Yes, I’m aware it’s in excess of 2/3, but I was simplifying. I think my recent record is finding a mis-identification with four agreeing IDs all of which were wrong. It required 9 correct IDs to overturn, not 8 as my comment might have suggested. It’s easier if you can get one of those mis-IDs to change or withdraw, but this example was a 12-year-old observation and I don’t think any of those four were still active on iNat.
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I think it’s great that you are thinking about these types of things. However, I would note that very similar ideas how been proposed and rejected by staff previously. Examples:
A way to have a reputation/expert system
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/implement-an-ispot-style-reputation-system/6998
Requiring comment on disagreements of coarser IDs:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/require-a-comment-when-adding-a-coarser-id-to-an-observation/45736/26
So I think it’s fine to discuss these ideas, but they wouldn’t be accepted as feature requests or implemented (though staff didn’t 100% close the door on some type of reputation system in the future that was totally internal to iNat).
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@cthawley Thanks, Chris!
Not by chance, around an hour ago I proposed a new feature citing one of the two links that you provided.
Let’s wait and see! :D
All the best,
Cesare
@cesarebrizio Another way to put what other people have said is that conversations about IDs should be evidence-based rather than reputation-based. That is in the true spirit of science.
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Hi Cesare,
so how would you measure it? University degree and/ or published papers? I know a few people who don’t have any professional degree, but which I would call experts in their fields. And who should be able to award those “badges”? And how would you mark the respective fields of expertise? For example, an expert on ants doesn’t necessarily know much about mushrooms.
If I want to know more about a certain person, I first look at their profile and then at their IDs. (If you click on “identifications” in the profile, you’ll get the list with all their IDs.) This gives me a pretty good idea about their field of expertise. And, sooner or later, you get to know the relevant people - sooner, if you engage in discussions with them.
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I agree with everything you said here, and want to add a question - how would a system like this even be implemented and tracked?
I see a few options
1.) people self identify as experts. This is functionally useless, because who defines an expert here? Anything based on an honor system like this would have enough variation in standards to render it functionally useless
2.) The community votes on potential expert - this would risk turning into a popularity contest, with users who are more active on social media attracting many more votes than, say, a PHD in a specific taxa that quietly works on correcting misidentifcations.
3.) Experts volunteer for the status and submit their credentials to curators - This might be the best option, but it puts more work on the backs of curators who already have a pile of tasks to handle. Plus, that would mean the curators would have to verify the expertise of everyone who applies and that could quickly become an untenable task if thousands of people apply to be experts on individual taxa.
IMHO the way it works right now is fine. If you’re an expert, put your expertise in your profile, say what your focus is and what you’re comfortable IDing, and be willing to engage users in conversation when they do have questions,
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I think that may be more difficult that it may seem. What are the qualifications of expertise? Who will judge those qualifications and rank someone as an expert? Expert of a set of species? A set of genera? A family, but only those species in a certain region? Given that this is a global platform (both taxonomic and geographic), determining who is an expert in what taxa in what region seems to be a challenging goal to reach. At the very least, it would require an entire database of its own to manage and curate.
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On the other hand though, I have had people who in the academic world would be experts (Phds and professors), who “explained” bees to me. I’m not that impressive academically, and they also underestimated my abilities.
I learned my lesson after the mushroom, I now check profiles to see if there is any expertise listed. In this way I have found more than a few people who know more than me.
And we do have a reputation system. Quite simply, it’s just your reputation. You can build it in two ways, make ID’s, or become the guy who the identifiers ask. Among the bee identifiers we have a guy who doesn’t make ID’s to the volume that the big guys do, but he’s the guy we call in for strange ones.
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I would simply advocate for more patience. Many identifications seem to come right over time. At least some of the mistaken ids are going to be from people who will readily withdraw them, once they login (maybe a week or a month later) and review their activity tab. Other identifiers will filter for controversy (once in a while) and weigh in, or someone may go through and confirm members of a single species.
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It takes a little courage at first. Some you ask will push back.
But.
Almost everybody is willing to respond.
The ones I value most are academics who are honest enough to say - I don’t know that group / species. Or - I can’t see the field marks I need. Bonus points all round when my first @mention prompts them to ask their own taxon specialist!
(I am a retired university librarian, fascinated by our fynbos - and addicted to chewing thru the mountain of Needs ID on iNat)
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When an ID disagreement appears, leave a comment in the observation to explain your ID would be helpful.
