Quite a lot of you suggest is debatable at best, somewhat contradictory, and a bit disrespectful.
A handful of pesky identifiers? Considering that the amount of people who run the vast majority of ID’s are a comparative handful to the total, seems that could be worded better.
Just a thought here, is it possible that they are happy because of identifiers?
With some taxa it’s pretty darn good. But why don’t you ask the Millipede crowd how it works for them. I can also say that for bees it has rather painfully obvious shortcomings.
I read that as referring to a subgroup of identifiers who might be called “pesky” for various reasons. Not all IDers. I find that those iNatters, or at least those who are forum users, who might be least satisfied with iNat are those who focus on hard-to-ID taxa which the CV isn’t very helpful in addressing. I can understand that frustration although we all know that not all taxa lend themselves to a quick and accurate ID. Most of the taxa I focus on tend to be relatively easy to ID so I’m possibly more satisfied with how the site works than others.
Some taxa are more readily IDed from photos than others. For those the CV works pretty well. Other taxa might never be easily IDed from photos and for those the CV will always be inadequate. And for some taxa, the CV has a lot more material to work with so will improve more rapidly than for less-often observed taxa.
That is a loaded statement. Remember - someone with an active iNat profile - who comes to look, but without logging in - is dumped with the lurkers.
(An echo of iNat conflating Not Wild with missing Date, Location, Media - chuck it all in the bin!)
I cannot find it again - but there were stats from iNat’s side. Think of that Pareto / tip of the iceberg principle. A lot of people come to iNat - to look something up, check distribution, what does that flower / fruit look like. Lurking? No.
That’s a good point, Diana. It was a good article that you linked to, too. You encounter lurkers in real life, too. How many times have you bumped into someone, and they say, “I was just thinking about you!” or “I was just talking about you!” They were “engaging with your content”, but not letting you know.
The Not citizen Science thing stands out to me too.
But thats because at the National Park Visitor Centre I am in, I pretty much talk to visitors about inat most days, and selling it as citizen science is something I do. But not as any specific project, but contributing to a pool of data which allows helps large ammounts of research. Its part of a way I encourage people to post obs locally so I can learn more about species in our park which I may not have spotted yet. Many people are motivated by the idea something they can do helps science, and that may be the difference between them just posting thier pics on social media vs putting them on a science platform.
That can work in a setting like this, where it has no real-world repercussions. However, it should be noted that in real-world situations where there are repercussions, the only time someone suggests “agree to disagree” is when those repercussions are de facto the same as a win for them. So if it seems like someone is unwilling to let it go when you propose agreeing to disagree, it may be that they have had real-world experiences like that.
I think that this does not reflect part of the current reality that I am seeing, that is: people or CV (I’m in Australia and the CV is frequently crap and intrusive) putting up inaccurate IDs and having this confirmed by someone who frequently has no personal records of that taxon - bingo RG. If this is for a taxon that no one has any particular interest in, then it is unlikely to be corrected. Another problem I see is the gaming of identifier status. This is evidenced by a sudden rush of confirmations of large numbers of records of a particular species where there are already 4, 5 or more confirmations, by someone who has no background in the species. Sometimes I feel like I have strayed into Questagame rather than iNat.
What was left unsaid in that paragraph is what created the tension.
What could the pre-inat scientists, wanting to encourage engagement, have done differently in support of the hobbyists? Were the scientists supposed to follow the citizens home to comment on the plants in their backyards? Before iNat, it was kinda difficult to engage with citizens about what the citizens were seeing at any place other than the park.
I identify plants stuck at higher levels, and there are literally thousands upon thousands of plant observations that will most likely never be identified higher than order or maybe family, and only by someone who is intimately familiar with the flora of a particular location. ID’ing plants only with some leaves or blurry photos is very hard, and it’s the same thing for fungi.
What you’re describing is a separate issue and a symptom of a lack of expert identifiers for many taxa, and that many identifiers don’t look at RG observations. And I guess any kind of gamification will attract overly competitive people, that can’t be avoided on a “democratic” platform where every user’s opinion is weighed equally. If you see such behavior, write a comment and explain nicely why the ID is wrong and how to do it better the next time.
I read that comment as a cynical take on how “corporate management” (yes, I know iNat is not a normal corporation…) might have different goals than us lab rats, not actual endorsement of those views. A way to understand why some tweaks that might make life easier for users stay buried for years. So you might want to hold your fire on that user-- their full context is definitely supportive of identifiers.
The conflicts or frustrations, as I see them (might not be complete):
Professional biologists and amateur naturalists: I know some biologists who get frustrated with poor photos, missing data, and the like and therefore don’t see iNat as a good resource, probably because they are used to working with collections and data sets that are much cleaner. Others recognize there is valuable data within the records if you spend the effort to look for it, even if all records don’t quite measure up. (I’m one of the latter.) There’s a broad continuum of expertise and experience among iNatters which can result in different expectations of how the site should function and what constitutes useful info. No two iNatters use the site in the exact same way.
