Sorry if I’m missing some nuance here, but it seems like the simplest way to address OP’s concern (@ overload) is adding a privacy checkbox to user settings: “ opt out of leaderboard ranking”.
What is the purpose of showing “top ten identifiers” if not to identify a few individuals likely to be proficient with the specific taxon? If not interested in volunteering the effort to participate in that part of the volunteer enterprise, why must it be compulsory? “Ignore” seems like an option already within user control, but I have no idea what the difference is between a “worthy” and an “unworthy” notification for the folks so troubled…
I am gathering from the thread that “top ten identifiers” may actually never identify the taxon they end up “leading”? [mind boggles] In which case, for sure, What is the purpose of the taxon leaderboard?
You’re not missing nuances. It’s a big glaring gulf between two points of view.
On the one side, there are folks who think leaderboards should be non-optional, because they think they are useful, and allowing people to opt out may compromise their utility (at least, that is my understanding). In general, these folks agree that some of the functional deficiencies should be fixed. On the other side are folks who think they should be allowed to simply opt out, regardless of whether or not the deficiencies are fixed. Since pretty much everything else on iNat is optional, why not this as well?
Right??? That has been my argument all along. You would think this is not a huge ask.
Every identifier’s situation is going to be unique. In my case, most tags are completely unnecessary. Local folks know (or figure out pretty quickly) that I look at almost all observations in our region for the taxa with which I have expertise. They just have to give it a day or two - that’s just being realistic in a situation where the identifier is reviewing all the observations in a systematic fashion. Response time isn’t going to be instantaneous. If I don’t look at an observation, there’s likely a reason, and no amount of tagging is going to get an ID out of me. So most tags that come out of the blue are from local people who tag me at the same time they submit their observation (not even giving their observation a chance to get indexed into our project), or they’re someone who has contrived to opt out of our project, or they’re someone from some other part of the world who I can’t really help. Maybe some variation of this scenario applies to other identifiers as well, but I can’t speak for them. But as I said, the tags resulting from the leaderboard are a relatively minor irritation. I just don’t like being on the leaderboard, period. It bothers me. I shouldn’t even need to justify it. For the love of all that is decent and holy - we have a platform dedicated to recording natural history observations and observers are allowed to hide the location and date of their observations (not to mention their identities), NO QUESTIONS ASKED. That’s pretty much subverting the fundamentals of what the platform does. I should have the same courtesy wrt a largely superfluous feature like leaderboards. To my mind, it’s small potatoes by comparison. I don’t care that somebody likes the leaderboards and feels they get good use out them. Participation should not be compulsory. It’s like we’re being punished for working too hard (which shouldn’t really surprise me I suppose). Hmmm… I guess one way around it would be to create multiple accounts and rotate through them so none ever gets very high on the leaderboards. That might just be crazy enough to work.
Right???
I submit that one can be perfectly willing to do all the work associated with being tagged and still not want one’s name to be on a leaderboard. Not wanting to be on the leaderboard and being bothered by inappropriate tags can be two separate complaints. Addressing one doesn’t necessarily address the other. My main beef is with my being forced to be on the leaderboard against my will. Of course, there’s one quick and sure fire way to get my name off the leaderboards …
Delete your account? I suppose that’s the nuclear option but seems unnecessary. There are those who have left iNat or died, but their account is still in place, and they continue to top certain leaderboards even though they’re inactive. Anyone who tags them has not done even the basic effort of checking their profile for recent activity. Some who rely on leaderboards for tagging purposes have suggested a dead person should not be on one. I strongly disagree. If you earned that spot, whether you wanted it or not, whether you’re active or not, you will be on the leaderboard. Unless, of course, some opt-out “Do Not Disturb” mechanism is someday implemented as proposed here.
We have invasive Australian plants, and we turn to taxon specialists for those sp. And in turn our Cape plants invade and we are asked – is this, one of yours, and if so, which ?
Many websites collect and display user data. Gamification is only one of many reasons for making this information visible.
Having one’s user statistics displayed is not generally optional except in cases where a completely private account setting exists. While iNat allows a fair amount of customization, activities on iNat are intended to be public, and I would argue that the functioning of the website depends on this. Beyond a very few mechanisms that limit access in specific settings (personal messages; certain moderation activities that are only visible to curators), there are few private or semi-private options for participation in iNat: observers do not have the option to create observations that are not published on the website; there are no private groups in which only members can see or contribute content, etc.
Identifiers can hardly expect that their individual identifications are not displayed on observations – this would defeat the purpose of making identifications --, and it is important to be able to have ways to find who identified what and sometimes it is useful to know how often that person identified something. This information is accessible in other ways than the leaderboards, though some of it would be time-consuming to extract otherwise.
