Improving iNaturalist's Rate of Accurate “Research Grade” Observations by Better Promoting, Explaining, and Improving Visibility of, the “Withdraw” Option

Great!

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I agree with your overall point which is one I have raised here before. Though I’m not sure changing the Help section is enough of a solution (I for one have never seen the text you mention). Perhaps another, or complimentary, option could be to have a pop-up confirmation dialogue come up for novice users after they click on “Agree” with clarification comments as you mention. So, sort of like the pop-up we already have that comes up when you ID to a more general level than already given by someone else and you have to clarify whether you expressly disagree with that ID, or it is simply that you are only confident to the more general level. Though in this case it is important that it only comes up for novice users (e.g. set it so that every user only experiences it the first few times they click Agree, and then never again). Otherwise the additional click is simply wasting the time of regular identifiers.

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I try to include a link to recent literature. If the original poster wants to look it up that helps them, and it helps me remember what I sourced to offered that ID. This helps in areas that are not covered so extensively as the USA/Europe. Also helps the authors get their publications more widely noticed…often long-overdue revisions that are so valuable. I wish more identifiers would take a few seconds to back up their IDs with links, that would help what you refer to, the problem of instant agreements. From my POV, I want to learn why they do/do not agree with me.

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Ask - most identifiers are delighted to have someone who shares their interest in that taxon. Copypasta on every ID … not going to happen.

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Your idea sounds like the “gold standard” for Identifying. Welcome to the forum!

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Thank you. It makes sense, it’s easy, and raises the quality of the posts of the OP and your own, and of the entire database. Contacting the other poster privately of course can be done, and I have done that, but then the general community does not learn anything about the decision making or peculiarities of that species. If you concentrate on ID’ing Asteraceae genera or frogs, surely you have the latest studies/links handy.

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Thank you bsteer! I didn’t intend to say that changing the help section was enough, but only that the Help sections instructions for “Agreeing” illustrated that iNaturalist has not been explaining the option to “Withdraw” well enough, and that the Withdraw option should clearly be explained within the section explaining “Agree”. I then offer a suggested improved text in the Help section explaining when to Agree. Maybe that whole section should be titled something like “To Agree, to Withdraw, or to just leave your initial ID up?” Your pop-up for new users sounds like it might be a good way to teach new users whether it is indeed appropriate in this situation for them to “Agree”, or maybe if it would be more appropriate for them to “Withdraw”, or maybe for them to just leave their initial ID standing. It might be a good way to teach my student who agrees with every ID I offer that is not the same as his initial ID.

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Thank you Barbara!
While I agree that it is good for the identifier, who is not offering an ID that is just agreeing with the original poster’s ID, to answer that “Why?” question in that box after they offer their ID with some kind of explanation for why they have given that different ID, it wasn’t my intent in this whole Forum subject to be asking, or suggesting, how individual iNaturalist users could do better, but how iNaturalist could do better in directing its users how to respond when someone following them makes a different ID from their initial ID. That is when to Agree, vs when to Withdraw, or when to just leave one’s ID standing. I tried to explain this in the beginning, but it might not have been clear enough. It is also why I later thought I might better have had this subject in “Feature Requests”, but failed to be able to change it after 8 days in “General”.

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You can ask moderators to move it to Feature Requests for you

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I definitely think that there should be a “Withdraw” button to the right of the “Compare” button of one’s own ID just like there’s an “Agree” button to the right of the “Compare” button of someone else’s ID.

I doubt changing the instructions would help much since most folks don’t read instructions. But it wouldn’t hurt.

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Yeah, I notice that identifications in the genus or family level get way less attention than do identifications at the species level. When someone disagrees with an ID without explanation, the classification goes up a branch (or few) and the dispute hardly gets solved unless the species is a vertebrate.

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Perhaps I’ve misunderstood what you mean here – and if so, my apologies – but questions and discussions can, and often do, take place in the comments of an observations as well, which provides a useful resource for the general community.

A quick example from my own observations is this one, where a broad identification of Diptera (flies) was whittled down to species-level based on particular features (cited in the comments), along with a discussion of nomenclature regarding some of the Syrphidae (hover flies).

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I second that. Huge blocks of text, Tutorials and Help sections look boring or scary to many.

Why not a concise, clear, educational, gentle message displayed a couple of times, asking novice users for confirmation whenever they agree with some ID (to deter blind agreement)?

[Off-topic, beating a dead horse] While we’re at it: why not a similar message box for novice users, upon their:

  1. first obs (e.g. “please double-check whether it is wild or captive/cultivated”);
  2. first multiple-obs upload (“is it really one observation with five pics?”);
  3. first non-identified obs (improve the existing text with AI suggestion of a broad taxonomic rank);
  4. first very-out-of-place obs (“no previous record of X Y on this continent, please confirm”)
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All those helpful messages, simply need, a Do Not Show Me This Again box to tick.

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In a related discussion in 2021, some suggested replacing “Agree” with something like, “Confirm”, to reduce the frequency of agreeable people simply agreeing. My comment in case useful, followed by the mock-up I’d made:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/add-extra-confirmation-step-when-agreeing-with-ids-on-own-observations/6316/26?u=colinpurrington

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Text for the box

Your ID?

To remind newbies, that it is their chosen answer to a question.
Not click , tick, done.

I’m definitely for this, but it’s not particularly simple. Just for mobile it would require:

  • text that makes sense and will fit in a small area
  • translation of that text by volunteer translators
  • design: what will it look like, how will it pop-up, where is the “don’t show again” button, how does it fit in with the overall design, etc
  • coding
  • until we decided to make a new single app for both Android and iOS, this would have required design work and coding for two separate apps
  • bug testing
  • release through app stores
  • (plus other stuff i’m sure I’m not thinking about since I’m not a developer)

I’m not saying it’s not doable, but there’s a good amount of work and coordination involved for something like that.

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OK, forget it - hadn’t realized the amount of work and trouble involved :) Fortunately, “garbage” data that is not filtered when gathered by iNaturalist can still be fixed further downstream (e.g. on GBIF and the such).

Yes, trying to explain every ID feels a bit like shouting into the void! I generally only write explanations if someone asks (which is always nice), if it’s a particular mistake I see getting repeated over and over, or if it’s a tricky ID between very close lookalikes.

I used to comment a lot more, but there’s only so many times you can try to explain “I know the Computer Vision suggested great blue whale, but this is actually a fig tree in a suburban lawn” before you lose your sanity.

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On a slightly tangential note, when explaining “Research Grade” to non iNaturalist users, I say the ID has been “Confirmed”. I prefer this to “Research Grade”, as “Research Grade” to me almost sounds pompous, especially considering the number of mis-identified “Research Grade” observations there are (many after the second ID came with an “Agree” from someone who didn’t recognize that taxon), and “Research Grade” isn’t self-explanatory, “Confirmed”, on the other hand, would be self-explanatory.

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