Taxonomy: Some hate the taxonomic sources used on iNat and others are fine with them. Depends a lot on what taxa you focus on. Other users don’t care or don’t know there is controversy in some of the names being used. Taxonomic disagreements are not unique to iNat, they’ve been around since taxonomy began. (I learned to live with them long ago.)
Identifications: Yes, too few IDers for some taxa and some areas of the planet. Interest in and ability to document organisms varies greatly across taxa and by location. Some taxa can’t be reliably IDed from photos. The CV works great for some taxa, poorly for others, and is just plain wrong for some (resulting in many wrong IDs). That’s to be expected given the limitations of the AI and the info that photos provide. iNatters who focus on those taxa that are poorly served by the CV probably have the most frustration with this tool.
Feature requests: Too many for staff to address with the resources they have. Many are of interest to a small percentage of users and likely won’t ever be implemented. This likely results in some frustration that desired changes to the site don’t happen fast enough or at all.
In a hypothetical world where the amount of expert identification on iNat outweighed the amount of observation, the identifiers would eventually click the “as good as it can be” option in the DQA on observations that can’t be identified to species. Therefore, all observations would eventually become either RG (if identifiable to subfamily or lower) or else Casual. I think that’s the “optimistic notion” referred to.
In this register, I would mention a true expert of La Réunion flora that helped a lot, but:
he remained only 1 month on iNat because he could not stand how we do botanics on iNat,
he never added IDs, he added only comments (in French) meaning “I think it is…” (so his contributions are almost untractable),
I was surprised that on the one hand he helped me solve a several-year identification puzzle (whose solution was: an alternative form of the species Seriphium passerinoides, compare photos 1 and 2), but on the other hand we were in complete disagreement about the only observation on iNat of this species showing a tree ; I claimed having checked that the shoots belonged to the trunk and were not epiphytes on the trunk (because I knew that this tree was extraordinary and required extraordinary attention), but he remained locked in his conviction that my observation was false.
After being an active member of iNat for 3+ years and a reader of the forum for less than a year, I can only offer that iNaturalist offers me almost exactly what I want for my investigations into biodiversity and I will offer that it offers almost each of you almost exactly what you want, too. I find a place to indulge my interest in biodiversity, an app that gives me the opportunity to photograph, post and identify a myriad of species from a diversity of families, orders and kingdoms. It gives me a catalog of similar species to compare and contrast to what I see and an opportunity to take the identification of each individual to a level that wasn’t possible before I found the app. I used to bristle at the thought of identifiers taking credit for things I found, photographed and identified but now I’m totally fine with people agreeing, disagreeing or completely not noticing identifications I make.
I recognize that I am different than Identifiers in that I want to find my own creatures and identify my own creatures. Others prefer to identify creatures other people find and I think that is great because it creates order out of the chaos of millions of unlabeled photos of thousands of different species.
I have no idea what the founders of iNaturalist thought they were going to created. I wasn’t here when it happened (and I somewhat regret not being around to see it blossom into the chaotic beautiful mess it has become). All I can say is that:
it provides me with an outlet for a passion I have had since I was 8 years old,
it provides identifiers with multiple things to label and categorizes at a pace that is both exhilarating and overwhelming,
it provides the novice with the chance to connect with nature whether they choose to continue or not,
and it provides complainers with an unending stream of things to complain about all the while providing them with enough reason to return that they keep complaining and keep returning for years and years.
You may choose to see all this as conflicts, and maybe it is, but it is also a community that has been created by people with different world views and interests and iNaturalist seems to be sufficiently large and diverse that there is room for all of these differing interests. Whether by madness, incompetence, prescient foresight or blind luck, this community is roomy enough to satisfy a guy like me, who is interested in finding new creatures no one else has seen, while simultaneously satisfying someone who seldom travels but is willing to spend hours each day organizing the chaotic mess of poor photos and haphazard identifications and turning them into an orderly and well curated catalog.
Well done to the organizers and well done to each of you for caring enough about the world we live in to have strong thoughts and powerful opinions about our world and its unending diversity.
I might be seen as a lurker because I only rarely post or respond but I do read through the forum posts and discussions very regularly. But this is not lack of interest. My lack of response is usually because browsing through all the discussions I usually conclude that everything I could add has already been said, often many times, and better than I could have worded it. Having said that I personally just rather spend my time and efforts on what I think INaturalist is for and what it is best at: engaging with nature, sharing my interests and limited knowledge and giving what I find, see and enjoy a worthwhile place. If what I do here then adds a tiny little bit to encourage others to do and feel the same, ever better. I really can not see other people using INat in a different way or for different reasons as a conflict. Let’s leave conflicts for the Twitters and Facebooks of this world.
Hi jnstuart:
I know exactly what you meant. It’s difficult finding a proper non-teleological word or phrase. Evolution “designs” organisms, largely by eliminating the worst designs (aka death without offspring), but if you say some organism was “designed,” they’ll assume you meant some cosmic intelligence did the design work rather than the environment doing it.