Before writing, I have a feeling that this will be a long post with lots of questions, many of which may have been answered in other posts previously. For this, I apologise. But I do feel like some of these at least are “edge cases”, where I haven’t found much about. Unclear areas and the meaning o…

As others have said, if in doubt ask the identifiers what they mean. You might not get an answer, especially from high volume identifiers where even tagging them tends to get lost in their notifications, but many will respond. Most specialized IDers don’t use the “good as can be” option because it’s…

[image] charlie: my preferred sedge key needs the leaf base visible, so i can’t identify this sedge, but another key doesn’t use that trait I second not liking the cases when people base ‘cannot be improved’ votes on their particular key. Many keys that are made solely based on pressed specim…

The same applies to ‘hard disagreements’ based on flawed keys (or faulty use thereof)

[image] paul_dennehy: given how many “Captive/Cultivated” votes I’ve had to counter on my own wild observations you could pre-empt that with a copypasta comment

[image] alloyant: If you are 95% certain then I would leave it alone, personally, just in case. “Statistical significance was set at p<0.05” – so if you are 95.1% certain, go for it. You will never see p=0. [image] DianaStuder: iNat insists that we say What it IS Not all of us conside…

There’s a lot here, and it probably is going to be different for different identifiers, but for my part: Ex 1. I would not mark an observation “as good as can be” unless either - I was certain that the observation cannot be more finely identified based on the evidence in the photo(s), or if it was …

Good response. The only comment I’d have is that if something is classified as Needs ID, then I think it should be in the “ID pool”, even if it’s there forever. It should only be marked as good as can be if it’s empirically impossible for it to be refined further (based on our current scienfitic/tax…

[image] mtank: I usually use a non-disagreeing finer ID in situations where I want to indicate to the other identifiers (and/or the observer) that I am unsure of their ID. There’s a problem with this approach, in my opinion. You’re just hinting at a possible disagreement and leaving the inte…

Yeah, you’re right. I checked and didn’t mention it in my post, but I do also make sure to add a comment to that effect. Something like “I don’t think you can rule out X” or “This photo is probably not detailed enough to ID to species”, etc. Point is I don’t add the higher-level ID if I’m just unsu…

How to understand identifications of other users, subjective and unsaid meanings of different IDs, and the best practices when identifying

General

DianaStuder April 11, 2024, 7:57pm 23

you could pre-empt that with a copypasta comment

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How to understand identifications of other users, subjective and unsaid meanings of different IDs, and the best practices when identifying

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