@matthewvosper
Thanks, Matthew!
I too am delighted by the positive energies that are seeping from the lines of this discussion…
As I see it, you simply and rightly bypassed the rough road of “competence certification”. Your competence developed “inside” iNaturalist.
I deem that you are fully competent in “Syrphidology”: you are a recognized, undisputed expert and you would well deserve the visual badge I am advocating, with full honors. By that badge, anybody who observes an unidentified hoverfly and still doesn’t know you would understand that your proposed identification is the expression of the high reliability that you gained in years of commitment. Such a visual recognition of your competence would be as much deserved, as helpful.
Now, you, the “boy from Inside”, can easily relate with a museum curator who is specialized in Hoverflies and who is deciding whether or not joining the iNaturalist community. Wouldn’t he deserve the same treatment, even though his experience was developed “outside”?
Is this an actual overwhelming concern that multiple other people have shared with you? Because I’m struggling to see how being afraid of being challenged by people who are inexperienced is a wide ranging problem. At worst, it’s an annoyance when it actually happens, but the solution, as stated by others, is simple: you explain your ID and then tag others who will back you up.
If having your knowledge base questioned by people who you deem to be less experienced than you is something that you find off putting then perhaps sites like iNat which are community focused aren’t for that person. The point of iNat is for people to learn. Personally I dislike the idea of having ‘expert’ badges - I feel like it would create a hierarchy where people assume that the expert is always right - which isn’t always the case! New users will assume that, by definition of being an expert, they MUST be right and will passively accept the ID. Proficient but not-quite-expert users will be put off from challenging what they think are incorrect IDs that might, in fact, turn out to be incorrect
I don’t think treating someone’s knowledge base as sacrosanct, regardless of whether or not they’re a expert or not, is a good way to approach a site that is, ultimately, community based. Is it embarrassing when you try and correct someone with a larger knowledge base than you? Oh, definitely. But it’s never anything more than embarrassing. The other person explains why you’re wrong, cites information, you apologise and withdraw your ID and that’s…it. I don’t think this is something worth making a big deal over. I’m firmly in the position of the idea that you need to earn your expert ‘status’ by being involved within the iNat community and being recognised as such, not by applying to iNat itself and be given a label. If you want to prove that you have an expert knowledge base, you need to show that.
No, the concern is not overwhelming (I’m talking about a very few scientist friends of mine), but the mindset from which the concern is born is widespread. We are talking about experts that may not have much time to engage in discussions. I do agree with you: community-focused sites may not be the right place for that kind of people. Yet, their contributions could be precious.
That is not what I would expect to happen. I would instead just expect that one would think twice and collect evidence before challenging anybody’s opinion, even more so if one is challenging an expert.
Did someone ever measure the rate of subjection-induced, passive acceptation of expert opinions? If affirmative, how could it be measured, since expert badges have never been available? Think about a leading expert such as @matthewvosper whose undisputed experience developed entirely inside iNat. Isn’t the leaderboard-based reputation equally subjugating? Does anybody passively accept the ID’s by @matthewvosper?
In actuality, one may state that an influential and potentially subjugating system, the leaderboards, is already in place. If the problem is “passive acceptance of the ID’s under the influence of reputation”, the leaderboard-based reputation may be as toxic as reputation based on external factors (scientific publications, tenures, institutional roles…).
A point on which I fully agree with you, @sylvc, is the following: all my concerns including any form of formal competence rating would be wiped away if only the “explain why” field would become a strictly required field.
No explanation? No observation! No explanation? No identification!
Yes, it would be time-consuming, BUT… any opinion would be fact-based. Challenging that opinion would require better facts, regardless to who is challenging who. Compulsory “explain why” would amount to showing that you have an expert knowledge base.
Again thank you for expressing your opinion so clearly.
Also 90% of the identifications would be wiped away, meaning iNaturalist would stop working. Most IDs are easy or very easy and many (probably most, but I’m not sure) observers are never looking at any comments.
Thanks, @richyfourtytwo.
Obviously, all the current “unexplained” ID’s would remain available in their current state.
For future ID’s, I’m not necessarily expecting eloquent, articulated explanations. Any of following “explain why” would be IMHO perfectly acceptable:
color
size & color
already observed in the area
See my publication here: [a link follows]
It’s the only Italian cricket with quadrisyllabic echeme
…and I may add that this is a big, big, problem. Doesn’t that amount to passive and uninformed acceptance? How can an iNaturalist improve his competence if comments are systematically ignored? Then, one might as well remove the comments entirely!
