Make opting-out of Community ID unavailable to new users

[dianastuder]

If you reject community ID - give your reasons in a comment.
On each and every obs.

[joe_fish]

My controversial solution:

Community opt-out should be limited to Curators and should only remain active for accounts that have been logged in within a recent period (say, 1 year). Mind you, I don’t know what the process is for becoming a “Curator” on here, but I assume there is at least some minimal amount of vetting to assure these are trusted community members. Removing the opt-out from their observations after a prolonged period of inactivity on the account will ensure that any future changes brought about by taxonomic reclassification can, in fact, be enacted. Novel concept, I know.

[anon93074988]

I’d be interested to know what proportion of Curators are active observers (which is the requirement to be able to opt out of community ID for an obs) as opposed to identifiers.

[spiphany]

Having the status of an iNat curator does not (in my experience) necessarily correlate with a person being diligent about following up on refining IDs for their own observations if they have globally opted out of community ID.

[fffffffff]

Wr also shouldn’t be forced to become curators, some see it as a badge and don’t really do anything (esp. those from times where every curator could make you a curator without asking), but imo it’s a great responsibility and if we don’t want it, it doesn’t mean we’re bad users.

[matthewvosper]

I like the idea of removing it after a period of inactivity. I don’t think there’s any reason to restrict it to curators. Curatorship is a status that is requested by people who want to perform certain roles (taxonomy, flags etc), rather than something earned by being a ‘trusted community member’. Being a trusted community member is of course a prerequiste (although there was less vetting in the past), but curatorship is simply not part of the plan for many/most trusted community members.

[tiwane]

FWIW I voted for this and think it would be an improvement, but I just wanted to add some numbers here to give a sense of scale: about 2200 accounts (0.088% of all users who’ve made a verifiable observation, if I got that right) have opted out of CID by default, representing about 1.3 m observations (I’m unsure if that’s verifiable or verifiable+casual), or just over 1% of the current total number of verifiable observations. So while it’s annoying for sure, it currently doesn’t affect too many observations, in the grand scheme of things.

Obviously if this is someone who is a prolific observer of the taxa/region in which you focus a lot of attention on it can be pretty vexing, but I think most identifiers could avoid these if they wanted to with a filter on the Identify page.

@matthewvosper

For me, the best solution mentioned above is simply not to mention the option at the point of account creation.

Is this part of account creation? I just made a new account on the website, then added an observation and didn’t see anything, but maybe I missed it.

[anon93074988]

Certainly sounds like the cost benefit of any change would be marginal. Bigger fish to fry ermmm ID.

[matthewvosper]

Hmm I think I said this because it had been the belief in the conversation above, but now I trace it back it appears to originate from this statement in the 4th comment which admittedly begins ‘if I remember rightly’:

@deboas

globally opted-out (which if I remember right, is part of the account creation process)

[neylon]

I would point out that for those of us cleaning up datasets, omitting any observations is not an option. If I turned off identifying opted-out observations, then I wouldn’t be seeing mis-dets that are now on GBIF.

Opt-outs are annoying, and removing the option for new users would be great, but I’m not against the option on an individual observation basis (do not like it all as a option for all observations). And wrong ID that opted out is a bit like when trying to correct an observation that has 4-5 ID’s from inactive identifiers: more work, but those do need to be fixed.

[deboas]

@matthewvosper

it appears to originate from this statement in the 4th comment which admittedly begins ‘if I remember rightly’:

Yes, I wasn’t sure about this, and remain unsure at what point, and why, people opt out of Community ID. For a few power users, this seems to be a considered choice, but from my interactions with other observers, it seems clear that many people do this without realising what the implications are. 1% of observations still means that every 100 observations, we’re likely to hit one of these. For those doing a lot of identifying, it means it is a reasonably common and frustrating occurrence (e.g., when an observer has put “dicots” for a bunch of otherwise excellent observations, opted out globally, and is unresponsive to IDs and comments). I wonder if language/translations can be an issue in some cases, because I have seen this most frequently in users whose main language is not English, but I mostly identify observations outside of English-speaking countries anyway, so that may not mean anything.

[dianastuder]

Only 1% but it’s like that solitary mosquito that keeps you awake and alert. Only one but … the opted outs are like the BUZZZ of a mosquito, that list of good intentioned identifiers stacking up to no point and purpose.
Make it visible - mosquito alert!
Next.

[carnifex]

That’s actually a great metaphor!
Well framed :)

[tiwane]

@deboas

it seems clear that many people do this without realising what the implications are

I agree, adding something like this would be good to add to the text, maybe in bold.

Unless you are diligent about responding to IDs and comments on your observations, choosing to opt out can result in data quality issues. Please don’t opt out unless plan to use iNaturalist on a consistent basis and check on your observations.