No, it is not, correct. But giving my ID based on the given evidence is not particulary difficult for me.. it does not make my task easier or harder.
I do not necessarily "want” more info, as I would assume if it is not given up front, it usually does not excist. There might be exceptions… but those do usually latest unfold after I have interacted with the observation.
The person who “wants” something is the observer, wanting to get the observation correctly IDed, as I would hope at least. And thus they should provide the sufficient evidence if this is true. Otherwise they have to accept how others interact with their insufficient evidence.
Ooops… so I’ve been getting it wrong all these years . When I post an observation, I’ve always thought it was a precise part of the task to make it easy for subsequent IDers to confirm my ID or add their own, so making my data and iNaturalist in general easier, more useful and more enjoyable for everyone. Good to know I don’t need to worry about that any more .
I do a LOT of identifications, and try extremely hard to make sure each of them is as accurate as I can make it based on the information available, particularly the evidence in the photos. Background knowledge of the species i look at helps, too, but I would rather leave something at genus level than specify further inaccurately.
What superusers could do as best practice is provide all information that they have when they create the observation, rather than expecting the IDer to ask for it. After all, the IDer has no way of knowing whether the observer has additional information or is just guessing unless the observer tells them.
It is not reasonable for IDers to ask every single time whether the observer has more information when experience tells them that most observers do not and they are using the CV for their ID. Experience also tells IDers that a fair portion of users are no longer active or do not respond to their comments.
Why do you believe this? It seems to me that it is in the best interest of observers to not make extra work for IDers. After all, IDers are volunteering their time to verify and refine IDs, and IDer capacity is generally less than the number of observations, particularly for taxa that require more than average expertise to ID. Unless you happen to be a superuser who exclusively posts observations of things that you have the expertise to ID yourself (not the case for most superusers in my experience), in most cases you are benefiting from the knowledge provided by IDers (i.e., you learn something, they are adding value to your observation by refining the ID). Generally if someone is helping me I find it behooves me to not make it unnecessarily difficult for that person to help me. This includes things like cropping or indicating the subject of interest in the observation if this is not obvious, but also things like providing all relevant information when uploading.
Now, maybe you are uploading observations for your own purpose and don’t care if they get an ID. If this is the case, I think it is important to keep in mind that iNat does not have an option to upload observations as just being for your own personal record – in other words, they will end up in the needs ID pool along with every other observation, and IDers have no way of knowing that you don’t want feedback. So like it or not, if you are uploading to iNat you are participating in a community and the community will see your observations. It seems considerate to strive to be a good community member (i.e., not behaving in ways that make unnecessary work for other users). One could, I suppose, upload observations with a private location, which means that most IDers will not see them.
Choosing not to provide all evidence necessary for the level of ID given is just asking for observations to be bumped to a higher level.
If the observer is also an identifier who knows what’s required for ID, I’d say that deliberately not providing the necessary information is just plain unreasonable - and if it’s about written notes, waiting until further information is asked for is asking for the information to be lost and forgotten. After all, some IDs take years, and while I might think I’ll ‘always’ remember something, past experience suggests I forget a lot sooner than I think I will.
If you want a confirming ID and have all the necessary information for that ID, provide it upfront. If you don’t want a confirming ID if possible, well, I’m not really sure what you’re doing here?
I am trying to make reference grade observation just in case it turns out something without a photo in the wild. I am not an expert, I need feedback to learn.
My guess is that collecting botanists load a representative photo or two from the field to get the datestamp and coordinates for processing the specimens.
I asked a friendly moss expert if I could confirm one of her observations, to add a photo to the taxa, and the request was declined - she did not confirm her own ID with a microscope yet.
Experienced observers might post what is enough for them to identify even if the evidence seems scant for someone else.
It’s certainly true that great familiarity with a species (particularly when coupled with familiarity with potential confounding species in the area) can mean you require much less evidence than someone less familiar.
Ultimately, though, I’d say the onus is on the observer to provide sufficient evidence, not on the identifier to ask for more - and yes, if the community agrees I haven’t provided enough evidence even when I think I have, well, I guess it stays at the level most people are comfortable with.
And if people are using iNat to store location and time but not actually making useful observations when they could, I can’t say I’m thrilled with the idea. It feels like a waste of identifers’ time and an abuse of the system, frankly. (Though I realise that’s probably not what you mean - or I hope not!)
A lot of other superusers won’t put up with bumping up with no reason, as you do, and keep their engagement to a minimum. Whoever left to identify ends up with a bigger load to deal with.
I think we do have an obligation to post photos adequate for identification – if we can, if we know enough, if the subject cooperates. It doesn’t always, you know: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/31029383 I also think it’s legitimate to post for a record of the date and place, even if the photo is hardly usable. I don’t like when people do that, of course. I think we really should record the data and place and also post an adequate photo, even if it’s of another weedy dandelion. But I’m not going to loose sleep over it. Just hit “Reviewed” and move on.
