Misidentification and prolific wrong identifiers issues

General
1

My first post here, never know there is this place before…

iNaturalist has a problem with misidentifications. Note: I’m not talking about casual users, citizens, or ordinary people here. Those people are generally very happy to learn when you explain the reasoning behind an identification. It wasn’t your usual hobbyist in learning naturalist.

I’m talking about actual ecologists who repeatedly make incorrect identifications.

I’m questioning whether iNaturalist’s advertised figure, that 91% of Research Grade observations are correctly identified is really accurate.

To be clear, there aren’t many people like this. Only a handful, but they can have an impact on the identification of an entire genus.

I noticed they’re often experts in something else (insects, spiders, or other animal), but then they start identifying plants. Eventually, they become top identifiers, and now they’re an prolific identifier on plants.

I’ve spoken to some of them privately, trying to explain things, but they seem to misunderstand everything from how to use identification keys to the original taxonomic descriptions of the genus. And no matter how much I try, it gets nowhere.

Sometimes, the photo doesn’t has the parts needed for a reliable identification yet, but they still go ahead and use iNaturalist’s AI to identify it.

Recently, a friend of mine shared a post about someone publicly shaming one of these serial misidentifiers, saying that such behaviour was terrible. As terrible as public shaming can be, I can somewhat wholeheartedly understand and justify part where that frustration comes from. That said, I’m not going to do that as that’s not my thing to do, it’s not my personality.

And I think a lot of the problems on iNaturalist stem from the way the it uses the “Maverick” label with the red lightning bolt symbol. I understand that it doesn’t intend it maliciously. But when someone disagrees with the prevailing identification, it’s often actually correct, why would you label them a “Maverick”? That isn’t a neutral way to handle disagreement. And just looking at the past thread when someone criticize the label everyone seems to defend the label. Is that really the kind of message you want to send on a citizen science platform?

2

That would be a Proud Maverick. The one who is right.
iNat’s jargon is also a learning curve. Think of Research Grade, 2 (random) people agree.

3

Lol, love (and hate) this: research grade = 2 (random) people agree, so on point!

4

I think the problem here stems from human nature. Once you become an IDer you find yourself craving to ID everything to the species level. Genus or family is somehow inherently unsatisfactory.

So then you make yourself believe that you can tell species apart based on some innate third-eye feeling or what-not. And you start doing precisely what you describe; IDing to species level even if the observation doesn’t show the necessary feature of the organism based on which you could distinguish it.

And that is a problem. The Research Grade badge gives a certain level of dopamine, the social media kind, so people chase it. Probably a lot of it could be disincentivized if iNat changed how they give out badges on observations. For example, just making a genus level agreement somehow more significant, e.g. with some little badge, could already align incentives better.

5

When we made the Pre-Maverick project, I had to explain – Maverick is iNat’s choice. Not mine. Perhaps the word sounds less offensive in USA ?

https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/dianastuder/77588-meet-the-pre-mavericks

6

You may be using the term loosely, but any taxonomist can tell you stories about what happens when ecologists do identifications lol.

I’m not sure how one would even measure or fact-check this (if there was any rigorous test and I had to guess, maybe a random sample could be taken and presented to experts in relevant groups; but accuracy varies wildly among different taxa). But if it is correct, ~90% is on par with expert identification and DNA barcoding.

7

Yes, and this is why I am so adamant that people do not blindly agree with my bumblebee IDs - it’s to the point where I don’t want to narrow down from genus to species unless I’m absolutely certain, which leaves more burden for other people and also, whether I like it or not, making mistakes helps me get better. But people are so quick to blindly agree that I find myself typing “please don’t blindly agree” more often than I’d like.

8

Perhaps an unrelated issue, but I’ve found that some of the prolific-but-bad IDers tend to remove their initial ID once their error is pointed out. I.e., they delete their incorrect ID and then reapply a correct ID, erasing their mistake. Presumably it preserves their stats in some way. It robs the platform of useful data about which species are confused by people.

