I like to spend time identifying Woodpeckers in the United States. Recently I have taken to going through “Needs ID” posts with the “Disagreements” filter and have noticed that an unsettling amount of users provide no reasoning whatsoever when disagreeing with a post.
While this is not required, I have a very hard time understanding why people can take the time to disagree with a post but not briefly state their reasoning. Not only is it helpful when reviewing a post, to be able to look at the particular feature(s) someone used as an ID, but it is also an immensely powerful learning opportunity for those who are new to iNaturalist, or are looking to determine distinguishing features by going through observations of a species.
Obviously, this is not a problem endemic to Woodpecker or bird ID’s. Although a bird lover, I am horrible at sparrow ID and have been corrected multiple times without anyone explaining why so I can improve in the future. It also exacerbates the issue of people adding a false-ID because someone before them has done so. Early in my naturalist adventure, comments explaining differences were crucial to my fundamental understanding of observing and identifying. Lack of reasoning on disagreements not only deters casual users, it ignores what I consider a fundamental purpose of iNaturalist and citizen science in general–making science more accessible.
I understand sometimes that what someone has taken years to learn cannot be explained in a few sentences; but a 4-word summary, link to a guide/observation, or advice seems low-effort and warranted.
Is there a way to educate the masses on what–I believe–should be common iNaturalist etiquette? Or am I arguing with a brick wall and underplaying the time/effort this takes?
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I think you have a completely valid concern. Many identifiers (including myself) have added disagreeing IDs without explaining their reasons, and it is definitely an annoyance. I think most of the reason for this is that it does take a little bit of time to add a small comment or find a helpful observation and for mass identifiers, that’s time they could have identified another twenty observations with.
I have tried to increase how much explanation I give in my IDs recently for the same reasons you mentioned, and I also don’t mind being asked to explain an ID that I’ve made.
This is just my take, so this may not be what others think as well.
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Experience teaches IDers that a significant portion of observers do not put much thought into their IDs (e.g., they may just pick the top CV suggestion, often without even checking it for plausibility); experience also teaches that a smaller but still significant portion of users may never see or respond to ID corrections (e.g., because they are no longer active, don’t check notifications, etc.).
I mostly ID a taxon where the CV suggestions are often wrong; therefore, I spend a lot of time correcting IDs. It does not seem like a good use of my time and energy to write explanations for disagreements when there is a reasonably high likelihood that the observer is mostly interested in putting a label on what they saw and therefore may not care why it is that taxon and not some other.
Most of the time, the sort of corrections I am making are going to be obvious to someone with good basic knowledge of the taxon, so explaining the disagreement will also be of limited value for other IDers who might be looking at the observation, while someone unfamiliar with the taxon might need more a more detailed explanation (including anatomy and illustrations of the relevant bits) than it would make sense for me to write.
If it is clear that the observer has put some thought into their ID (e.g., they have included notes about their reasoning) or if it is a taxon where there are commonly confused lookalikes or the ID is tricky and I feel that it would be important to explain my own thought processes and how I interpreted the evidence, I am more likely to leave an explanation.
Otherwise, as a general rule: If the observer wants to know why I disagreed, they can ask. Sometimes they do, and I am happy to provide an explanation.
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I think your suspicion that you might be underplaying the time/effort this takes is… actually, true. When you’re looking down the barrel of literally thousands of mis-ID’d observations to correct on your to-do list, it really does add up.
My heuristic is to try my best to add reasoning/comments on correcting IDs of observations where there is some indication that the observer actually cares about the observation (e.g. the presence of written notes or multiple photos honing-in on particular features, etc.). But even with boilerplate text ready to copy-and-paste as needed, it’s just too much to do for every single observation, especially when the majority of iNat users are casual/occasional or even duress users (students forced to use the site for a graded assignment) of the site and will likely never even return to read your commentary.
I do think it’s very rude to ignore follow up requests for clarification, or corrections-of-the-corrections.
When someone adds a naked correction of one of my observations, I do agree that there can be an initial sting of “but… why?” - You just have to remember that pretty much everybody on here means well and is happy to explain when asked.
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Yeah, I understand all your perspectives, and I guess the reasonable middle-ground is to be ready to reply when tagged.
I have run into some people who do not reply when tagged, and that is a bummer, but for the most part users are friendly and accommodating. I will say that it is another time burden on the part of me when I do large swaths of IDs to tag them, but then again that is a similar burden that I am asking of everyone so I understand.
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This comes up a lot. Here are some reasons that I’ve heard or felt myself.
I might not include text when I add a disagreeing ID because:
- it takes time/effort (e.g. that I then put into making more IDs)
- I haven’t received a lot of feedback in the past that the text was helpful
- I’ve received negative feedback when adding initial explanatory text
- it requires expertise or terminology that many won’t understand without a lot of explaining/background research
- I prefer to wait to see if someone asks before adding my reasoning
- it’s easy to see the reasoning if they do a quick search for species A vs. B
- I don’t want to appear pedantic or pretentious
- I don’t have a useful explanation to share (e.g. I can’t put into words well how I can tell them apart)
- something else that I’ll share below
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something else:
“I strongly suspect the initial observer will never even see my explanatory text, based on their account activity.”
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When our taxon specialists do a taxon sweep, because they are sorting out a mess - they will often leave thoughtful comments. That ripples out to help the rest of us avoid ‘making that mess’ in future. I will sometimes leave a very brief comment - if the newbie I am encouraging is responding, asking questions, sorting out what I asked them to. But on the whole - no explanation for my disagreement.
Unless. I am whining about distribution. Not found here. That is a Himalayan sp ! (without the !!!