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I am decidedly not an expert on anything, but I am active in identifying. It takes time to learn the species you prefer. I have learned a lot on iNat, but the thing I learned the best is the number of people who are willing to help others learn and grow. If I never entered an ID I wasn’t sure of, I would not have had the conversations that helped me learn. Many, many people have helped me learn on iNat. Some of them were self trained, some have degrees, some are young, some are not but every one of them was willing to share their hard won knowledge to help me and help iNat.
I believe it is best to always be willing to withdraw any ID, to listen to those who clearly explain why you are wrong and to take chances to allow for more learning. I might add an ID to an observation at species, that is not at species level, and without disagreeing with the previous ID, just to learn through the notifications and comments. I am not claiming I know more but I am trying to learn more.
I have been on other sites that had labels for each person’s expertise. I was labeled an expert long before I warranted that description. I would not want to see the same system on iNat. I believe it works because we are all equal, not despite of it.
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There are two results when you see a higher level ID after your ID, for example, a genus level ID after a species level ID. The first one is disagreement, means “I think it is in this genus, but I don’t think it is the species” or “There is not enough information to tell the species”. The second one is uncertain, means “I think it is in this genus, but I don’t know whether it is this species”. They can be easily distinguished, because the former one will have a note there to tell you the person is disagree with the ID before.
Not everyone knows how to use the tool.
Telling someone what to do, is not impolite in such a case.
In the present case the appropriate action of your interlocutor is indeed to ID at the higher taxon level (where he is certain).
He may push the wrong button, though, because iNaturalist asks to choose between (I don’t recall the exact wording)
A) there is not enough information to be more precise.
B) I can’t tell whether it is the higher precision taxon
He might accidentally have affirmed that there is not enough information.
IMO you can tell him just that.
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Thanks Susanne for the opportunity to clarify
While IMHO an university degree is absolutely not required and may not mean a thing, I think that a list of publications may help. What I would require is just “demonstrable” competence, some claim that can be verified, such as “I have been breeding goldfishes for 10 years, i have no publication but you can check my company website at www.goldfishusa.com”
About fields of expertise you are right, as stated elsewhere they would amount to a closed-choice list that should be discussed beforehand and that ideally should be mapped to high-order taxa, something like “orders that I’m knowledgeable about” or “families that I’m knowledgeable about”.
I’ll clarify further in another answer.
Thanks for your welcome opinion!
Cesare
To @pfau_tarleton & @lothlin
Hello Russell and Jessica,
My proposal is that someone submits verifiable claims about his/her competence and asks to be accepted as expert in a specific natural group (order, family, genus…).
Yes, sure! I do understand that this would require both implementing a database (in fact just a two-column bridge table may suffice - rows would include as many entries as the compenteces declared. Columns would include iNaturalist ID and taxon ID, both the tables already exist in the iNaturalist database).
I am equally aware that the feature that I’m requesting would add more work to the already relevant burden on the back of curators.
But this shift of paradigm would, in my opinion, entirely change the perception of iNaturalist by all those academical and non-academical people who are afraid (with some reason…) that joining iNaturalist implies the possibility of being challenged by inexpert people, and this in turn would require defending one’s identification.
I’m not saying that educating the less informed is a bad thing! Surely, one cannot join iNaturalist if he/she isn’t available to collaborate and provide advice!
What I’m saying is that those who are actually expert would like to be recognized as such, right from the start. As I see it, by feeling recognized as expert right from the start, many who still didn’t join iNaturalist would feel encouraged to participate.
Many thanks for participating to the discussion.
Cesare
Thanks @jrcagle.
Yours is an embraceable opinion: any identification should be evidence-based, and I would insist to require that filling the “Explain why” field should be strictly required to anybody, expert or not, before any identification or correction is saved on iNaturalist.
The kind of documented scientific competence that I would like to see more clearly recognized on iNaturalist would equally serve good science. Here too I am talking about evidence: evidence of competence. Anybody who wrote a monograph, e.g., on a bird species can be deemed reliable whenever he identifies a photo of that species, and provides written clues about how he did it. And he is reliable since his very first identification: that’s why I advocate the assignment of some sort of “expert badge” since the beginning.
Cesare
@dentalflossbay
Thanks, Cam!
Yes, patience alone may work as a general solution.
But that virtue is not widespread: if it’s required, we are restricting iNaturalist catchment area.
In other words, we may provide the impatient with some feature that may engage him and convince him to be patient.
I consider expertise recognition as one of such features.
Thanks for participating to the discussion!
