Lack of Reasoning on Disagreements

[pnwcoasthiker]

I LOVE when people give a reason for disagreeing with my ID or when moving my genus ID to species, telling me why. It helps me learn and then I can give better IDs for my future observations and often then help move other genus IDs to species level. So it is very much appreciated.

I have little notes (with links) saved for the ones I work on the most that explain why I’m selecting a species or disagreeing with something…and I can just copy and paste them in…which works well when I’m working through a large number of specific plant obervations for things such as searockets or brooms.

I will add that if I’m working on observations that are 3, 4, 5 or more years old and the observer only has uploaded a ONLY few observations, say 6 years ago, or if their profile shows they have not been active for many years, I sometimes don’t take time to explain since I know they will never see it.

[vbjanos]

Other:
If the initial ID is close to or easy to confuse with mine, I’ll leave a brief note.
When the ID is way off, I just correct it.

[Ajott]

But please do not assume the worst when this is a one-time-incident. I ran into quite a bunch of missed @tags recently going through certain subsets of needs ID.. some with questions.. I unfortunately regularly miss some @tags due to finding the notification system so wonky. So it is not always intentionally when people do not respond. The safest option is probably to write a rwminder PM if you are really really interested, as this is harder to lose..

[jhbratton]

I am not clear why there is more obligation on a subsequent identifier to give their reasoning than on the original observer. The two identifications have equal weight so why does timing mean an explanation is more necessary or more polite? An explanation can always be useful and will often be a waste of time.

[spiphany]

@tgroo

“I am a busy, high-volume identifier and simply cannot be bothered to respect the effort of those annoying observers who continue to overflow my backlog.

This is a gross misrepresentation of the reasoning of people who do not leave comments every single time they correct an ID. Nor does failing to leave comments mean that the IDer is being impolite or disrespectful.

Maybe the user is no longer active. Maybe they aren’t interested in an explanation. Maybe I have already provided explanations multiple times for this user and they show no sign of having learned from this. Or maybe they will recognize why my ID is correct without me telling them.

And if I want to include an explanation, this also means deciding what sort of explanation to provide, in what language, and in how much detail. This requires navigating a host of other social questions (how much knowledge does the user have, can I use technical terminology, will they find my response insulting/patronizing, etc.) and requires mental and emotional energy of a very different sort than the skills required to recognize whether it is this or that species.

So I disagree with your premise that including an explanation is automatically respectful and not including one is disrespectful. This is too simple a dichotomy. Explanations may be rude, or perceived as rude, and lack of explanation is not necessarily a signal that the IDer feels they are too busy and important to take time to write a note.

Consider also: if IDers are not expected to leave an explanation when refining an ID or agreeing with one, why should etiquette demand different behavior when correcting one instead? If observers are not expected to provide explanations of their IDs, why do different rules apply to IDers?

Respect goes both ways. If as an IDer I am supposed to acknowledge that observers put time and effort into their observations and care about what they saw, then it is also reasonable for me to expect observers to respect my time and effort helping them ID their observations – this includes both not making unnecessary extra work for IDers (cropping photos, taking a couple of seconds to think about CV suggestions before using them, paying attention to feedback) and also recognizing that I have to make choices about the most effective/meaningful use of my time. Sometimes this may include explaining corrections. Sometimes it may not.

I agree with you that observers should not be expected to carry the entire responsibility for communication themselves – but neither is this the sole responsibility of IDers. Correcting an ID, with or without an explanation, already communicates information (“I think it is this taxon and not your ID”). Just like a telephone call, both parties have various options along the way about how to proceed (picking up the phone or not, leaving a message or not, etc.). While some choices are going to be more effective than others or better received than others, there is no single rule of etiquette that dictates how either the caller or the recipient must behave at any given point in the conversation.

This has nothing to do with seeing observers as a nuisance or some idea that they have to prove that they have “earned” an explanation.