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This is also a concern I’ve had, especially recently. A lot of old observations I go through have posters who haven’t been active for months or years and it seems kind of pointless to explain why I disagree with their ID.
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It depends. I tend to do it with Calystegia - in Europe there’s two common white-flowered species, in one the bracts overlap, and in the other they don’t - it can be easy to see from the right photo, but it’s hard to notice if you’re not looking for it. Especially when the OP’s ID is a user-typed one, I’ll happily give reasoning on the initial disagreement. Sometimes I’ll forget anyway but if they ask I’ll still answer.
Last year I went through 2025’s daffodils in North America and there were several thousand observations showing various escaped cultivars all tagged wrongly as N. pseudonarcissus - usually put there because of just clicking whatever CV came up with. I’ll pass on giving each and every single one an explanation - just knocking them back to genus took long enough and when someone tagged me to ask why I happily answered.
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something else: after so many years I’m jaded and my default assumption is now that an unknown observer just wants to be told the answer rather than learn how to identify themselves
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The reply by ddennism is a good response to the OP by wyattsibilia and questions about etiquette with the identification process in the context of a disagreement (with ID). I prefer (but not perfect with this approach) as an identifier to take a bit more time to “put” a rationale into comments with my disagreement on the front-end; rather than wait for being asked at some later point in time. And sometimes my comments are rather abbreviated; sometimes I feel like I am writing a short story. Circling back to ddennism - ‘heuristic’ sounds about right. I understand the science goals within iNaturalist, but there is also the ‘art’ of communication with comments and feedback; and it is here that we attend to the human condition, and trying to work well with others.
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This is completely fair, and I don’t always leave an explanation either, but I will say there have been a great number of times where I have learned really important stuff about separating species because of comments left on other people’s observations. I think even in observations where you are basically certain the observer will never see your comment leaving a comment can still have some value for this reason (though that value can be weighed against your time, etc…)
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For rabbit IDs I will usually leave a short reason because I’ve noticed a lot of people are interested in learning to ID rabbits themselves. When asked I will elaborate with additional ID methods that I didn’t mention before because they were not visible in the photo(s).
For plant IDs I usually don’t leave an explanation because frequently people are not interested in learning to ID, just want an answer, and often are not on the platform anymore (plants are easiest for students to photograph). If I’m asked for an explanation I will try to give one. Often it is easier to give a link to a website that explains it. I tend to forget the terminology and would have to consult a glossary to create my own answer which takes more time.
For gall IDs I usually leave my reasoning. Frequently my explanation is that the gall species they chose does not use the plant in the photo as a host. Or sometimes that this species uses the stem not the leaf, etc. And I will usually put a link to the species page on gallformers.org, especially if it is an undescribed species. People who notice galls and photograph them often seem interested in learning more about them (or at least I hope so).
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I used to put a lot of time and care into adding comments. In most cases and for most observers, I consider it a waste of time now. If someone asks me to tell them why, I’m happy to oblige. If it’s something weird and interesting, I’ll add a comment whether the person will respond or not (for future identifiers). But, there are too many who will never see my comments. And beyond that, I simply get board of explaining the differences of two similar species over and over again. If I had to explain the differences every time someone got E. prostrata, E. maculata, and E. serpens confused, I’d never get any work done. I have guides for that that I or someone else can direct them to.
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In general I’m much more likely to leave a comment explaining my ID when its something that doesn’t have many records yet or looks like many other things, or is just a group I’m extra passionate about. But other than that, I’m also especially inclined to leave a detailed comment if I can see someone else who is trying to help ID that taxa has already added an ID, whether incorrect or coarse. My thinking is that leaving good comments for others who ID a lot goes further than leaving comments for people who mostly observe.
Of course, if tagged, or if a follow-up comment is added from anyone, I’m always more than happy to expand on my thinking.
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This one is very difficult to answer for me. I’ve had a lot of positive feedback and a lot of no feedback in the past. Not much negative feedback. But regardless, I don’t think this is driving my behavior. It’s really the massive accumulation of new observations and observers that started me down the path (i.e., no time for commenting if I wanted to keep up) and reprioritizing projects outside iNaturalist that kept me there (i.e., gave up on keeping up, but iNaturalist is less of a priority).
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This was what I was going to say as well.
A related item is when an observer is active, but simply doesn’t respond or hasn’t responded to requests for clarification. Not going to waste time on someone who doesn’t care and just dumps their photos onto the platform.
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Almost everything others have said, plus a few more reasons:
My natural communication style comes off as rude to most people, and wording things carefully takes a lot of energy. In spite of that, I used to take the effort to explain myself when disagreeing.
I stopped leaving identification related comments when the AI thing came up, not wanting to create more and more content only to end up having to delete it all, possibly leaving confusing holes in conversations. I also cut way back on identifying at all during that time, but didn’t stop completely. Even though it’s now been announced that the future comment finding/sorting feature won’t include AI summaries (at least for now) the whole situation has severely eroded my trust in the organization, and I feel wary that something like that could still be forced on the community in the future. So I’m back to active identifying, but still trying to limit my comments in case I need to delete them all at some point in the future.
Also, I guess during the few months when I was strictly not commenting, I got out of the habit of feeling like it was necessary. I learned that people who were still active usually took a second look and (hopefully after doing their own research) changed their incorrect ID to match mine, without asking me to explain anything.
Another problem is that there is often a long list of reasons I could cite, but it seems rude to rub someone’s mistake in with a comment like: “Bark too smooth, wrong leaf shape, venation, growth habit, twig color, and bud arrangement, plus X is a tropical species not found in Michigan.” when chances are good they just went with the CV, and don’t even care about learning plant identification.
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I definitely learned a lot about Araucaria ID from other people’s comments on other people’s observations
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