I thought the leaderboards do a simple count of identifications without regard to leading, improving, or agreeing.
If the leaderboards were changed to only count leading and improving then I would suspect the behavior that lead to this topic would cease.
Generating thousands of notifications. I would flag that for bad behaviour.
And totally missing the point of iNat. This isn’t a computer game for kids.
For the dopamine hits - it is more fun to move the IDs along
The only subspecies on the subcontinent
and then, when the ssp is promoted to sp - we already have the critical mass of over 60 obs for the CV update!
And that leaderboard makes sense, taxon specialists flying high. Diana trailing along behind.
indeed. had been away from inat for a bit, returned to peruse thousands of notifications. Quick scrolling through pages of 50 consecutive notifications showing the same avatar made things a bit easier, though had to pay attention and not miss one or two ‘legit’ notifications on some of those pages.
If it happens again, you can mute The One.
They’re high enough now atop their desired leaderboards, doubtful to happen again or at least, soon. Good to know about the Mute option, thanx!!!
Is there a Mute function in the Forum?
Correct me if I’m wrong, I think identifying old posts can also bring it back up when people look at observations with recent activity, so even if they aren’t adding anything by adding the same ID, it could make it more likely other people see it?
If you click Tracking at the bottom of this post
there is also a Mute option.
(or ‘Normal’ to catch @mentions of you)
There seems to be this feeling that people are trying to agree their way to the top of the leaderboards. Well, here’s global Bombus, if you want to try and agree to the top, good luck with that https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?preferred_place_id=113055&subview=map&taxon_id=52775&view=identifiers
I realize that all taxa are different and some may not have as strong an identifier group, but are you really thinking that “identification farming” for “dopamine” is a problem with this set?
And would potentially lose a sizable percentage of the specialists. People forget that many taxon specialists often have very high agree rates simply because they focus on very small groups (mine is over 75%), which means they wait for things to get passed down and get a stamp of approval.
I do not really understand these repeating complaints about someone “generating notifications”. This is the point of this website - you upload observations, others will give you IDs. If you don’t like that, then probably iNaturalist is not the correct website for you? There are other tools where you can keep your lists of records without interactions with other people.
Moreover, I do not understand this complaint technically - you get a separate email for each ID someone makes? In such a case I would suggest changing your notification options?
I am among the top 200 observers here by the number of observations. If I do not feel like getting to many notifications, I feel it unlikely that it is actually a problem for most people.
If a prolific and knowledgeable identifier does not give an ID, it might also mean “I am not sure about this.” So, please, drop the 10th identification, rather than not reacting because it is RG already.
I never like seeing this given as a reason because my experience goes the other way: I’m trying to correct a mis-ID and there are too many wrong IDs to get it out of RG. I agree your first point can be a valid reason, but personally I’d rather have observations drop out of RG if someone suggests an alternate ID, right or wrong, than have an observation stuck in RG when it shouldn’t be there.
Ouch. Paying attention to notifications of disagreeing IDs is very helpful if you ever make mistakes (which everyone does at least once in a while) - if you’re notified of a disagreeing ID, it’s a chance to review and possibly fix it, rather than requiring many extra IDs to counter your incorrect ID.
Do you check the level at which it goes to RG? You may be making it RG at a relatively high level when it could actually get to species with just one more ID… (I haven’t seen examples such as you’re talking about, so maybe not - but it’s worth watching.)
My area has just a couple doing the IDing. They are good, no doubt. I know some of the species in my area you need a spore print to get a good ID and I don’t usually take them home. Another hard one to get an ID on is lichens. But I do know there are those trying.
You can turn off agreeing ID notifications in the notification settings.
This discussion seems to have run its course. Most of the new comments are redundant (e.g., comment #54 says the exact same thing as #5).
Agreed!! Lichens, non-lichenized fungi, bryophytes, etc- vast majority of lineages of (even macroscopic) life are not showy or conspicuous enough to get most humans to look at them haha. Basically once you get outside vertebrates or some plant species, you stop having the problem of lots of IDs!