I am slightly uncomfortable having my username at the top of several leaderboards, because I see it not as evidence of expertise but as evidence of spending too much time on iNat. But ultimately nobody forced me to make all those IDs; if I feel that this is somehow problematic, that is something for me to resolve with my own conscience and decide whether I want to change my actions going forward. I do not blame iNat for displaying the facts about what I have ID’d and how many times, and the existence of the leaderboards (and thus, the potential for ending up on them) has never been a secret, so iNat has not violated any social contract that I did not implicitly accept when I began using it. I don’t think it would be reasonable for me to expect iNat to selectively hide my statistics just because I find it embarrassing. I do, however, think the statistics should it should reflect actual IDs and not observations I have provided some other ID for, and I would like it to be made more clear to other users what the statistics represent (i.e. they are not a measure of skill).
I also think it would be highly problematic to present identification or observer statistics while allowing users to opt out, because this would result in a highly skewed list. This has nothing to do with the usefulness of lack thereof of the leaderboards, but rather that statistics need to be honest about what they represent, and a list of user numbers that only displays a somewhat arbitrary selection of users (namely those users who have not opted out) does not meet the criterion of good data. If this proposal included a workable suggestion about a different way to display user numbers without suggesting that the list of users is in any way complete or representative, I think there would be a stronger case for allowing opting out.
To my knowledge there has been no communication from staff explicitly indicating that they do not intend to consider some form of opting out from leaderboards. The fact that this feature request was approved and the thread has not been closed (in spite of going repeatedly off topic) suggests that they are open to hearing arguments.
But if you want to convince other users and staff that they should adopt the idea, it would seem strategically desirable to base your arguments on more than “I dislike leaderboards on principle and I object to being forced to be included on them”.
In particular, it would seem important to demonstrate that this change would not create additional problems – that is, that the benefits would outweigh the disadvantages for the community as a whole (this would include its effects on identifiers who have not opted out, on observers, and on those who find the leaderboards are not completely useless if used responsibly).
It is also difficult to explore what kinds of problems the leaderboards are causing in practice and what approaches might address these problems if you are starting from the uncompromising position that the only possibilities you would consider acceptable as a solution for your complaint are either allowing users to opt out of leaderboards or getting rid of them entirely.
just to mention based on some above conversations, people generally do not find me from leaderboards; But I add some ids to their observations and then they will be tagging me.
This seems like a way of shutting down people who don’t agree with you. You’ve made really good points - I think maybe spiphany is just saying that it’s important to recognise the impact of decisions on the wider community and not just ourselves and our personal emotions. If you want things to change, you have to include arguments that aren’t only from a personal perspective.
It was never my intention to suggest your feelings don’t matter. As I outlined in the post just above yours, I am not without sympathy for your discomfort with the leaderboards.
My point was that making changes to the leaderboards would affect a lot more than just the individual users who might choose to opt out, and that finding a solution that works for everyone is therefore likely to be complex.
My suggestion was entirely pragmatic: generally if one wants to convince other people to make changes, it is going to be more effective to demonstrate that it is in their interest, or at least that the change will not result in disadvantages for them. If you want people to recognize your feelings, it helps to also recognize that other people have their own feelings, and these may not always align with yours.
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Edit: A bit of context that might be relevant: I am in the EU, which has a fairly extensive and restrictive data privacy regulation which is based on the principle that individuals have a right to determine how their personal data is used. As part of my work I have been required to participate in trainings on data privacy and under what circumstances personal data can be shared, when permission is required, and when people have a right to object. I’m in no way a lawyer, but as I understand the law, the sort of information included on the leaderboards is something that I have no reasonable expectation to be kept private according to these regulations, because the underlying data is something I submitted voluntarily to a public website. This means that, whatever my feelings about the leaderboards, I do not see them as a violation of my rights or as something that iNat should be required to rectify – rather, it is a personal issue and it is up to me to find a way to deal with it.
If you are starting from a different understanding about what your rights are, the situation may look rather different and you may well consider the leaderboards an unacceptable infringement of your rights to self-determination and privacy.
What if instead of opting out of leaderboards there was an option to opt out of tags. This wouldn’t address the discomfort at being on leaderboards but could address the excessive tags.
It could even be set up as more flexible than entirely opting out of tags. I’m imagining a multi select dropdown on your profile with options like
Allow all tags
Allow tags on observations I have interacted with (as an observer, identifier, or commenter)
Allow tags from whitelisted people (then add a list for whitelisting people e.g. taxon specialists on the same taxon you regularly interact with or your friends)
Allow tags from whitelisted places ( the observation location would need to be that place, so you can stay in your areas of expertise)
Block all tags
Then you could possibly display an icon near their name indicating that you cannot tag them (or alternatively an icon for the positive indicating that you can tag them) and when you try to send a tag to them it displays a warning saying the user can’t be tagged.
I think a similar warning could be showed for users who have been inactive for more than 6 months or something like that.