@nilshelstrom

when you directly ask an identifier for details on the disagreement and they ignore you

Sometimes we get overwhelmed and miss notifications. Some users have specific ways that they wish to be contacted because they can’t guarantee that they will manage to respond otherwise. I find that the vast majority of the time when an IDer does not respond to a question, it is not because they are intentionally ignoring me, but because they were away from iNat or simply did not see my comment.

[bazwal]

@tgroo

I’ve opined and disputed on this question previously. Doesn’t seem to change minds on either side. It’s awkward to have this kind of factionalism develop in a cooperative enterprise, but there it is.

Are your opinions based on personal experience? It’s sometimes difficult to take opinions about cooperation seriously, when there’s such a clear imbalance in the relevant contributions to iNaturalist.

As several people have pointed out above, the “factionalism” you allude to is actually just another example of the participation inequality that plays out in so many social situations. As we all know, the vast majority of identifications on iNaturalist are made by a relatively small pool of identifiers. Given that, it doesn’t seem surprising that many members of this little band of volunteers have developed somewhat ambivalent views when it comes to questions of etiquette. Changing the minds of such people is going to be an uphill task if you’re not a member of that group yourself.

Your quoted caricature seems to contrast observers (wearing the white hats) with identifiers (wearing the black hats). Apparently, high-volume identifiers are all condescending elitists who have no respect for the ever humble and blameless observers.

@tgroo

Not really my reason, because I would never consider making a correction to another person’s observation without an explanation.

“Please ignore my big axe whilst I make these pious assertions”

[someplant]

Thanks for the kind words! I am glad that somebody is reading and learning from these comments.

[nathantaylor]

Awesome! I’ve been wanting a tool like that for a while now.

[szep]

as someone else said - because of the way the notification system works, if you’ve recently identified many things, it’s extraordinarily difficult to track who has asked you what. You may be getting 20+ notifications a day and there is no infinite-scroll screen where those notifications are logged, grouped by activity type, searchable, etc. You just get the web dashboard, the web notification drop-down, and the mobile ID tab, which is pretty laggy and difficult to use.

I recently started coarsely IDing a lot of Unknowns from old events and I sometimes get enough IDs a day from people progressing those observations toward species that it’s hard for me to track what’s going on with it all. I imagine that the people who routinely ID hundreds of things every weekend have it even worse than me, haha. It’s very likely that at least some of the people who might want to respond to you are unable to track your notification in a practical way.

[DianaStuder]

We need better notification management - for the people who put in the time and effort to generate their notifications. Please ? I have agreeing IDs on (I want to see WHO agrees, and to read a possible comment to learn for next time) I actively unfollow each obs when the discussion has gone beyond me.

PS have another 50 waiting. No idea how people can deal with hundreds !

[clightowler]

@wyattsibilia

; but a 4-word summary, link to a guide/observation, or advice seems low-effort and warranted.

I love this idea, and IDers have done this on some of my observations.

I totally get why people don’t write reasons evey time. Most of the comments I put on observations, such as explaining the need for photos from different angles or different parts of a plant, seem to be ignored, which is why i have several standard comments ready to copy and paste. Some of them include links to guides other people have written.

With my own observations, even though most IDers don’t put explanations, I will often respond to them and tag them.
● Thanks for IDing, @wyattsibilia . I don’t know much about this species yet. Please could you explain how to tell the difference between X and Y?
Or
● … Is there any advice you can give me on what photos to take to help get better IDs on this genus?

I usually find that people will take the time to give me a detailed explanation, if I ask, and they’ll often include a link to a guide.

[sedgequeen]

Brief* version of reply I removed: Hypothesizing people’s motives and then complaining about those motives is not helpful, in part because the hypothesized motive is often not accurate. I’ve seen “How do we stop people from doing a lot of identifications just to run up the leaderboards?” How would we know that’s the motive for many ID’s of one species? It often isn’t, as identifiers who runs through the observations of any a single taxon knows.

Now we get scolded because our failure to explain without being asked is a result of arrogance, of not respecting the observers, not considering them our equals who deserve our time. (And in the same comment that implies we don’t treat them as our equals, we’re scolded for saying that observers have a responsibility to ask if they have a question, while assuming we have a responsibility to answer questions even if they haven’t asked.)

