Yes, I think it would be worth adding a cautionary sub-bullet under #1, to look for multiple photos first, and if they are not the same species, leave a comment instead of an ID (with some suggested boilerplate wording). What do others think?
Yes, probably worth adding a “tip” or something under #3 for a potential identifier to check the existing description and comments first before deciding whether to disagree.
Thank you for this post. I plan on using it as an instruction manual to my students at the beginning of the semester. I generally get my students (about 70 of them) to do around 8,000 observations in a semester and I am constantly trying to help them with observations but one of the things they tend to shy away from is the identification part and this will help encourage them to get more involved. I personally get a lot of experience knocking back identifications with students because they can often have very strange choices for initial identifications.
This is how I understand it and treat it; that’s what the wording (both in the box and later as @sgene said) implies to me. If I made an identification and choose “I don’t know but I am sure this is GenusX” it means I don’t know enough to agree with the species ID but I agree with the genus, and I think it’s possible for other people to ID it to species.
For what it’s worth the exact text in this pop-up box was discussed extensively when the feature was added, so I don’t think it should be changed lightly.
I usually withdraw my ID when I am wrong, just like what you said. I can’t think of any other situation when I’d do it. So if I make an ID (on my observation or someone else’s) and then someone who knows better than me makes a conflicting ID then I’ll withdraw mine, because otherwise more people will need to agree with the other person to reach Research grade to counterract my wrong ID (assuming in this case that I don’t have the experience to be comfortable with just agreeing with them).
But if I identify an observation as a Plant and then someone else says what species of plant it is, I wouldn’t withdraw my ID because that won’t affect that ID or status of the observation.
This is SO helpful! I especially like that it is written in such an accessible style. And the follow-on discussion is excellent as well. I have pondered many of these and have handled some situations rather less well than others. Ah, welcome to the human species lol.
So how do the site stats handle withdrawn IDs? Are they accounted for in any way? Does withdrawing an ID have any impact beyond that particular observation?
This point talks about doing research on the suggested taxon. Is it worth suggesting checking the commenter’s profile? If the commenter is the world expert on that taxon, it’s probably pretty safe to accept their suggestion. If all you find is “John Q. Public is a naturalist!” (or even a world expert in a completely different taxon) you probably want to do a little more research. Or is this getting too close to suggesting some people’s opinions are worth more than others’? Which I suppose they are, but there’s probably a nicer way to put it!
And a suggestion to add - I just realized that in identifying a sea anemone as Tribe Anemoneae I had consigned it to being a buttercup lol. Somewhere (maybe in the google group?) someone mentioned that “someone”/the great “they” somewhere were keeping a list of taxa that have been used for more than one organism/genus/whatever. If it’s not too long, perhaps we could include it? Or link to it? My guess (stab in the dark) is that there aren’t too many, and becoming familiar with the list could avoid a lot of embarassment!
Suggestion 2: do you want to expand the “hard/impossible to identify/verify to species level” part to include the comments about how different kinds of research look for different levels of granularity, and observations may serve many purposes? I keep thinking about a comment on the google group from someone who was responding to a comment about the undesirability of observations of flowers in gardens by saying that she had her class studying the activity of honeybees (I think), and the bees really didn’t care if the flower was cultivated/wild/native/imported/escapee/you get the picture - the class needed to know what flowers were around. Which is not to say I think we should encourage observations of potted aloe plants on someone’s apartment (flat) window sill, but again, you get the picture.
I think I’ve finally run out of things to say. Thank you again for doing!
Isn’t this a situation where you should turn off community ID for that observation?
(Edit: By the way would it be preferable for me to keep all my comments in one post rather than separating them like this? I’m sorry if that’s the case…)
Some time in the past couple of days the forum told me I was unable to post because it would have been the third consecutive that was mine, and that I should combine.
I would say do whichever keeps the flow of discussion the clearest, that the forum will allow. I wouldn’t worry about serial posts if you are responding to different folks, or unless the forum limits it like @sgene mentioned. Editing an existing post is ok too, but the longer time lapse before doing so, the more likely the edit will be missed by others, even if you label it prominently.
I often see things ID’d to the wrong species, but can only ID them to genus or family or higher and so I add a disagreeing ID. Later, the previous IDers might change their IDs to something that I think is plausible but don’t know enough to confirm it yet my ID will still lock the observation to the higher taxon because it was an explicit disagreement with the previous clearly wrong ID. When this happens, I think you can just edit your ID and save it without changing anything and it will show you the popup again allowing you to say whether you explicitly disagree or not. Or you can just withdraw your ID altogether. But I usually just keep it as it is even though I think I should do one of the two options above.
