I’m removing my vote because I think a lot more discussion is needed about what taxa to do this on. I want to avoid unnecessary blanket restrictions on taxa that don’t need it, for example it may only be needed on certain vertebrates.
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I definitely agree with your mindset. I think in this case, the species being considered are the highly popular ones that are constantly being rearranged by different users, mostly likely not out of necessity. If they’re highly popular they most likely already have plenty of good photos to choose from, many of which are viable default icons (one not really being much better than any other). Personally, I don’t like seeing a new species picture when I’ve seen the old icon so many hundreds of times but that’s quite subjective.
The convenience of having a good default icon comes when you’re scanning through a gallery of species trying to find something close to your specimen in a taxon you know nothing about.
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Just in response to people talking about this being an issue more on charismatic popular taxa…the above anecdote was on mesofauna families with hardly any observations. I don’t think the issues here are limited to vertebrates or more popular taxa. To me, if anything it seems like it’s more of a big deal (in a sense) on taxa with few obs…where the destruction may go un-countered for longer.
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Not RG and wrong ID - flag for ‘bad’ behaviour.
Taxon pictures should be RG if possible?
Yes, in more complex taxa though where there aren’t RG ones but there are obs ID’d by experts… personally I support having a photo over no photo in these instances…
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Yes, I don’t think that there’s a requirement that taxon photos be from RG observations, though obviously this is preferable. For reference, here are the guidelines for choosing Taxon Photos from https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#photowrong
As described above, any user can edit a taxon’s photos. Taxon photos are the first images people see when they research a taxon, so photos that are helpful for identification should be prioritized. Here are some guidelines for choosing appropriate taxon photos:
- The default (first) photo should be clear and legible even at small sizes because it’s shown in reduced size on observation pages, lists, in the mobile app, and elsewhere.
- Photos should be clear and show diagnostic features of the taxon.
- Photos should show as much morphological and phenological variety required for identification (e.g. life stage, sexual dimorphism, plant phenology) in as few photos as possible.
- Blurry or unclear photos are better than no photos at all. If the only available photos are not clear, it’s fine to use them.
As of February 15th, 2023, changes to taxon photos are now recorded publicly on the taxon’s history page. If there are repeated changes, please flag the taxon and tag the users involved in the changes to have a discussion. Staff may lock a taxon’s photos in the event of an unresolved edit war.
The guidance does note that staff may lock photos of individual taxa in response to an “edit war.”
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These guidelines are perfectly good and clear, but I never stumbled on them.
Would there be a way to maybe make them pop automatically every time a user attempts to change the taxon photo?
Surely this would deter a few bad behaviours, particularly if they are unintentional.
Yes I ran into several instances where a user would replace an existing good photo with their own. Several times after reversal, too. In a particular case I had to call out said user that made multiple replacements of taxon photo with their own, and to their credit the behaviour pretty much stopped. Some of their pictures have since been kept as default, because they are appropriate and good quality, too.
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iNat changed the default - so that when we choose taxon pictures, the default is now RG. I have also replaced pictures which came from Flickr where the ID is doubtful, in favour of an iNat RG obs - where the ID will change if an identifier has good reason.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/suggestions-towards-more-accurate-taxon-default-photos/8066/9
2019 - sorry can’t find the RG announcement
Only a taxon specialist is able to choose the best photos because one needs to know what the identifying features are. I doubt that curators are able to do this job for all taxa, so how should this be implemented?
Perhaps the taxon specialists should be proactive themselves and just change the default photos if they come across inapt ones. Also: please don’t hesitate and add photos of boths sexes, juveniles etc, there are lots of common taxa where you find only photos showing the same version of the organism eg. a bird and only the breeding plumage male perched, but 10 photos thereof and no bird in flight, no female, no juvenile. Or insects with adults only. Or plants only flowering, no fruits etc.
I think we are all too lazy to go and edit these photos for the taxa we are familiar with.
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A specific example, because it is especially egregious: the red fox.
It is changed AT LEAST once a week, to put up pictures that are not appropriate.
I put up a flag on the taxon to specifically call out on this, and someone put a picture of exactly what I criticised (a melanistic, so non-standard, individual with prey in its mouth).
I do not want to target anyone in particular, but it looks like trolling here.
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