How to judge people who treat your ID mistakes with mock and irony?

I agree. If there are only one person, I just block him, that’s easy. But sometimes bullies have followers. Or bullies can incite or pursuade people to think so using his Influence. It is disgusting because it might spread a bad impression of mine. It will affect my activity in certain group.

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I don’t condone this person’s behavior at all. But just to look at a possible other side of the issue. If you are not sure if something is A or B, the appropriate thing to not make any ID except at a level where you are sure. If you’re sure it’s a beetle, but aren’t sure otherwise, don’t identify it as a specific species even if inat gives it as a top choice. Just identify it as a beetle. Especially don’t provide IDs on other people’s observations if you aren’t reasonably sure with personal knowledge on how to make an ID. And most especially don’t confirm someone else’s ID, if you are not sure.

I’ve had similar experiences a few times but it’s always been with very young teenage iNatters who are really quite expert… so it amuses me and I let it slide. Remember what it was like to be in that middle school - high school environment. In their case I think it was just their habitual manner of interacting with each other… and yes, as someone else mentioned, they had an entourage :grin:

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We would feel lonely and sad and maybe embarrassed and frustrated if this occurred. We would probably avoid commenting back to the person if the person did this a few times. But if it was persistent, we might comment to them that we do not appreciate comments other than about the observation and what helps identify it. We would ask them to not make comments about us or our skill or how they want us to act. We would say that we will respect their right to observe and identify on iNat and ask that our need for respect to do this also be met. Any violation of iNat guidelines by them and further actions that are about us personally or our habits, we would flag the comments and report the person to iNat.

Thank you for bringing this up so that we can support you. We are not on social media and so don’t have experience with this type of behavior. We follow a paradigm called Nonviolent Communication (a book originally written by Marshal Rosenberg) that explains all people as having the same needs but with different strategies to meet them. This explanation helps us to not personalize other people’s behavior, since we are not causing their behavior. Their behavior is about them. We try to value everyone’s needs equally. It is not easy. None of this is easy. But nonviolent communication helps us find ways to connect with other people in ways that are less threatening to us.

We try not to judge people at all. It is not easy to do. We do judge, out of habit. Then we translate the judgments into our feelings and needs. That gets us to a clearer and more compassionate position.

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This comes across as a passive aggressive attack on manassas - who is a competent and careful identifier. Not into throwing out random wrong species IDs.

Ad hominem attacks in comments are not appropriate on iNat. Go back home and learn more The comments should stick to discussing the ID for the observation.
It is … because
It isn’t … because the other thing

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Maybe I’m incorrectly extrapolating, but I and many (most?) iNatters form impressions of people based on interactions with them.

Hypothetically, If I regularly interact with user A and user B starts badmouthing and insulting A, it wouldn’t change how I feel about A, but I would certainly think that B is a total jerk.

Looking at your comments in observations (warning: slow link), you engage with tricky observations, are tagged for help, and people are grateful for your help, so you’re clearly valued and respected on iNat.

Granted, that doesn’t change how hurtful it feels to see such comments. I think this is because by default, it’s assumed that most people are good-willed and honest, so when a harasser say something negative, the default thinking is that it must be true, especially if they’ve convinced a bunch of other people to agree! Not with trolls/bullies, and their entourage, they enjoy making people feel bad and will say things just to get a reaction.

Hopefully knowing that your positive interactions outnumber the negative ones by several hundred times helps take the sting of such comments away?

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