Only the people who didn’t provide a reason know their own motives (and sometimes even we don’t know). It might be burn out. (It’s real – so many comments thrown into the iNaturalist ocean, so little reason to think that most observers care. [Some do. We know and value that.]) It might be not seeing a tag. (Fix notifications, will you iNat?) And yes, it might be prioritizing other parts of our life over explaining all the time. Why would we do that? You don’t know, do you? We might really have other responsibilities that do have priority. And we might be turning to iNaturalist identifications for a near mindless escape from and unwinding from those other responsibilities. I assume those who scold would rather we escaped into doing a jigsaw puzzle instead of providing an ID without an explanation. Well, . . . I’d better stop this rant here.

( * OK, not brief. But briefer.)

[faerthen]

There is so much silly drama and hand-wringing on this forum about how other people are doing iNaturalist wrong. I’d really say to everyone, lighten up! Maybe try to find a way to use the platform without requiring everyone else to change the way they do things? If it isn’t fun anymore or feels too much like a job, don’t do it.

Regarding this particular issue, one thing I’ve found very useful is to check the profile of whoever provided the ID in question. Often they have posted links to publications that are useful for IDing organisms in their area of expertise. These sources are often difficult to locate on your own. There are also many, many online keys out there that you can use to compare the oddball IDs with yours to see if you missed something.

I’ve also had great luck reaching out to folks directly when I have a specific question that I haven’t been able to answer by researching it myself, first.

As for my own IDs, I tend to adopt areas where I know the botany well, rather than focusing on specific taxa. That means I see the same people a lot, so there’s more of a relationship that can be worked on by providing more info to those who would probably appreciate it. I also often post curated check lists for those areas, based on previously published sources that I am willing to bring up to date on taxonomy. That helps people help themselves by narrowing down the likely candidates. Another thing I do is spend extra time commenting on plant obs in my areas that the AI consistently mis-identifies, since it’s a self-reinforcing error when noobs just automatically accept the default suggestion. In this way, I can gradually correct the AI.

Obviously this isn’t the way everyone uses iNat, and that’s fine.

[nathantaylor]

@rcavasin

@nathantaylor

I haven’t heard of a Universal Meta tool. Could you explain what that is?

You can read about it here:

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/announcing-the-universal-metadata-tool-beta/53182

I’ve been using the tool this weekend and it’s great for a lot of things (especially, in instances where I’m focusing on one or a small number of species). However, it can’t really capture enough complexity to make it worthwhile for general identification use. There are just too many species and combinations of characters to keep track of. And, as I mentioned above, the filtering involved to apply comments after the fact is just too time consuming. I appreciate you letting me know about this tool, though!

For anyone else who hasn’t tried out this tool, I highly recommend it! It takes a little time to get set up, but it works well when you do.

[rcavasin]

@nathantaylor

There are just too many species and combinations of characters to keep track of. And, as I mentioned above, the filtering involved to apply comments after the fact is just too time consuming. I appreciate you letting me know about this tool, though!

So far, I’ve only used it for adding annotations and observation fields (eg. insect life stage, sex, summer/winter form, etc.).

If I was going to do a massive review of several years worth of observations of a particular genus, I might consider creating a set of buttons/shortcuts for the species names and frequently used comments. Otherwise yes, I would probably confine myself to adding annotations/fields. For that, it is very handy as one doesn’t have to switch tabs. There have been a few occasions where I used it to add fields in bulk on many observations.

[rupertclayton]

As a pretty frequent identifier who does try to provide an explanation for at least some of my disagreeing IDs, I agree with those who say that it’s infeasible to do that all the time.

I have a lot of autotext responses to help with common identification issues, but even those only go so far.

@wyattsibilia

I guess the reasonable middle-ground is to be ready to reply when tagged.

I also agree that identifiers should be willing to provide more detail when asked about their disagreeing IDs. Where identifiers don’t respond to requests like this, I would guess it is almost always because they didn’t see them due to the limitations of the current iNat notifications system.