I was drawing from my own experiences where I’ve noticed that new users who are inexperienced tend to upload their observations with what they think is correct ID and then automatically agree with any ID added by other users (to the extent that, on one observation, eight different IDs where added by eight different users, and the original observer ‘agreed’ with every one of them). This is a pretty common problem that’s been discussed at length in the forum. Adding in the idea of “well, this is an expert so they MUST be right” is only going to complicate that further.
If the concern is not overwhelming then I don’t see how it can be considered a problem that requires changes to how the site is perceived. I do think it’s contradicting that you say experts might not have much time to engage in discussions, and then propose a compulsory ‘explain why’ field. I presume this is for adding contradicting identifications, rather than simply agreeing with the original identification? I do think it should be a more common practice to explain why, but not to demonstrate your breadth of knowledge, rather to educate people on the difference. The point here on iNat is not demonstrating who has expert knowledge, but educating others on nature. As much as I think explaining the reasoning should be encouraged as common practice, I don’t think instituting it on system level is the way to go either. A proficient but not expert IDer might be able to tell whether a bird is a lark or a pipit, but lack the ability to explain the reasoning why - this would add to the burden of experts who, as you say, might not have much time to engage.
Please cite me correctly. I said ‘many observers …’ that is a fairly different statement. But no worries, not so important.
Well, yes, more engagement from anyone would be nice. But iNaturalist is a very flexible offering. You can dive in deeply and broaden your knowlege (no matter where the starting point was) significantly. Or you can just see a pretty flower, upload it to iNat, look at the CV identification and never look back. From my perspective iNat does something useful even in those minimalist cases.
Thanks, @sylvc .
You pointed at a potential contradiction. Besides amounting to education, the time invested in “explaining why”, by supporting an opinion with explanations, would save the time needed to counter unfounded different opinions. Excuse me, my bad English doesn’t help. What I mean is:
one thing is a challenge between equally unexplained ID’s.
another thing is a challenge against an ID accompanied by explanations.
In the first case, you may challenge the first ID even with an equally unexplained alternative ID: contentions may arise, explanations must be provided (too late!); In the second case you need first to prepare a better explanation, then challenge the previous ID providing the alternative, better explanation. Explanations, if convincing, may cut contentions at the root.
In a general sense I recognize that I was inconsistent. By advocating a solution that, in my opinion, would save the time of expert IDers, I’m proposing a solution where somebody else must anyway spend time in the competence certification process. The only difference that I see is that competence certification would only happen once, while its benefits may save time on each observation.
Another good point of yours: yes, indeed, I can identify a species but I may not be able to explain how. As I answered to @richyfourtytwo, I’m not thinking about long explanations. Any of following “explain why” would be IMHO perfectly acceptable:
color
size & color
already observed in the area
See my publication here: [a link follows]
It’s the only Italian cricket with quadrisyllabic echeme
I have seen various “experts” (according to your definition - people who have academic degrees and papers published in a field) provide nonsensical/ill-informed identifications, or blatantly false statements. Experts are not omniscient, flawless gods who have perfect knowledge of the whole of nature worlwide and have infinite time to read the whole international literature on a topic.
I’d go as far as saying that diagnostic features of an expert are an inflated head, and wildly erratic behaviour when caught at the outskirts of their native area. :)
Democracy for all its flaws is no worse than aristocracy, noocracy and other tyrannies of the ‘self-appointed select few’…
@richyfourtytwo excuse me for the too short citation! I apologize.
This time I’ll do better! :-)
I do definitely agree. The recently created “Orthoptera Sounds of Italy” project is a thing I’m engaged in. Huge work was required, and will still be required, to ID many sounds.
I discovered that “projects” are in fact database queries. As such, they grow passively and indefinitely. We are getting entries whenever an Italian orthopteran observation accompanied by sounds is recorded on INaturalist.
The potential - at the price of some clean-up and some chat - is immense!
@SQFP Thanks, your position is very clear.
Generalizations are always misleading.
Very correctly, you do not generalize and cite a subset (“various experts”) from a subset (those who you have seen).
In just a week or so, I have seen various experts that were helpful, comunicative, and explanatory. I would never think that all the “outside” experts are equally available.
Whichever the personal qualities of an expert, devil or saint, something doesn’t change: one can expect that he/she knows things better than a non-expert. That’s a reasonable assumption.
I’m not proposing to sanctify the experts. I’m just hinting at making them recognizable. Whichever your personal relation with the “outside science”, you would know whom you are dealing with.