Edit to specify macroscopic life!
Mosses are hard especially if there is only one picture or if it’s from far away or you can’t see identifying features. Birds are mostly easy.
It seems many comments are in disagreement with OP, so I just want to come to their defense a little bit. There are so many variables at play but I can say in my area, given my level of expertise, I am certain a few of the top identifiers are identifying outside of their expertise, and in a volume and manner that makes me question their motives. I have no idea why people behave the way they do, and sometimes it is extremely confusing from my position/perspective. But I think it is completely reasonable to suspect that a non-negligible number of identifiers are doing it for something other than what I would consider the “right reasons” of trying to help get something the correct and confirmed ID or trying to help someone learn about nature.
That said, I have my own perspective based on how I interact with nature. I rarely upload “observations” of living vertebrates, but when I do, they get many times more IDs than say, some bryophyte that is a much more notable find (usually zero IDs). So for my particular situation, it is frustrating to see some common bird receive 6 IDs while some liverwort I found in a remote area and worked really hard to examine gets zero. Which makes me more likely to view the high-volume IDers with some sort of negative feeling. I don’t doubt the majority have good intentions and a sincere love for nature and their group of interest, and I don’t take out my frustration on any one individual. But I guess I’ll just leave it at- sometimes people’s behavior frustrates me, and in that way I empathize with OP. It’s also worth pointing out that people can do something without any bad intentions, but still be misguided (which gets subjective), e.g. identifying outside of their expertise.
This is a bit controversial and another discussion, but based on my own research work and education, I am deeply skeptical of the species concept in many cases, so I think people on this site tend to focus too much on getting a species ID relative to learning and caring about nature and conservation. So my frustration with the behavior of people focusing on species IDs also comes from this larger frustration. I want to note that because I think it is relevant to this discussion and my perspective, but I understand it is a different, larger topic.
Edit- I’ll just note I am not a frequent contributor to the forum, and I may not respond to things because I don’t tend to go on here much.
I think you’re misrepresenting OP’s statements and the situation overall.
In my view, to get to the “point” of this website, I look at their mission statement at a broader conceptual level.
“Mission: iNaturalist’s mission is to connect people to nature and advance biodiversity science and conservation.”
“iNaturalist is a lot of things, but at it’s core iNaturalist is an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature.”
“It’s also a crowdsourced species identification system and an organism occurrence recording tool . You can use it to record your own observations, get help with identifications, collaborate with others to collect this kind of information for a common purpose, or access the observational data collected by iNaturalist users.”
I think it is very reasonable for some people’s behavior in their IDing to be not in line with those stated missions, even if it is certainly within the normal functioning of the site. There’s a broader discussion about people’s intentions and all that, and there’s a lot of gray area so I’m not saying there should be any rules or punishments coming of this. But generally I think it is reasonable for someone to be frustrated that their observation gets ten IDs (especially in the bigger picture of things, for example that many other observations get zero IDs, that people are not answering a question you want to learn about and instead are just posting IDs, etc).
If I do not feel like getting to many notifications, I feel it unlikely that it is actually a problem for most people
I think this is unreasonable. People have different experiences on here, regardless of how many IDs or observations they post. Someone sincerely expressing their frustrations can be valid, even if it is not a frustration you experience.
Thanks for the thoughtful discussion. I apologize that I don’t go on the forum much so I may not respond down the line.
I do not think that it’s reasonable for anyone to be frustrated just because they get a handful of notifications on the computer.
The identifiers are the one single most valuable part of iNaturalist. That much is completely clear from the current situation, where the identifications are sorely lagging behind the observations. I know this is not something many people like to hear here, but to put it bluntly: at the moment, we need identifiers much more than we need observers. That’s why I consider people needleslly blowing up tiny inconveniences against IDers to be a bad idea.