It’s goldenrod season in North America, which means countless blurry distant photos with none of the visible identifying characteristics. Usually, I type out individual comments until I get too frustrated and give up identifying entirely. @Megachile 's amazing tool allows you to ID and comment a pre-made comment with the click of a button. This, in theory, can help in my goldenrod heck.
My question:
Is having a pre-made comment spam? At what point is that just too annoying to receive? Is it better or worse to say “Unable to be identified from this photo” versus a whole paragraph explaining? Fwiw, my current comment is:
I know many identifiers who have preset paragraphs or comments to correct common mistakes. Will some people get annoyed to be corrected, especially repeatedly in the same words from the same commenter? Of course they will. Does this mean you shouldn’t do? That’s your judgement. My suggestion would be to try, at least casually, to leave the same paragraph only once for each observer.
I’ve done this for thousands of observations in a session when pushing a CV issue taxon back from species to complex/genus. In that case in particular it’s possible to annoy a lot of observers who prefer a research grade observation, and I’ve found with a tactfully worded comment providing justification it really improves the response and people are generally appreciative. Having a link for them to explore more on their own is appreciated as well.
My stock comment generally just says I don’t think that the photo can be IDed to X level based on the evidence in pic/s. But I will sometimes tune with specifics if there is something interesting about the pic. I like the idea of adding a link to allow the comment to be short, and the comment above is constructive. I’d err on the side of including it, but as noted above, if you can remember, it probably only needs to be left one time for each user (at least in a given session).
To add to the comment from @dlevitis that I agree with completely:
I often do many IDs per day, and have a number of preset replies for various situations. At the end of my comment(s), because I can’t always remember who all I have sent which comment to, I often include something like this:
"(If you have gotten this ‘tip’ from me before, I apologize. Doing many IDs a day, I can’t keep track of all the photos and user names. My apologies if this is a duplicate note.)
I don’t know how many of the 30K IDs I have done that include comments and the “if you have gotten this before…” but it is quite a few. I have only had one (1) person who has replied that they WERE annoyed at getting the same comment twice.
I’d say go for it and that it is fine to have some preset comments.
As a beginner, I VERY MUCH appreciate comments like this and honestly don’t mind at all if they are posted on every observation of mine that they apply to. I appreciate identifiers taking the time to educate me. Others making similar comments have helped me vastly improve getting IDable photos. I even got an earthworm to species thanks to @thirty_legs tireless educational comments.
Edited to add that I just took a look at your guide and it is very helpful and also beautiful! Now I just need to find some goldenrod to photograph.
I feel like with a more concise comment people are more likely to feel like it’s a personalized comment and respond positively, but it’s not like you’re going to get many upset people from a neutral comment either way.
There’s one taxon where all the IDs I used to receive on it from one identifier (who was the primary identifier for that family in my area) where each ID for a particular species would have a whole paragraph of ID tips plus multiple links resources for identifying the family. That feels a bit more intimidating and is more obviously a copy-pasted response, but personally I still appreciate it in case I do ever feel like investigating that taxon in the future. I think most people heard about the Fly Guide from edanko and other users linking to it in similar kinds of comments and I think that’s been a huge benefit.
I think most observers appreciate a comment with tips or details if they’re curious about the ID of something they posted. On the other hand anyone with experience identifying knows that it takes extra effort to include a comment and that personalized comments are necessarily generally rare. So on balance if I receive a copy-pasted comment I still appreciate it because it’s more information than getting nothing. A blank ID is missing so much context that just a short sentence can easily provide.
If it is, then I’m guilty. I have several ready-to-paste commentaries that I can tailor to the situation. Usually, mine are the ‘New User: Wild Organisms, Please’ and ‘One Organism per Observation’, but I’m also working on some for Odonata species that have close look-alikes, with the tips on what diagnostic fearures are needed.
Also, since I’m certain that some of my Goldenrods are among the offenders, please accept my apologies. I’m not always bendy or non-wobbly enough to get the right photos, especially if the plant is far off the trail.
If someone gets the comment once, they have the chance to act on it and amend all their other examples of that mis-identification. If they don’t, they shouldn’t complain about getting the same comment again.
I’d treat a reusable paragraph as a starting point rather than a macro to paste everywhere. If one observer has several similar observations, commenting once and mentioning the pattern can avoid notification noise; a second sentence tailored to the photo or season keeps it welcoming. When the key features are visible, adding one specific observation is usually more helpful than repeating the full template.
Except. From the identifier’s side – if you are doing a taxon sweep in goldenrod season, that is asking a lot. Identifiers are all volunteers, with other commitments and interests.
If the observer is interested, and asks a question, then you can hope for a tailored to the photo or season answer.
Many observers aren’t even going to read whatever comments an identifier enters. If you’re reviewing older observations, the observer may not even be active anymore. I’m currently doing a review of old observations, and for a while I was entering a longer “canned” explanation for one of the ID revisions. I figured adding a big block of text to hundreds of observations might not be the best use of system resources (given the text probably wouldn’t even be read by anyone). So I started adding a shorter comment that contained a link to one of the observations that had the longer explanation (one sentence with a link vs a long paragraph). The only danger is that someday, somebody might delete the observation I’ve been linking to. Perhaps I should update my canned comment to reference an observation from an observer I can reasonably expect to NOT delete their observation/account…
Or you could write a short journal post with your explanations, since presumably your account (and journal entries) will exist as long as you are writing comments.
Thank you all for your thoughts! I had thought too hard about it and was feeling guilty for spamming people. Your perspectives are very helpful in figuring out how to do this kindly and with reasonable efficiency.
The side effect of using the pre-made text is it helps me not say something too snarky. A new observer has no idea that I’m being jokey-silly after 238 unidentifiable Subsection Triplinerviae IDs when I say “i’m dying” on their single Subsection Triplinerviae goldenrod observation
Oh… oh no… oh NO! I had not even looked at the full number and now I feel this in my bones I have three different goldenrod tattoos and I swear I’ll earn them with my ID work, but whew, that is a lot In some ways, this is my regional guilt and ethical duty to the international natural world for our native goldenrods becoming your weeds.
100% this, thank you for articulating this well. If I’m hand-writing individual advice, I will do maximum 50 IDs. If I can use my premade message, I can do hundreds in each sitting.
Example where my comment evidently left enough of a positive impression that they remembered it and came back to it 2 years later: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/235996251
This comment was workshopped over the course of many IDs to balance informativeness and firmness while not being too blunt (this species complex was pretty frustrating to get out of the CV).
I think if you’re attentive and have a large enough sample size (in this case >10,000 IDs resulting in dozens of observers commenting in response) you can get an impression of how a particular wording might be inspiring certain responses and modify accordingly. It’s kind of a fun sociological experiment to see how different people respond to the same message. :)
Even has taken it a step further and created a fully-interactive, dynamic key, which when linked to your iNat account can create and post your ID with a relevant comment attached that details the diagnostic features you selected with the key.
First, I’m very sorry. I have neglected studying goldenrods for so long. Every year, I’m definitely going to learn goldenrods this year. Every year, I forget to look up what I need to know.
So, no, it definitely does not count as spam, as long as it is informative and accurate. (I…guess it could be spam if you posted it on observations of Feral Pigeons???)
Taraxacum officinale is the 23rd most observed species with 276k observations currently… (Rock Pigeon is 9th) at some point there is going to need to be a taxon change along with probably significant ID effort in order to achieve a taxonomy consistent with iNat’s guidelines and external sources. I think basically every observer would get some notifications from that.
I have three different goldenrod tattoos and I swear I’ll earn them with my ID work, but whew, that is a lot 