This is a somewhat hefty declaration. Most people are just identifying to their best knowledge. However, some people will deliberately change the tide in a malicious way. If that’s the case, you can flag it. But usually it is innocent and just how somebody chose to ID something. Everybody uses the site in their own way and that’s part of what makes the site what it is.
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Maybe a shorter explanation option than to have a back-and-forth wirh every single observation is to add a note/link to a journal discussing this reasoning to your profile so that when you up-level the ID to genus, all you’d need to type is “see my profile”?
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100%. iNat is a community, and the best thing to do is to talk to the user who added the ID. They unfortunately may not always reply (for various reasons), but I don’t want this Forum to become a place to vent or speculate on the motivations of others. If so, then the Forum is a failure.
If you want to get an understanding from a large group of people (aka Forum users) why they do a certain thing on iNat, that’s great and is what this place is for - for people to share and understand each other and have constructive discussions. I’ve learned a lot about the various ways people use and think about iNaturalist.
Anyone can add any ID they believe the evidence shows, and they can choose whether to disagree or not disagree with the Community Taxon. How does a coarser ID that doesn’t disagree with the Community Taxon affect anything? If they do disagree, then either they think the evidence doesn’t support the Commuity Taxon, they’re confused by the disagreement modal (which is understandable), or they’re purposely messing with your observation. Only the last reason is prohibited and would be considered “sabotage”. If you believe that’s the case, then flag the ID.
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Sometimes people just actually don’t think there’s sufficient evidence to go to as a specific degree as the observation is currently at. Happens a lot with the genus Lotus for me. Without clear shots of the leaves, it’s impossible to properly tell species apart. Some people will mark it down to genus and say that’s the best it can be so that it is a RG observation but at genus. I’ve seen scuffling ensue over that method but it makes sense to me and I have no problem with it.
Edit: Ugh-a-duh. Just reread that and that was the first thing listed. Oopsies.
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That’s how I used to manage my assorted comments. For me, on an iPad, I find using a series of auto text shortcuts is faster, as I don’t have to click in a different window and find the text to copy, then click the first window to paste.
If someone has several pictures of different species on one observation , I type “mult” which triggers a recommendation to split them into separate observations.
For those potted plants and garden shots, I type, “PictureThis”; and the device auto inserts “You may also enjoy using an app called PictureThis, which is designed to ID landscaping plants.”
(Apologies for drifting a bit off topic)
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I think I agree (more or less) with every one of the contradictory opinions expressed here!
It is frustrating when the identification gets changed to a broader category without explanation. However, I do this sometimes, especially when I’m tired or when I’m IDing something I rarely work on but I know for sure it’s not the species it’s identified as. Sometimes I write “Not species A” when moving it to genus, not a big help.
I feel kind of apologetic about moving observations to “Dicots” or “Monocots” because they’re such big, diverse groups. But sometimes I don’t know what the plant is, just what it isn’t. So I’m doing my best but it’s not very good.
What’s a help is my “iNaturalist responses” document, which has explanations for issues I see a lot. I copy and paste an explanation. My planty equivalents of “In this group of spiders, species-level identification usually requires examining the genitalia under a microscope,” which @benjamin_fabian might use. (Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you for identifying spiders! The need is great!) Those keyboard short-cuts look intriguing, but I’ll probably stick with copy-and-paste.
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Exactly this.
The buttons that we have to click in the iNat user interface when we don’t know what something is (to the same taxon level), or we know what it isn’t, have very clear labels so there can be little doubt what they are for.
I guess, however, people who don’t ID regularly may never see those buttons and the lengths iNat has gone to to make it clear what they are for - and so in such a case, perhaps a non-IDer wouldn’t necessarily understand why we click what we click. Hence this thread, I guess!
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I recognize jumping spiders but now, as a result of having several species to genus changes, my choice is genus and leave it at that. If someone changes it to species that is fine too. I try not to make this a personal competition.
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I wonder - in these frustrating cases did you feel you had enough knowledge for species-specific ID and felt 100% sure it was what you IDed? Because if not - why frustration? Instead, there should be curiosity - why it is not what I named it and where I was wrong. Did you ever go checking literature or internet resources or asked why your ID was downgraded?
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I agree with several other commenters here that the whole point of clicking disagree is to say “it’s definitely NOT the taxon you’ve selected, but at least I know it’s in this broader taxon”. For example, if I’m identifying a species I know very well, I may come across dozens of observations that are some related species, but clearly NOT the species they’ve been called. I don’t feel the need to comment “This isn’t the species you’ve identified it as, but it’s likely something else in this genus” every time I bump them back to genus, because I figure that’s the implied message in clicking disagree. The options when you go to broaden the ID specifically ask if you do or do not know the more specific ID to be wrong. If I click that I know the specific ID to be wrong, that’s what I mean. If people are clicking the disagree button when they mean “I don’t know”, that is pretty annoying.
I do think there’s a culture on iNat among some users to press for more specific IDs, even if they’re not warranted from what’s shown in the images. Personally I think it’s more detrimental to the value of the site when the “agree-bots” come through and bump things to Research Grade despite there being no good evidence of the ID than when skeptical people go through and disagree with IDs that aren’t very solid.
I think the burden of proof is on the person who claims to have the more specific ID. If you call something Helvibotys helvialis without any explanation, I bump it back to Pyraustinae, and you comment with a valid reason why your original ID was correct (it was dissected or DNA-barcoded), I’ll gladly update my ID to the species level. But in my view, users giving impossibly specific IDs based on the AI suggestions without any valid explanation is the problem- not the curators who come through to give a reality check. Honestly some days when I go through a moth family that I know really well and see hundreds of “Research Grade” obviously wrong IDs, I wish the site had more “disagree-bots” to keep the unwarranted specificity at bay.