My one concern is that displaying this publicly could have some stigma if only a few people do it since there seem to be strong opinions about people’s availability out there, but I think if it was commonplace it would be less of a stigma. There could even be an informational text by the opt-out-warning saying many people have been overwhelmed with excessive messages and have had to limit which tags they can receive.
I think this would help the identifiers limit which messages they get and also help the taggers because they can find those who do want to be tagged more easily and can avoid wasting time tagging someone who can’t help them.
A not-inconvenient shortcut might be to include a NO TAGS banner as part of the profile image on the account. That would certainly save time for all involved.
This thread has nudged my future behavior to check profiles before tagging. If there is no specific admonition not to tag, and the person is relatively close geographically (“semisphere”?) I’ll go ahead and tag them.
This is the purpose of my post, to be clear: asking someone to add an ID is different from asking someone to help you learn what you’re looking at, like which genus, which features matter, which lookalikes to rule out. My example was the second. We weren’t asking anyone for an ID. We wanted to learn what it was and what it might be.
That’s why I keep coming back to the same idea: a way for users to show they’re open to helping others learn. Identifiers who don’t want that kind of contact are left to their own devices, and observers know who to ask.
Isn’t “wanting to learn what it might be” precisely asking for ID help?
Even if you didn’t want information in the form of an ID being entered on the observation, there nonetheless is no guarantee I would be able to say anything useful about an observation in a part of the world I have no experience with.
Um, in many cases checking profiles would answer these questions. But if people don’t take the time to read profiles, why would they pay attention to a symbol to indicate whether a user wants to be contacted or not?
This also would not guarantee relevance. I am generally quite willing to answer questions from users, but if they ask me about taxa or regions I know nothing about, neither one of us benefit from this: my time is wasted and the user does not get the information they are seeking.
“Too broad” isn’t typically about the scope of the request; it generally means that the request isn’t formulated precisely enough and it is therefore unclear what the change would entail and what implementing it would look like.
In this case, the original request was vague about whether this is a request to allow people to remove themselves from the leaderboards or just prevent themselves from being eligible for @ mentions. It doesn’t specify which leaderboards would be affected (they appear in several places: on observation pages, on taxon pages, in Explore, and are calculated somewhat differently in each place).
It also doesn’t specify how the “top 10” are to be calculated or whether opted-out users (for whatever definition of “opt out” is being used) would be included in this count, and whether their position would be displayed as a blank line or the next-highest user would be silently promoted. It doesn’t specify what happens to the person who was originally number 11 on the list once at least one person in the top 10 has opted out, and whether this person would now be eligible to opt out themselves. It doesn’t specify whether the choice to opt out would be on a per-taxon basis or for all applicable taxa. These are fairly major questions that would significantly affect whether implementation is feasible or not.
I actually think the “top 10” restriction is the biggest issue with the request, regardless of one’s view of the underlying question about whether users should be able to opt out in general. In other words, I think it there would be fewer logical and logistical problems with a proposal for allowing universal opting out from leaderboards (for all taxa and all positions on the leaderboard). Because top 10 is, by definition, relative: it depends not only on what taxon is being referred to, but what location and any number of other search criteria. If one sets the filters in Explore narrowly enough, any user who has made at least one ID for an observation in a given taxon would be in the top 10, making this restriction fairly meaningless.
Ok, perhaps the original requestor ( @rafael_gianni) can edit the feature request accordingly. I checked, and I wasn’t able to find any previous feature request along these lines. If the requestor doesn’t want to change this feature request, I can create a new one that is more specific.
No. Asking for an ID is asking for a verdict. Asking what something might be is asking for a second opinion: features, morphology, lookalikes. Different requests, even if they arrive in the same comment box. A lot of what gets learned about an observation happens in that gray area, before anyone is ready to commit to a name. That’s how the Diplotomma question got answered.
I already check profiles, as I said earlier. New users don’t know to, and nothing on the site tells them to. Contact preferences that only live in profiles are a bit like a “please knock” sign posted inside the room. Site-wide etiquette for contacting people isn’t something anyone can count on soon, if at all. A colored dot on the leaderboard for users who’ve opted in as “ambassadors” would work now, and it shows up where people are already looking.
This makes the case for the opt-in. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it’s come up a few times in this thread. A regional default handles location; an opt-in signal handles willingness. Nobody should have to walk on eggshells just to ask a question, ID request or not.
Professionals, scientists, and researchers reach out to colleagues all the time when something doesn’t add up. Not knowing everything is normal, and relying on others’ eyes and knowledge is how anyone gets to a clearer answer.
Nobody is asking anyone to answer outside their expertise. That’s exactly what an opt-in is for: the people who want those questions get them, and everyone else is left alone.
If you’d like to continue this, feel free to message me directly.
opt out of leaderboard ranking”.