dont appologise! i didn’t know about that ap and i do work through unknowns, and did not know that ap so I can certainly add it in to my copypasta :)
And that makes sense, I use web interface on my computer so split screening is easy.
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If I don’t know what a plant is, but know it’s not what it’s identified as, I will continue to apply the best name I can to it even when that name is only “Plant” or “Dicot” or “Monocot.” That’s not very helpful, so why would I do that? Because I consider leaving it with the wrong species name to be even worse.
We have different styles of identifying. At least we’re both identifying, and that helps more often than it doesn’t.
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I think this is exactly what the forum is becoming. I really hate seeing these long topics that just seem to consist of people complaining about other people who are not violating any rules.
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I can’t speak for anyone else on this thread, but at least I can contribute my side of the story.
A lot of Melolonthinae larvae (in California, at least) have been misidentified as Cotinis mutabilis, which are distinctly different. I’m not saying I’m an expert on beetles or anything, but I just correct any IDs I am certain have been misidentified, which is why a lot of “Cotinis mutabilis” larvae I’ve corrected are broadened to Melolonthinae or even Scarabidae.
I believe that it is necessary to correct any misidentifications whenever possible, as they can be misleading to the people that use iNaturalist as a source to visually identify organisms. Feel free to contradict…
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Amen. Major identifiers seem to be getting a battering of late. I could personally not care less about what people think but perhaps if identifiers deleted our accounts in bulk (it’s a joke!) maybe there’d be a rebalance in appreciation. Maybe we should unionise? 
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I would love to provide a specific ID as an alternative when I know that the proposed ID is incorrect – but unfortunately sometimes I really have no idea beyond, for example, a very general “dicot”. I don’t enjoy adding such disagreeing IDs and I will generally apologize that I can’t help further. But I fail to see how not correcting such an ID helps anyone. It leaves an incorrect (albeit unverified) record in the database and unless it is a common misidentification for that species (which would show up as such on the taxon page), it is unlikely that someone who does know what it is would be looking for it under the wrong species. So my ID is not preventing an expert from being able to find the observation.
In cases where it is clear based on the observer’s notes that they have chosen a specific ID as a reasoned decision (rather than guessing or merely following the CV) and there is no concrete reason to suspect that it is not that species even though the evidence is not enough to positively confirm it, it has been my experience that a lot of IDers will choose to add a non-disagreeing higher-level ID rather than a disagreeing one. This strikes me as a reasonable way of respecting the needs of both parties, though as an observer one may have to be content with the observation not reaching “research grade”. I’m sorry if your experience has been that IDers actively disagree in such cases; I can see how that would be frustrating.
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Not reading it all, sorry. Just my thoughts, a few rules I try to abide by:
IDing is not an online game.
Disagreement happens for good reasons mostly.
Me feeling fine about my RG observation is not the goal of identifying.
If you cannot find the reason for disagreement yourself, then why don’t you just ask.
An observation that does not reach RG is not a bad thing. Better true than blandished.
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Yes, it definitely is.
In an age that celebrates “my opinion” as holy, not to be touched by anyone, especially not by them damned scientists, for many people it seems to be difficult to grasp how the scientific truth finding process actually works. They don’t seem to grasp that feeling offended by contradiction is part of the truth finding process, and overcoming this feeling of being offended is part of becoming a scientist. And, in a broad sense, a scientist is what an observer has to become if he even wants to think about identification in the first place.
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That’s easy to say when you only have 200 ID’s. Try that when you’re doing that output every day. If you are curious about someone’s disagreement, it’s very simple: ask them. I’m not going to explain to every single person (most of whom do not care) why their Pyrobombus can’t be ID’d to species. If someone asks, I’ll explain, because that person wants to know.
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This has been thoroughly covered already but to throw in mine.
A lot of us are doing multiple hundreds of ID’s a day. Spending more time on yours explaining why it can’t get to species means less time to get through other people’s observations (you did notice that there are 125 million observations?)
If you uploaded a picture with no notes adding extra detail in writing, then don’t get mad if the community ID ends up disagreeing with you. We can only work with the details given (pictures, location, date, notes). Remember, it’s a Community ID, not Community-Agreeing-With-You-ID. But, even if you include a note, I may still disagree: considering that I’ve found collection specimens ID’d by renowned experts that were wrong, it’s just possible that the ID that you keyed out from a key you found an hour ago, was wrong. I had a guy recently get mad at me for disagreeing with a finer ID, and said a well known ID’er (not on iNat to the best of my knowledge) had given the specimen the finer ID. But, he neglected to mention that little detail in the notes or say what details made it the finer ID. Still, it’s partially my fault; I forgot to activate my long-range mind reading ability to learn that from him, mea culpa. If you had an ID process but don’t include it, then I don’t see why I have to include mine.
The vast majority of people don’t particularly care what the ID is and if the observation is old may not be active any more, so I’m not going to explain to someone not interested or not there. If you want to know, @ or DM me, I’ll give as much explanation as I can in that case. Because for that I know the information is desired.
The statement that these disagreements is likely from new users, strikes me as un-researched. You can click on their profile and see exactly (to the day) how long they’ve been members and how active they are as identifiers. Assuming that if they disagreed with you they must be young or malicious is somewhat arrogant.
I got my knowledge with a lot of time, money, and the occasional bruise to my ego. I don’t see why I owe you what I earned. I’m willing to give it to people that I know want it, but I’m not giving it away like cheap Halloween candy.
I hope this isn’t seen as too harsh, but lately the attitude about the major identifiers has been rather, well, mercurial. One week it’s lamentation that there aren’t enough, the next week it’s condemnations: Mistakes are made! Gamers! No explanations! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
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What @benjamin_fabian said!
