As a rote amateur when it comes to many taxa, is so helpful to know where any one person’s expertise lays. Are you a student in a certain field, if so, for how long? Are you a professional? Have you been a citizen scientist studying broadly or specifically? More specificity helps me parse the quality of your identification suggestions! I know that we all make mistakes (I might lead in that category), but knowing the depth of your knowledge is so very helpful.
This is my plea for everyone to say a bit more about themselves on the bio page. Thanks, Pam
A partial solution might be some statistics on the user’s observations and identifications, both in terms of taxa and geography. I agree with your request, but this could be a way to learn about a user’s experience and expertise that doesn’t rely on the user writing a biography (if they really don’t want to). In my case, such statistics might reveal that my specialty is North American Odonata, and that I have some knowledge of moths in the Pacific Northwest (besides a smattering of observations and IDs among other taxa).
I like Jim’s idea. The people who do a ton of IDs usually have profiles. But this could be useful for some of the experts who aren’t so into technology. If I see someone with no icon and no profile, it is easy to overlook their expert ID.
It could also be useful to identify what states and countries a user is most active in. I often go to a person’s observations to see how likely they are familiar they are with species in my area before I decide how reliable their IDs are. There are some experts who can ID at least to family their specialty anywhere in the world. But I and many others are only good at our local species.
I like the location thing. Perhaps it would be neat to have it listed under the name (province/state, country) as they are under the name in eBird profile, example of that below
Just my thought, not sure how logistically realistic that is :-)
Yes, you could write that, but also if you have an area about which you are particularly knowledgeable. It is really helpful when I am weighing suggestions to know more about the suggester.
I think the user icons of people who haven’t edited their profile text should be set to 10% saturation. This would give instant information to other users about the usefulness of a new user’s IDs and comments (no need to waste clicks going to profile to check), plus would be visual nudge to new users to edit their profiles. I would remove the “I am a naturalist” default, personally — I think many new, young users might see that phrase as the expected profile content. A blank profile would be so much more inviting.
Or, if technically feasible, have a mouseover event trigger the display of more details on user: geographic location, number of observations, number of IDs. That would be sooooo useful and convenient. I did a search for code … and this seems like a standard popup option on many platforms.
I like the “I am a naturalist”. It’s inclusive and removing it in favor of a blank profile seems generic and kind of sad. It seems clear to me that one can edit a profile.
Out of curiosity, is there a “it’s OK to edit your profile text” part in the Getting Started guide? I couldn’t find it but probably just missed. I’m sure it’s pretty clear to most people that one could edit it, I’m just wondering whether a new user is actually prompted or encouraged to do so.