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Nobody likes to disagree by adding a broader ID, very few people do that for fun or for ‘sabotage’. Bumping species back to genus or whatever is the boring part of identifying - but it is essential.
The key words here are “as possible”. What carries more importance is not being specific, but being correct. If someone has uploaded a fly and called it Syrphus ribesii but the picture doesn’t show the hind femur of a female, I’m going to knock it back to Genus Syrphus, or even tribe Syrphini if I’m not sure it’s a Syrphus. That is because the species ID is more specific than possible, it is the bane of science - precision without accuracy. That is not blasé or unhelpful, it is exactly how the site is supposed to work.
I’m not going to leave an explanation on every observation because I have another 6000 Syrphus to get through, many of them will need to be left at genus because it’s a hard genus, and most people are simply not interested in the explanation. If I see signs that the person might be interested in an explanation (something they’ve said in a comment, or they’ve clearly worked an ID out themselves rather than using the CV to make their ID) then I will leave an explanation.
If they ask for an explanation I will always try to take the time to provide one. If I don’t it is because I have missed the tag, or I can’t find it in my notifications later, which occasionally happens. I think the vast majority of identifiers are the same. This is the best course of action if you are interested in why someone has put your ID back up some levels: simply ask them politely what their thinking was: they will probably take the time to tell you.
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To then have someone come along later and intentionally make a more general ID seems senseless, pointless and dysfunctional…almost an act of sabotage.
Not only is it not beneficial, it can cause problems later for anyone searching for a specific ID.
I don’t get the blasé attitude of the iNat peeps on this issue. One would think the whole idea of making an observation as specific as possible would be a beneficial goal and carry more importance.
This seems like an unrealistic scenario you’re describing here. I would recommend not jumping to ascribe malicious intent so quickly, maybe ask the user to explain their disagreement or tag another user with expertise on the group to see if they have thoughts. If you really sincerely believe there are specific incidents where someone is maliciously adding disagreeing ID’s that would be a good use for the “flag” feature to get curators involved.
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What bugs me is what seems to be an iNat culture pushing for species-level IDs always when that, in the vast majority of cases for things that are not vertebrates, is impossible. As an identifier mostly of arthropods, selecting “No [there is not enough evidence this is (species)], but it is a member of (higher taxa)” most often means you cannot identify that species without further drastic steps like microscopy or (as in the case with almost all beetles) finding a male specimen, killing it, and pulling out its genitalia. Even high-quality photos really don’t cut it for fine ID for the vast majority of species on Earth; inherently fraught when you’re on a website for identifying organisms from photographs!
That being said, I try to offer an explanation as often as I can, because I know this is a foreign concept to amateur naturalists – exactly the kind of people who should be using iNat! – but it is simply not practical to do that on an individual scale for the 500th time for every observation I’ve looked at that day. If it’s a case of “this species/genus/family/etc. is not found on this continent”, sure, but it’s kind of unrealistic to expect identifiers to run through a crash course in unlearning “vertebrate chauvinism” in ID standards for every observation they disagree with.
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Wondering a bit how commentless disagreement squares with: Identification Etiquette on iNaturalist - Wiki? I understand that the volume of observations vs. identifiers might encourage it, but just a thought.
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I don’t find that at all helpful. If I come across a observation like that, I often think, “I don’t know enough to be constructive,” and move on without adding anything.
No, they don’t. They ask if there is enough evidence to confirm the ID. Which is easily misunderstood by someone who doesn’t necessarily know what evidence to look for.
And now people are invalidating @mazer . I honestly understand how mazer feels. That was the only reply I “loved” in this thread. Even if I didn’t post my identification process, I still had one. Especially if it is a species I had been wanting to find, or a first-for-region, then yes, bumping it back does feel like sabotage. Even if it is done for the valid reasons people have described.
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There are plenty of cases where it is very helpful. I know a lot about Rallids, but say I didn’t know much about distinguishing hawks and falcons. If someone adds a computer vision ID of “Common Gallinule” to an observation showing a raptor sitting in the marsh, I know plenty to “constructively” say this is not a gallinule. Birds would be the highest common taxon between hawks and falcons.
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I diagree that this is helpful. Now, if you could distinguish between Falconiformes and Accipitriformes, adding either of those IDs to an observation originally IDed as a Common Gallinule would indeed bump it back to “Birds”; but it would do so in a way that gives them something to work with – at the very least, they could then perhaps withdraw their ID and it would jump forward to order, for instance. But just saying “Birds” provides no information for them to work with, and if they then withdraw their wrong ID (and why would they, if nobody has a better idea?), it is still just “Birds.”
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How is having a wrong ID better than having “nothing to work with”? At best, it still gives them nothing to work with because they still don’t have a correct ID. At worst, it makes the observation susceptible to serial IDers.
I personally would couple my ID with a comment “this appears to be a hawk or falcon” which would give them something to work with. But leaving it as a known incorrect ID sounds like the worst possible option.
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Not sure about cases by number of species, but if cases are observations, most of them are idable to species, if you check stats, RG species observations is what you mostly will see for older observations, some can take years to id, but unless it’s a very blurry photo or one of unidable genera, it will be ided to species by a right expert.
I was meaning “cases” for species on earth; it’s definitely true that most organisms posted to iNat are very common, and thus readily identifiable, though.
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