I am also into IDing spiders (however, actually except salticids… there are some knowledgable people already onto them :-)) and have the exact same issue. There are lots of spider that have to stay at genus level and I will sometimes push them back from a finer ID. However, I also often do not do that anymore (e.g. european Dolomedes) because of massive backlash… it´s just annoying and I have to be in the right state of mind to confront myself to that wave. I rather do something else.
On a side note: I get, why people wish for explanations, especially when you are very new to the game. It can be very frustrating to get IDs pushed back… been there.
Since IDing more I do absolutely understand, why an IDer will not give an explanation every time. I do give explanations in some cases: if there has been already a back and forth on the ID, if I know there are people involved that are interested to know why I IDed it in a certain way (observer or other IDers), if I go through a homogenous subset of observations for which copy-pasting a response works, if I IDed a before never or seldomly identified taxon on iNat. But often I don´t because it would just take too much time if copy-paste is not an option and for almost no impact, as I feel many people are anyways not really interested in the explanation… those interested often do ask - and I appreciate that and will answer if I don´t miss the question.
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Just a quick comment on that one:
That might work for you… but it might also increase the time for a feedback. Last year I went through thousands of pisaurid observations in Europe, often with suggestion to species… there were many that were sitting there many years despite it would have been easy for any spider-person to ID to genus. But why would you go in and correct if the above mentioned backlash is just around the corner? So those observations where just left hanging there…
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Yes, I am bugged sometimes too. It might well be that an observation is not clear enough to ID a certain species for sure. But in my opinion you shoud only correct it to genus level if you are SURE that it cant be the proposed species. and than i strongly would recommend that you explain this to me!
I admit I haven’t read the entire thread above, but having seen this type of discussion pop up before I think the common theme through all of them is the “with no explanation” part. Communication on disagreements is key. Lack of communication seems to trigger resentment (and threads like this on the forum).
As an ID’er, I think it helps to adjust your mind set accordingly. When I just want to kill some time doing high-throughput style IDs without comments, I go for refining unknowns or stuff stuck at higher levels such as Plantae. Usually there’s no explanation needed, people are happy to see a broad ID refined.
If I tackle a particular species to bump back IDs made in error, I know I probably have to communicate my reasons to avoid backlash. I usually create a couple of copy/paste explanations to post along with my disagreeing ID. Often there will be a response but mostly along the lines of “thank you for the info” rather than people being upset about the disagreement. If I don’t have the time to provide explanations, I skip disagreements and stick with IDs I can confirm or refine.
From a scientific accuracy standpoint, disagreeing with a wrong community ID is an important part of identifying to avoid having wrong IDs trickle down into actual research projects. I found plenty of GBIF records for example based on erroneous RG identifications on iNat. But I think it takes just a little more time and effort for identifiers to communicate with observers in a way that lowers the frustration over having one’s ID bumped back or an observation made casual to keep it out of GBIF.
I’ve seen plenty of arguments how this takes too much time, but I like to think of every disagreement as a teaching opportunity. Even if the original observer is long gone and unlikely to read the explanation, another identifier coming after you or a student wanting to use it as a data point for a research project may see it and appreciate it.
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I strongly recommend that you read some of the comments on here. It has been fully explained multiple times why explanations are not always added. To reiterate, if you want an explanation, ask the identifier for it.
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Communication is very important and considering how many people have sent me long responses to messages that I sent for explanations, or how many people have messaged me, it seems most people understand that. But then it seems like a lot of people want all the communication to come from one direction (ie the identifers) instead of starting the dialog themselves.
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Some broaded IDs bother me, others don’t.
If the IDer knows it’s not the right ID, that’s fine. The specimen could lack a key character or have a character not found on that species.
If the IDer doesn’t know it’s wrong, that bothers me. If it could be one of 3,4 or a hundred species in the group and they can’t be identified from a photo, how do you know it’s not the species listed then? Here is where a comment may make matter worse. If you tell me you’re unsure because it might be something else and you broadened the ID, that really bothers me. The observer was actually there with all the habitat clues, may have had the specimen in hand, or may have consulted with others at the time. I will gladly accept a comment and reevaluate my ID if asked.
I often broaden IDs. Usually with a comment like “annelids don’t have legs”. If you’re a researcher using photo verified records of species that cannot be reliably IDed from photos, the problem isn’t iNat or GBIF.
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And if the observer shared, in notes, the strategic bit they observed which decided the species … then both parties are happy. Observer has to provide the neccessary info, then they can have a turn to ‘whine’. I often see comments, along the line of - leaves needed for species.
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I strongly suggest you go back to disagreeing. It’s important to knock it back to genus level if it should be. I see no reason to feel required to give an explanation. The most important thing is to get the IDs to the level they should be at.
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Well, of course our point of views depent on our own experiences. I do not know your exact experiences, what you ID and such, but I can tell you mine.
IDing evolved to a time-killer for me, a procrastination-tool and something that actually relaxes me even if the day was stressfull. Depending on the kind of IDs I provide, it allows me to shut down my brains :-)
Especially if I use it a relaxation tool, I am for sure not in a mood to think about what to write each time I disagree (and copy-paste is a lot of time not an option as well as it is actually sometime hard for me to put into words what I just see without thinking about it). Depending on which taxon I go through, disagreeing is common and commenting each time would actually take a lot of time and a lot of my relaxation away. For sure it would result in less IDs done either way. I personally think I can help out the community better the way I do it, even if someone might be annoyed in the end. But let´s be honest, someone is always annoyed by something (and yes, sometime that someone might be me as well ;-)).
I will answer if someone asks me why I IDed the way I did… I actually do it often and in those cases I know it will be read, which is for sure more rewarding then screaming into the void. And after all, communication is not a one way street. People can ask and quite some of them/us just do. From my own experiences, in most cases the IDer is then happy to explain
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