Identification streak?

Is there a way we could generate this, but for identifications rather than observations? I’m curious who would be on such a table!

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I do not think it’s a good idea. The introduction of elements of competition into the identification process is always fraught with a drop in the quality of ID, when someone, in pursuit of quantity (or continuity), begins to confirm everything, including species wich he does not know in reality…

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There’s no problem in making good ids each day, we’re undergoing identotron anyway, so maybe participating in it can show those results.

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Perhaps it could be on the personal year in review instead of the general? So that an individual would know their possible streak but not other people’s.

Edit: I firmly believe a person could make one ID per day without resorting to making bad IDs. With so many millions of observations to choose from, there’s no way to run out, even if you just bump one unknown to “Plantae” each day.

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Personally, I’ve never understood the problem people have with making ID’s somewhat competitive. The majority of the time when I run into someone who consistently makes questionable ID’s, it’s usually not someone who uses the site a lot, and often only has dozens or a couple of hundred of ID’s. Not exactly a competitor in an ID race. Another one I run into occasionally are people who are rooting through the Unknown’s and put a Fly into the Bees, but I think that’s a bit different. Maybe there are people with 1000’s of ID’s who are consistently inaccurate, but that’s not the group I usually run into.

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There’re some (quite a lot) of mass identifiers who don’t care much of what hey agree with, they’re choosing a taxon and agree with all of observations, sometimes like a 5th or 6th id that sometimes is wrong (that shows how much thought there’s in each id). So many are afraid that getting more competition means more errors like that.
But 1 id a day isn’t a lot, less than 400 a year! Same as 30 mins in unknown section. You also can’t cheat with date of ids.

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I’m guilty of this sometimes. For example, if I’m going through unknown insects I accidentally get my ‘H’s mixed up (I type Hemiptera instead of Hymenoptera or vice versa). Usually someone picks them up quickly, and they pop up on the dashboard so you can correct yourself. I like to hope most IDs I make are ok!

As far as seeing an ID streak, I don’t think it will attract many bad IDs. People who aren’t really interested in IDing things will get bored quickly.

I’m not that interested in seeing my personal numbers, but if others are and it encourages more people to ID things, then why not?

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That really doesn’t bother me, getting things out of Unknown at least makes sure it gets seen.

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I can’t imagine why “agree-botting” would be fun, that strikes me as extremely boring.

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Me neither, but those folks are out there! (with annoying consequences for the rest of us…)

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It seems some people like leaderboards too much without realising what exactly they show.

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I love the ID-streak idea, since I am both very motivated by competition (ask the admins of the ID-a-thon!) and perfectionist in a good way - I wouldn’t accept shoddy identification as being worthy of a place on a leaderboard; that’s just plain cheating, and I would never do it.

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This reply become little bit general then ID streak but well :slightly_smiling_face:

Whenever ID count is being the topic, usually its seen equal to a race. With that logic, observants may take so many silly photos or put each photo as different observation to make a count too. This may not look bad, but will give similar effect. After all every human has kind a similar feelings, actions and reactions. If they want to do something, they will do anyway. It depends on the users way to look at the board or the websites way to work i think.

There are no difference between observant, ID’er, translator etc as a user, right? I m not comparing as an importance of the work being done but as a person who contributes to community as the way they can.

I understand, if ID process becomes as a race, people might ruin the data. But negative kind of thinking ways, instead of gaining ID’ers, it looses them. Because, IDing needs expertise and focus, it gets kind a boring or pointless after sometime as mentioned all over. And experts have to go to big amount of observations to ID may be few things by spending such a long time. Also they are usually minority as i see.

When you have 2 sides of work and keep working and supporting for 1 side, unattentioned part eventually will start effecting the other side too like more observation, less ID process. Balance is the key for everything.

From my view, i like to see my contribution in some basis sometimes to feel good/motivated because; more i involve, more i see (or shown) my mistakes or rights and more i learn. And more i get involve with community, shapes my view more if i m belong/welcome here or not.

Also i dont think competition can be bad if it is well organized/designed, instead it attracts more users to help to at least kingdom ID may be. I see observants with more than 10k observation less than 100 ID and even their observations in Unknown Forest most of the time for years.

If there is a will, there should be a way to solve or at least balance these. If its too important to ID and there is a chance to be used bad way, then there can be few ways depends on the situations like:

  • Identotron can be open to only; users who have x amount of ID + x amount of day visited or x amount of page visited etc. and/or may be kingdom/genus level IDs are accepted.

  • newbies only can ID to kingdom/genus level may be until they reach x amount of ID (since mentioned, the site is not attractive enough for some users, they get away after few days or ID process anyway) so mistakes are correctable easily by filter using experts anyway before the finer identification.

  • newbies ID can be hidden or not counted until it reaches to x amount of correct ID counts happen. means, i ID kingdom/genus, nobody sees but me, then observation reached to research level, my counter will be x-1 for kingdom/genus level. after i reach 0 count or x count, then my ID starts to show my ID’s and i m not newbie anymore. So if i stay for few days, few IDs then leave, it wouldnt effect the community data.

Sorry for taking time of readers with a long text, i just wanted to say that, somethings can have no value for some but another can be motivated or included into community more. It should be looked at the way as, how this could be turned to a positive process so both sides can gain.

Of course this is my opinion with no harm intend :slightly_smiling_face:

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You don’t take in consideration new user doesn’t mean non-expert, many experts only do ids, with no observations made, if they can id to kingdom level only, what’s the point for them being here? And not be counted until some amount of ids? They’ll leave pretty quickly. While other users have thousands of observations and ids and still make big amount of mistakes while iding (no matter what’s the couse).
Identotron is a forum thing, so at least you have to be on forum to participate, plus there’re “classes” for people new to iding.

they were just an idea examples since its always being mentioned, ID as a race which is equal to bad ID. so there should be an idea to motivate or get people IDing without pressing ID/agree button just to ID for leaderboard count etc. I guess my lines gone different way. I should read all topics first to get knowledge about things around more :slightly_smiling_face:

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Unknown area is what sounds best for that, with no possibility to push agree. :smile:
Well, I think @astra_the_dragon idea is in it too, not just eliminating unknowns.

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