Cesare
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Dear all, also today I’m going to hit the maximum number of daily messages, so I apologize for not being able to reply individually to everyone, including @helium_l , @juliereid and @chirp147 who weighed in the discussion. Please accept my sincere thanks for this enlightening conversation!
So, summarizing the current state of the art:
- for all the reasons exposes in this thread, no curator will ever scrutinize your scientific credentials and formally acknowledge that you are an “expert identifier”;
- you shall never be visibly recognizable as an “expert identifier”, except on your profile, where you can state that you have particular competences;
- it will be each individual user to acknowledge passively and silently your experience e.g., by accepting your identification proposals;
- reputation will grow passively as your accepted ID’s accumulate;
- but even when you will escalate the leaderboards your state of “expert identifier” will never be formally recognized. It will always be a matter of visiting your profile and investigating your activities.
I would like to share with you the answer that I received with my feature request “Fact-based designation of “expert identifiers””. It’s interestingly explicit about the fundamental reason why my proposal is unacceptable.
As expected, the proposal was rejected on the following basis, the same cause of rejection of a previous, similar request: «As has been discussed in the Google Group, if iNat ever does develop a reputation system, it will be based on someone’s iNat use and not outside factors.»
I have a message for those of you who wish to read further. Having enjoyed your openness and availability to discuss, I would like to delve even deeper in the “experience” issue because - so to speak - I heard a worrying creak coming from the iNaturalist building. Please allow me being argumentative and - just for the sake of discussion - allow me taking to the limit my position. I’m not that aggressive!!! :-)
That word, “outside” (see above, “outside factors”) sent a shiver down my spine. “Outside”? The place where observers and observations come from? Do iNaturalists have two identities, in and out? Two personalities who must ignore each other? Is schizophrenia a requirement?
As I see it, the disregard for “outside factors” is ideological, and translates into a sort of self-referentiality by iNaturalist. I deem that the word “outside”, by creating 1) an inside and 2) a separation wall, is a radical, oppositive choice with far-reaching consequences, the first of which is that now everybody can see the wall we weren’t aware of. You find walls around castles and around aristocratic clubs. Usually, an initiative aiming at community involvement does not build walls nor requires you to go schizophrenic and develop two conflicting personalities.
Anyway, I deem absolutely inconsistent that “outside” experience/expertise may be shown on the profile, but cannot be shown in the identifications and in the observation. It seems that someone thinks that these two things bear different consequences:
- discovering that someone is an expert by reading his/her profile,
- discovering that someone is an expert by seeing a badge in his observations or identification proposals.
I see no difference, besides the time required to investigate the profile of everybody to understand whether they may be knowledgeable or not. The information is the same. The person is the same, either “outside” or “inside”. I see no reason why such a useful piece of information as documented competence should not appear anywhere possible.
Please accept and comment the following provocation: perhaps what iNaturalist is asking for is an act of fake submission by unrepentant, arrogant science barons? “I, the arrogant baron scientist from the Outside, shall pretend that I’m begging your pardon! Publicly, I shall wear sackcloth and ashes: I promise that I shan’t tell anybody that I’m a leading expert in crustaceans, so that nobody may feel subjection for my opinions nor feel that I know more! Yet, as soon as somebody visits my profile, my majesty will shine above him/her!” - is such an hypocritical line of action required???
As said, I’m stretching the things and I’m being argumentative on purpose.
Thanks for your patience - that I’m putting to the hardest test! - and all the best,
Cesare
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What a nice discussion!
For my pennysworth @cesarebrizio I wonder how I would fit into your scheme. I am the second top identifier of hoverflies on the site worldwide. My only ‘demonstrable competence’ is here on iNat: I cannot point to a qualification, business or experience elsewhere, because this is mainly how I got involved, learned much of what I know and was enabled to practice, including learning by correction.
I would like to think that my fellow syrphid enthusiasts would regard me as competent at least in what I choose to identify, though I do not accept being called an ‘expert’ (as people occasionally do).
Most of the experts on here I find rather enjoy working alongside punters like myself, and do not mind being levelled in that way. This ‘expert+enthusiast teamwork’ is what makes it such a fabulous (and quite unique) learning resource, as opposed to the ‘client-service provider’ relationship that exists elsewhere. If other people’s IDs were in some way worth more than others, I would probably have felt more inclined to ‘leave it to the experts’, rather than getting involved myself.
In one sense I would like all the experts in the world to be on iNat, but there are plenty who just don’t get the ethos, and I think it’s ok that iNat isn’t for every expert.
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