9

We are all learning. Even professional taxonomists are constantly revising and correcting each other’s work. Nobody is immune from misidentifications, even experts with specimens in front of them. Citizen science from photos alone is harder. If a prolific identifier is wrong, politely let them know where you think that they erred; we all want to learn and I’m sure most people would be happy to develop a better understanding of subjects that they’re interested in. And be open to the idea that despite good intentions you also probably get things wrong sometimes as well.

10

I’m totally confused by you and the OP saying that “maverick” is some kind of disparaging term. In the United States, the word “maverick” generally has positive connotations. Think Top Gun or John McCain. Is it really an offensive term in other parts of the world? In the US, it typically means someone who thinks and acts independently rather than someone who conforms to the predominate groupthink. Politicians here like to call themselves “mavericks”. How is it used in your neck of the woods?

11

I feel you. I’m an arachnologist. my main ID work here is bouncing species back to genus because some people think you can ID spiders from partly very diffficult species group by simply looking at their backs, while arachnologists extract internal genitalia for species ID in these cases.

Do you know that intentionally adding false ID is a violation of the community guidelines? So, when you talked to them, there are ways to ban these users indefinitely. I just learned about this, here is the article:

Community Guidelines Enforcement : iNaturalist Help

12

Divided by a common language.
To me maverick is someone who goes against the others – rebellious. I don’t think of it in a positive context. Thank you for that.

From Merriam-Webster – Derived from 19th-century Texas lawyer Samuel A. Maverick, who left his unbranded cattle to roam freely (difficult for the rest of the world to know about Texas cattle ranchers)

South Africa has a ‘defend the truth’ online journal
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/

From Cambridge dictionary – a person who thinks and acts in an independent way, often behaving differently from the expected or usual way.
a political maverick
With an uncomfortable subtext of feeling threatened if you ‘do not toe the partyline’ or support a banned organisation. Support Ukraine or Gaza or …

Maverick is not a neutral word, and I suspect difficult to translate across iNat’s many user languages.

13

Anecdotically, about a year ago I summarily reviewed all the ~30,000 RG obs of vascular plants in my area. Only 0.5% (~150) were indisputably wrong. This is a very good result!

14

Withdrawing or completely deleting?

15

Not to distract from the main topic too much, but I’ve seen a lot of cases where prolific identififiers, even one’s that are generally correct with their IDs, completely delete a wrong identification. Presumably, it’s just to avoid the embarrassment of having others see the mistake they made.

16

I went beyond the anecdote and published a similar analysis for one lizard species and found only 76 errors of 33,000 observations, so your result is probably accurate.

Zani, PA, 2024, Accuracy of iNaturalist Identifications: a Test Using a Geographically Ubiquitous and Variable Species of Lizard. Herpetological Review, 55(2), 157–162.

17

@Miroslaw if what you’re saying is accurate and an identifier is repeatedly making incorrect identifications despite explicit correction from multiple other identifiers, then it sounds like it would be appropriate to flag one of their identifications to discuss a response with moderators. You would need to provide sufficient evidence (i.e. links to other observations where this problem has occurred) to demonstrate to moderators that the identifier is being willfully ignorant and is stubbornly unwilling to be more cautious in response to correction.

18

I typically see it used for “rebellious/against the norm”, both in positive and negative contexts. Maybe a slight slant towards positive, but overall I think what I’ve seen has been fairly balanced?

19

Yes, I agree with you.

The term “maverick” usually connotes an attitude of “the hell with everyone else and what they think is right - I’m going to do my own thing and go my own way, no matter what everyone else thinks.” And here in the United States, that attitude is generally applauded.

Hence, “maverick” has a positive connotation. Call me a maverick and I will feel a little surge of pride and an ego boost.

20

Yeah, to me ‘maverick’ is absolutely a neutral term for someone who goes against the grain. Whether a maverick is good or bad depends on… whether they turn out to be right! I’m UK based, but I wouldn’t presume to speak for all my compatriots, but I’ve always thought it was a very apt term.