I understand your concerns and where you’re coming from, but at the end of the day I find it a bit odd that you’re proposing iNaturalist overhaul its entire system and potentially lose out on millions of observations worth data, all to combat the idea that some experts might find it time consuming to have their IDs challenged. Practically speaking, how often does this happen to warrant an entire site overhaul? How often does it happen at all? Perhaps it’s different in other orders, but I rarely see observations that have been identified correctly that then have someone add an incorrect identification. I feel like the solution here is simple: encourage for ‘experts’ you know who don’t use iNat to join iNat and help lessen the load
In a general sense I recognize that I was inconsistent. By advocating a solution that, in my opinion, would save the time of expert IDers, I’m proposing a solution where somebody else must anyway spend time in the competence certification process. The only difference that I see is that competence certification would only happen once, while its benefits may save time on each observation.
I’m not sure what you mean here - do you mean that the competence certification would lend more weight within the system itself to your ID, or that people will see your ID and assume that, as someone with the expert badge, someone will choose not to challenge you based on that? Because I’ve made it known that I’m firmly against the idea that experts shouldn’t be challenged, even from a “the challenger will think twice about it” angle.
@sylvc I’m very grateful for your availability to continue the discussion.
I am slowly understanding how a single feature request (“experience badge” that may be claimed by providing documented evidence of “outside” scientific activity) propagates in the iNat structure in such a way that in fact, as you say, it translates into an overhauling of its entire system. I’m not equally sure about the potential loss of millions of observations. People who spend minutes to geolocate and upload a picture, and who often provide a tentative ID, IMHO may be available to add a short explanation of their proposal.
We agree to disagree on that. My personal position is: while I would easily cross swords with someone at my level of knowledge, I’d rather not cross swords with a seasoned fencer. I would ask for him to be assigned a visible “expert” badge. I would like to know whether the fencing match (in terms of actual knowledge) is uneven.
The fundamental reason why - at the end of the day - my proposals are unacceptable include the following: iNat is self-referential system by definition. So proudly self-referential, that competence attestations coming from the “outside” look suspicious and should not appear (outside of one’s profile). Any proactive ostentation of competence is menacing. The only non-menacing competence is a reputation exclusively acquired by participating in the community.
The following lines are not meant as insulting: I didn’t expect that the communitarian approach of iNat would imply self-referentiality. While I’m disappointed, I’m also beginning to think that maybe some form of self-referentiality is a “selling point” (excuse my English): once you’ve bought it, you’re proud of your purchase.
anecdotally, I’d say new or inexperienced users have about a 20% chance of blindly agreeing with a specialist’s ID – and up to 80% when it is a graded student project – and that is without any form of special badge. there are many possible reasons for this, including vague directions in the user interface, but it’s not a negligible amount.
honestly, I have to agree with this one. The leaderboards aren’t even a very good metric of expertise, only of volume-of-experience. Correlative, but it’s very easy to get false positives. I’m called in frequently to consult on observations where I can’t be of much help, only because I’ve done so many IDs that I appear near the top of many lists by default.
Hi everyone!
I’ve put on “slow mode” so as to allow each poster to take the time to make a well-thought-out and productive comment. So far, despite the controversial topic, dialogue has been pretty civil, and I want to keep it that way in light of rising passions.
I also want to ask: Do not call out other users. Flag a post you find problematic, and the mod team will make a decision on how to proceed. Thank you!
I’m disappointed that someone who has valuable information to share and potentially educate others with is only prepared to ‘cross swords’ with someone that they deem to be on a similar knowledge level as themselves. I feel like this is antithetical to iNat’s mission statement. It’s one thing if you simply lack the time, but this isn’t the case here.
There is an economy of scale issue that I don’t think you’re acknowledging here.
It isn’t just that it would add a little more work to the curators. It’s that it would have the potential of adding such a huge burden of work to the curation queue that it could potentially cause a breakdown in the curation queue.
If something like this were implemented, there’s nothing stopping every single user on this website from applying for expert status. This could mean potentially millions of expert claims that would then have to be independently verified by curators to determine if someone is truly an expert on a taxa. That isn’t even asking the question of how would curators even determine expert status.
Sure, traditional academia would be the standard path here, but even PHDs aren’t going to know everything and there are going to be specific things they’re experts on. Meanwhile, I know someone who is considered to be the leading expert on a particular genus and yet he certainly didn’t take the path of traditional academia.
Okay, maybe you could make a minimum requirement of IDs or Observations - but I have seen some mass IDers that do nothing but mass-agree on things that already have multiple agreeing IDs. And I’ve seen experts who barely post.
And to what benefit? For a little badge that only some people will pay attention to and that could exacerbate the issue we already have where people just blindly agree with identifiers because they think that they must know what they’re talking about?
As far as I see it, this is inventing a problem that barely exists and proposing a solution that would absolutely not work well when scaled up.
Especially because its really not that difficult for users who care to look to figure out who is a competent IDer/expert of certain taxa - if you question a leaderboard ranking, just look at their profile, most specialists love to write about what interests them.