Thanks alot!
I bookmarked the first article, as it was quite interesting also for further reference. It gives a good impression on the intentions.
“Verifiable observations are labeled Needs ID until they either attain Research Grade status or are voted to Casual via the Data Quality Assessment.” I believe the term “verifiable observation” is indeed more a wish than a true reality in many cases. And I guess much of the data quality talk is “just” about the fact that literally any photo is per default accepted as verifiable evidence unless the “Data quality assessment” indicates differently. This assessment process is obviously way too weak to flag and sort out failing evidence or other system abuse, like mentioned duplicate observations, efficiently.
Unfortunately, but understandably, the frequent use of the term “the community agrees” in practice seems to reduce itself too often towards a common understanding not to spend time with data waste and conflict management. This then gives time to other users to confirm ID’s that shouldn’t be confirmed.
What stays in the end is that every responsible user can effectively only leverage the data quality of his own ID’s and do the same for selected other users with similar intentions. Actually a sort of positive sub-culture. Every try beyond for sure is celebrated by the community but carries the risk to be compared finally to the doings of Sisyphus or Don Quixote. A community guideline to responsible users not to sacrifice themselves on the altar of preservation would be good!
Regarding the management of own ID data quality, i now found the following forum entry quite helpfull:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-monitor-and-maintain-the-quality-of-your-inat-contributions/61772
P.S.
Man, the web platform is indeed a very powefull tool for data management, way more than the app.
But i could only run some recommendations from graysquirrel by manually changing the URL. No idea where it is hidden in the menue structure.
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