My thoughts would be yes to both questions. If it’s reasonably clear that the Computer Vision ID was accepted blindly, and the photo(s) are ambiguous as to the intended subject, treat it as if the user has not (yet) expressed a preference for which organism gets identified. In that case, you can either query the user first and try to get a preference from them, or just go ahead and identify one organism and leave an appropriate comment. Mention which one you are identifying, and let them know that if they prefer a different one, you will be happy to come back and modify your ID accordingly. Then see where it goes (if anywhere at all…)
BTW, the wonderful “elephant or daisy” example was actually provided by @tony_wills as an edit to the Wiki. But the way this forum works, any and all quotes from the Wiki post get attributed to the original poster (me in this case). This is probably because it would be too complicated to figure out which editor(s) contributed the material quoted from a Wiki.
Once I noticed that placeholders exist and where, I started saving them as a comment. Since I was mostly moving things out of a year or more of Unknown Jail, I don’t think much harm done. In several cases it alerted the OP of the issue and they re-IDed.
They should put “(placeholder:whatever)” with a different colored background to make it more obvious.
While far from an expert, I would assume the OP is following their own observation if they have any interest in it. I will generally tag them if a long outstanding problem exists and they still seem to be active, such as naming the correct genus but from the wrong kingdom from 2 years ago which some have posted correct IDs a while back, but still needs a push to get it out of “life” jail.
Be aware, too, that the placeholder is lost once you make an ID… with no apparent way to get it back or find out what it was, so copying in the placeholder to a comment is a good practise!
Actually you can find out what the placeholder was by looking in the .json for the obs. It should be species_guess I think. But looking this up isn’t something most people are going to do since it is inconvenient and hidden.
I tried that, and it did replace species_guess with the formal ID. But I think that was because species_guess shows the last ID entered by the observer. If you enter a placeholder ID to species and someone comes along and IDs it to kingdom, I think you can still find the placeholder ID you gave it as long as you don’t add another ID to it. I made this observation with placeholder ID “sillyate” and I think if someone else adds an ID species_guess will still be sillyate.
Paragraph 3 in this thread now seems to indicate that adding a coarser ID is always okay. I’m just wondering how that fits in with this thread https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/choosing-not-to-identify-subspecies/699 discussing, among other things, the annoyance some people feel about species IDs after a subspecies ID has been made. I’m bringing this up because I think the site will work best for everyone if everyone is kind of on the same page about what is allowable/acceptable and what is not, so that everyone feels welcome.
My understanding is that everyone is allowed to identify to the level they feel confident, whether that be subspecies or family. When putting a lower level than is already applied, then you need to be careful of whether you are explicitly disagreeing or not. In those cases, you should only explicitly disagree if you can see reason why it is not that species (or subspecies, or genus etc), and ideally you should specify what it is that alerts you to it not being so, just for clarity. If you believe it could be one of several species, then a genus level ID, stating you think it could be one of many, but not explicitly disagreeing. There has been considerable discussion around these explicit IDs, and I am not 100% sure what the outcome of those was. For me, the way I describe it here best fits with the Community ID model.
This to me is fundamental to this matter. You could be the #2 expert in the world, and decide that the photograph does not show enough detail to get to species, but the observer could be standing next to the #1 expert in the world and they could have told them that it is that species (based on characters of the actual specimen visible to the naked eye)
You could be the #1 expert in the taxonomy of these, but the observer (or external input) could be the #1 expert in the field experience of them, Or the lab experience… or flip it totally and it could be the #1 taxonomic expert externally advising and so on.
Fast forward to 3 months in the future, and the “expert” that was #1 might then be #15, as advances in understanding from studies that were read by the other top 10+ experts put the previous #1’s expertise as out of date.
And then you take into account the mission of iNat to engage more people with nature, and the relatively “open model” of the iNat identification system starts to make a lot more sense. We are making the future experts, just by allowing grass-roots amateurs to engage in the identification process.
Can amateurs be wrong? Sure! I have field guides that I use on almost a daily basis, written and photographed by experts that I respect, but they have mistakes and out-of-date IDs. iNat is different in that the IDs are dynamic, they can always be corrected and change to reflect newer understandings and fresh expertise coming on board.
As of today it reads as you say, but before today coarser IDs were discouraged where there was already a finer ID and no intent to disagree, so the reason I was asking was to make sure this really includes the subspecies issue which had seemed like a special case in the other thread. Here’s the change on coarser IDs that was made in this thread today:
Good point, I had forgotten about the differing treatment of subspecific disagreements by iNaturalist. So made yet another tweak to that paragraph to add that informational note.
That said, given existing iNaturalist community guidelines, I don’t think we will ever be able to have a black-and-white rule about adding higher level IDs. While always acceptable when done in good faith, it will always be an area where a little extra caution and deliberation is advisable, exactly because of the different ways observers may receive / interpret such IDs. I think my personal perspective on the subspecies topic was pretty much in line with community expectations here, but I’m always open to different perspectives.
For what it’s worth, when I come across a subspecies ID, and I am only confident at the species level, I usually (not always) just mark it as reviewed and move along, rather than rain on someone else’s subspecies. That is a risk that subspecies identifiers take (including myself, alot!) – that there will be few if any others on iNaturalist able to confirm an ID at that level.
I added two sentences to part 10.4 including a link to the external taxonomy authority list on the curator guide.
I tend to skip past flags that don’t have any links to supporting documentation and I’m guessing other curators don’t have a lot of time to track down references either.
Remember that not everyone has access to the website, and may not see messaging, or have a withdraw button and other features recommended for use here. For those of us with just the iPhone app, many of the instructions above are not feasible.
As others said in another topic, you can open website on iPhone and see all the options, it’s good to remember about iOs app and how it’s not even a half of actual iNat, but we need to get as many people to at least learn website and buttons as possible.
Remembering, too, there is no indication in the iOS app that additional features exist on the website.
The only link from the iOS app to the website is hidden under the species name link, which shows a range map and photos. All that link says is, “More info on INaturalist.org”, suggesting there is more information about the species, but in no way suggesting there is additional functionality. (mind boggled)
(mind boggled)