Thank you to everyone who replied to my original question. Having reviewed the replies, I think my original question missed the core issue. The more fundamental question I should have asked is: is authority a sufficient substitute for photographic, audio, or descriptive evidence on iNat?
Over the last several days, I began encountering an observer with a handful of observations with minimal evidence yet they IDed their observations to cryptic species or difficult to ID species. The evidence provided are distant, blurry shots of mosses. They contain no macro shots or micrographs. However, the observation description notes the specimen was IDed by an authority in the field. The authority’s analysis is not provided. It simply says “IDed by [authority’s name] from [authority’s organization]”.
What is the best way to handle an observation like this? I can take the advice from folks above, which seems to say: IDers have the option to not ID an observation, mark it as reviewed, and move on. However, doesn’t the do-nothing-and-move-on approach have potential negative downstream impacts on the CV? So, an ancillary question to my fundamental question is this: given that iNat trains the CV from user submissions, and the CV does not assess authority, how important is it for IDers to submit disagreeing identifications to assure the CV is trained on useful evidence?
if you cannot see the field marks you need - it makes no difference if They are the World’s Only Expert on Cryptics. To my eyes it is blurry green stuff, could be moss ??
First, if the observer reports that an expert ID’d the plant, I’d believe it but I’d also not ID it myself because I couldn’t.
Second, don’t worry about the CV. It won’t get trained on the species unless there are some number of observations (or RG observations?), so there will be a lot of other photos for the CV to scan. The CV will essentially ignore rare conditions – a bird on a plant observation, blurry green nothingnesses, signs, people’s faces beside the plant. Unless there are many observations of this species and they’re all distant, blurry shots, it won’t matter.
iNat is based on the principle that observations should be ID’d based on the evidence provided, and that IDers should assess this evidence themselves.
In connection with this, users are discouraged from agreeing with IDs made on iNat by experts just because that person is an expert. An ID made by some expert off of iNat is not fundamentally different, except that it is more difficult to determine how they made their ID if we do not have the same evidence (a specimen etc.) that they had.
In other words: no, an ID should not be confirmed just because some recognized authority said it was a particular species, if there is not sufficient evidence provided to back this up.
I agree with the summary above. If the evidence to ID isn’t present in the observation, I think you should feel free to disagree, and I certainly would never agree to an ID simply because of hearsay. Really, the observer shouldn’t even be adding their own ID based simply on hearing an ID from someone else if the observer can’t explain the reasons for the ID themselves (though this happens somewhat frequently on iNat and seems to be tolerated for expediency’s sake).
All opinions are moot when they’re not backed up by evidence. Anyone claiming to be an authority must accept that the burden of proof always lies with them. In science, there should be no free passes when it comes to evidence.
If the observation is already RG, an explicit disagreement seems advisable, since no one else can reliably identify it, even if you allow that the observer (and/or some proxy) could do so by other means. If the community cannot reasonably agree about the ID, then, by definition, the observation should never become RG.
If it’s not currently RG, but you’re concerned that it might become so, you could follow it and disagree later should its status ever change (or perhaps make a broad, non-disgreeing ID and/or tick “yes” in the DQA).
Although the observer always has more information than can be gleaned from a photo or sound, one of the fallacious arguments is the argument from authority. I very much dislike when a user says ‘I have worked in this area for X years’, or ‘I have travelled in this region’, or ‘this is my special taxon of interest’. All of these boil down to ‘trust me, I’m correct.’ Uh, no, I don’t trust you. If you can’t articulate what about the evidence provided allows one to identify an observation as such, then you are in essence making the fallacious argument from authority.
Just be aware that ticking ‘yes’ in the DQA may make the observation casual because the CID and OID are different (recent change). I mean, such observations sound like they deserve to be casual, but only do it if that’s the intent.
I disagree. I view putting the expert’s ID on the observation as giving that person a vote on the ID. What I would consider wrong would by getting the expert to vote and then agreeing with that vote – two votes based on one identification.
(Exception: if I had learned enough I felt I really understood how to ID that observation and others of the same species.) And of course I should make a comment about the name of whoever actually made the ID.
I would in principle treat experts like anyone else.
HOWEVER note that some people are using iNaturalist to provide helpful photos (without necessarily full evidence) or to do “local mapping” of their area for their own project. When those seem to be the case you can, if it feels important to, tick the box preventing it going to RG (bottom of web observation page), or just leave it as is, as seems appropriate.
. When I post an observation, I’ve always thought it was a precise part of the task to make it easy for subsequent IDers to confirm my ID or add their own, so making my data and iNaturalist in general easier, more useful and more enjoyable for everyone. Good to know I don’t need to worry about that any more 
.