos, and they are over 3000 observations. The professor hasnât logged in since 2023.
So if the teacher says: âhey kids, take pictures and upload them to iNat after you join the class projectâ, how exactly does that mean that the kids didnât add anything to the project?
Good? I fail to see the issue. Trying to appeal to the students willing to put int the least amount of effort doesnât seem like it helps at all. They largely arenât going to be users long term anyway.
Why? Weâre talking about people making projects that they actively encourage people to upload poorly shot pictures to, clogging the IDâs. I donât see the damage of getting those observations out of the way until the project heads start engaging.
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Because people can do it to other projects besides the kind you have in mind.
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And those projects that have active managers would get unflagged.
But I donât understand why you think not letting the teachers create projects is any kind of solution. The lack of a project makes it harder to correct. Observations will still be uploaded with incorrect IDs that will go unaddressed. In fact, the lack of a project would likely make it harder for teachers to address the misidentifications.
You say the projects encourage misidentifications. No they do not. Better organisation of class observations actually makes it easier for teachers and students to correct the IDs. And they even make it easier for third-parties.
What, are you thinking that teachers wonât make their students use iNat if there are more stringent requirements to create a project? But why do you think misidentifications are any reason why someone should be discouraged from using iNat? The misidentifications can be corrected. They do not make the observations useless.
And when I said students would leave the project so their observations wonât be casual, you said that was good. What? That would undermine your whole âmaking student observations casualâ thing.
I find it unfortunate how this situation turned out. The teacher deleted the project and their account. The observations are still there, but no longer organised. Itâs harder for us to correct them now. Can we please stop being hostile to users for misidentifications? And I also ask that we donât judge the teacher for their studentsâ misidentifications. The teacher likely had many things to do. The teacher canât go around correcting student misidentifications all the time, can they?
By the way, not only do I oppose making it harder for new users to create projects, I actually think we should remove the current restriction on traditional projects, which is that you have to have 50 verifiable observations.
P.S. It appears that you actually accused the projects of encouraging poorly-taken photos, not misidentifications. Well, this accusation makes no sense either. If someoneâs bad at photography, Iâm not sure how a project makes it any worse. Doesnât the project make it easier to find those users and tell them to take better photos? And not all poorly-taken photos are useless. Sometimes they could still be identified to genus but not species. And some can even be identified to species or subspecies.
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Well firstly I donât think I said they shouldnât be allowed to make projects at all, but I would like it if people making projects with the intention of having uninterested students upload observations to were people that actually use the site, so yes, Iâd like it if before a user can make a project, that they demonstrate that they do actually use the site, and will curate their project.
Maybe. But if weâre speculating, may I suggest an alternate speculation? Like the teacher deleted the project because they no longer intend to have their students upload photos? If that is the case, then sure the current observations will be harder to find (and I wish they hadnât deleted their project), but maybe we wonât have more later.
This implies that the student cares about their observation. Many do not. We are going to make most of these casual anyway, and because many students donât log in after getting the required amount of observations they wonât know.
Also something that Iâm pretty sure I didnât say (straw man much?). I said that these projects encourage an influx of unidentifiable observations that clog the works for other peopleâs observations. And no, better organization does not allow for teachers and students to correct their IDâs, since they typically donât, some donât even log in.
To give an analogy, a teacher tells the students to play on a playground without reading the rules, doesnât supervise the kids, and they leave a mess for everyone else to clean up, but I shouldnât be annoyed that teacher keeps bringing kids, and when I want them to read the rules, they donât have time? Remember, I know of teachers that havenât logged in in more then a year, but they still encourage students to âplay on the playgroundâ.
You are confusing regular users who are here by choice, and students that were told to take X amount of photos for the project. I have to assume that you havenât dealt with many student accounts, most of them never login again after they upload the handful of photos they were supposed to get.
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But not being able to create projects will not necessarily prevent teachers from requiring students to use iNat for an assignment. To use your analogy: instead of bringing the kids to a playground and not supervising them, the teacher will be bringing the kids to a park or an empty lot and telling them to play without supervising them, and they might cause even more problems than at a playground. The problem is the lack of supervision, not the use of the playground (= project).
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True, and teachers do that anyway already, we canât do much about those. However, in that analogy the playground is not the project, itâs iNat. The project would be the school uniforms. So tons of kids making a mess, we donât know where they come from, but that group making a mess are all wearing a uniform (the project).
We canât see all the teachers that have students upload observations, but when we can, why not make attempts to control at least that part of the choas? If we can see that a specific project is problematic, why not have a way that all the observations are automatically set to Casual? Sure it doesnât fix all student issues, but it fixes some.
Take one step further back, and make the teacher and the students, when first on iNat, work thru a tutorial.
Before they are able to upload obs.
If that is too much of a nuisance for them ⌠iNat is not a good fit for their purpose.
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But itâs the users, not the project. The project shouldnât have all its observations set to casual, especially since itâs a collection project. If anything it should be the users who get that penalty.
Perhaps now you will realise just how mean it would be. Imposing such a penalty on a user isnât right. And imposing the penalty on the user just for joining a member-only collection project is even worse. What if theyâre the one who makes good observations? What if itâs only a few bad apples who make the bad observations?
Also, what if someone made all observations in the Alive Animals project casual? Consider the disruption and damage. Who will set projects to auto-casual? Curators? Staff? Will collection projects only be eligible if they have a member-only rule? Will this even be a thing for traditional projects, given that you can only create them if you have 50 verifiable observations?
This is a change I want iNaturalist to never make. Right in there with forcing people to log in to see observations like eBird.
And if someone takes a low-quality picture of a plant, so itâs only identifiable as Magnoliopsida, then the answer is to ID as Magnoliopsida, disagreeing with finer IDs (this doesnât mean theyâre wrong, just that they canât be confirmed), and tick âNo, itâs as good as it can beâ. It will be casual, as Magnoliopsida is a class (above subfamily). Not to subject the user to a penalty that assumes their observations are not worthy of research grade or needs ID.
And when a user is subjected to the auto-casual penalty, how will their observations get out of casual? Are we seriously adding a DQA point âObserver is qualifiedâ or something?