I get about 30–100 iNat notifications a day, and if I check and review them several times a day, I can generally keep up and respond to those that need it. But if I take a few days off, they pile up, and you basically get one shot at responding to all unread notifications. (If I remember I might turn to @pisum’s notifications tool that has more flexibility: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_observations_updates.html.)

There are probably a few iNat identifiers who actively refuse to explain their IDs, but it seems such as small proportion that I don’t feel a campaign to encourage people to explain IDs more would have much effect.

[swiftkami]

I loved reading this.

[reefnet]

“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.”

I treat iNaturalist as a science resource, so I appreciate the corrections that you make. I certainly don’t want it cluttered with junk IDs contributed by lazy or ignorant people. Those who know an ID is wrong SHOULD say so and explain why, not for those who don’t care but for the rest of us who value scientific accuracy.

[spiphany]

@reefnet

I treat iNaturalist as a science resource, so I appreciate the corrections that you make. I certainly don’t want it cluttered with junk IDs contributed by lazy or ignorant people. Those who know an ID is wrong SHOULD say so and explain why, not for those who don’t care but for the rest of us who value scientific accuracy.

Um, did you actually read the rest of the comment you are responding to?

I spend a fairly large portion of my time just correcting wrong IDs. During the summer, the number of observations in my taxon of interest is overwhelming and there are not enough skilled IDers to look at everything. I often feel like I am doing triage – correcting the most egregious mistakes because I can’t manage any more than that.

Given this, why should it be the responsibility of IDers to spend even more time writing explanations? Why should those who have put in the effort to learn a taxon and are already working as hard as they can be expected to work even harder?

Why is it an unreasonable effort for “those who value scientific accuracy” to do their own research or ask the IDer if they want more information about an ID? Why does the IDer need to do so unasked?

Writing an explanation will not improve the CV suggestions or prevent the next new user who comes along from uncritically using these suggestions – in other words, it will likely not have any direct effect on the accuracy of iNat data.

Please note that neither I nor anyone else in this thread has been arguing that IDers should never write comments when they correct an ID. Many of us do in fact write comments some portion of the time. I may do so if it feels like it would be useful or it is a taxon where there is widespread incorrect knowledge or if the observer seems interested or if there is some short and easy tip that might help others avoid mistakes in the future.

But often the relevant information can’t be compressed into a few words or a handy link or a standard copy-paste text, so I have to decide whether the theoretical potential benefit for the community of an explanation that might or might not be seen by anyone who cares is worth the time and effort of composing that explanation.

[aaravmishra]

I totally agree. When your focus is on identifying things that are either misidentified or identified for the first time on iNat or very rare, it is often hard to provide reasoning every time. It is on the user’s side to ask. In such cases you can get a (hopefully) detailed explanation such as this one of mine.

If you want the explanations, do not feel shy to ask. Asking is the best way to learn. I have a very close friend @alexstach (who I don’t think is very active here on the forum), and I have learnt a lot from him. He completely changed my perception of the subfamily Typhlocybinae, and where I previously thought it was only filled with the “boring stuff”, he made me realise that this subfamily is one of the best. Now it is my favourite and I am spending quite some time putting together figures from figures where the head + thorax and wings were originally illustrated separately.

In fact when I got into contact with hims some time back, I did not much about leafhoppers except local Indian ones. Somewhere he sparked unlimited curiosity about this underrated group in my eyes as my focus was mostly planthoppers previously. At one point we lost contact, and stopped tagging each other for some reason. Some 15-30 days later he remembered me and then tagged me on two typhlo’s. Then I did not feel confortable asking him for data directly but I’d noticed that he was following me so I just wrote it indirectly through a journal post. That was the start of my typhlo-journey.

Therefore when you ask, that is the best way to learn. Whether you are an identifier of an observer, this improves both your knowledge and data accuracy on iNat. It even can make a person notice his/her misids when the ids are made in a rush etc. A gentle reminder or request benefits everyone.