I’ve noticed that there seems to be some disagreement about how best to make observations Casual when, for example, the focus of the observation is a man-made object rather than an organism. E.g. foam insulation or a plastic lawn flamingo. In these cases, most people seem to think that it should be identified as Human. When I suggest that it might make more sense to mark No Evidence of Organism in the DQA, I get strongly disagreed with. I see three ways to look at this scenario:
The object in the photo was created by humans, so the observation should be identified as Human. Since humans are organisms, of course there is Evidence of Organism.
The person who made the observation thought there was an organism here. They were mistaken. There is no evidence of the organism they thought they saw, so we should downvote Evidence of Organism in the DQA.
The focus of the observation is not an organism, so the observation should be Casual. It doesn’t matter how that is achieved since all the options have the same end result.
Option #1 seems to be the opinion of many people. I’ve even heard the argument that all photos are themselves evidence of humans, as a justification for using this method to make ambiguous observations Casual. I’ve also seen people agree with Option #3, but I know that’s not an idea that should be encouraged. My opinion is that we have the many DQA options for a reason, so we should always make sure to use the most accurate one even though they have similar effects. It seems less than ideal to dump most Casual observations into either Captive/Cultivated or Human when there are additional options that may fit better.
I would like a solid answer, preferably from staff, as to whether Option #1 or #2 are the right choice for the examples I gave. When is No Evidence of Organism supposed to be used, and when should observations be IDed as Human instead?
Since I’m getting lots of responses showcasing the disagreement here, I’ve decided to make a poll. Do you agree with Option #1, #2, or #3 as relates to the examples given above?
(1) Identify as Human
(2) Downvote Evidence of Organism
(3) Any option is fine
(4) Identify as Human and downvote “Evidence of Organism”
That DQA exists for a reason. If somebody uploads photos of a rock, pencils, a slab of concrete. That is what you should use. I didn’t know there was confusion over it. Extra clarification doesn’t hurt, and if it turns out I’ve been using it wrong for years, it would be news to me. I’m also not sure how else you would use that DQA.
In general, there’s a lot of emphasis on making sure to identify the intended focus of an observation. So the question is, does “No Evidence of Organism” only apply when there is no evidence of an organism anywhere in the photo, or does it apply when the obvious intended focus of the observation is not evidence of an organism? I think the second version makes more sense in a broader context, but the first definitely follows the “letter of the law” better.
Roundabout technical evidence to me is a slippery slope that should be avoided.
Quick thoughts.
Why is the water slightly green? Algae.
Evidence of organism
Why does the rock have some discoloration of yellows and blacks? Lichen.
Evidence of organism
Why does the ground have a brown substance called dirt? Dead organic matter.
Evidence of organism
Why does the atmosphere have oxygen?
Evidence of organism
Pink lawn flamingo made by a person.
Evidence of organism
Really if you try hard enough and have a trained eye, you could argue evidence of organisms from nearly any photo.
All very good points, and it sounds like you agree with my interpretation.
is definitely my main argument here. Yes, you can rules-lawyer evidence of organism out of anything, but if that’s the way that it’s meant to be interpreted, it shouldn’t be an option at all.
I tend to follow #2 of your example. If somebody uploads an image of sidewalk as an ant. There being no insects in the image, but i do see sidewalk fire dot fungi, im not going to ID the fungi. I’ll just mark no evidence of organism since its a photo of sidewalk with no insect. Doesn’t mean you can’t point that out to uploader, and reccomend deleting or iding the Fungi instead.
Funny to think about. This is why I find it a slippery slope, and even dangerous to allow this interpretation. Technically it could make the DQA useless as any photograph taken whether by human or wirelessly is evidence of human activity.
I thought I knew how to handle this, but I’ve just found one I don’t know what to do with.
Photo taken inside a room. There are no organisms visible in the room. There is a window. It is raining. There are trees outside, but due to the rain on the window, they are unidentifiable.
The observer has IDed it as a common house plant. That species is not in the room, and can’t be the trees outside as it is not a tree.
So - No evidence of organism? Or Human? Or “Vascular plants” for the trees outside? Or what?
I gave it the original title to make it more of an open topic, with the thought that I or someone else might think of questions other than the one in my original post. If the more specific title seems more appropriate, that’s fine too. I’ll leave it for now.
I think some people find the idea of IDing human artifacts as “human” to be fairly unintuitive, so this may be the source of some of the pushback. The logic is that this is the same as other types of indirect evidence where the organism itself is not currently present (tracks, nests, etc.), but it seems like it requires a bit of rethinking to recognize human-made objects as being analogous to this. I don’t know if it would help if the annotation for evidence of presence that exists for other animal taxa were to be activated for humans.
My inclination is to handle such observations based on what seems to have been the intention of the observer. In other words, if there is a discrete human-made object that appears to have been the subject of interest (an artificial flower, a piece of garbage, etc.), it makes sense to ID as human. If there seems to have been some other organism that escaped from the photo (an ant, a bird, etc.), I would be more inclined to use the DQA “no evidence of organism”. I’m a bit more conflicted about how to handle street art/murals that are clearly intended to represent a particular species. I’m always tempted to use the DQA rather than IDing as human, but the established practice seems to be the latter.
Occasionally users may not have seen anything in particular and they are just taking pictures and seeing what the CV suggests. I think “no evidence of organism” is fine in such cases. (Along with maybe suggesting to the observer that they delete the observation.)
More generally, in cases where the observer has entered an ID for something that I can’t find in the photo, I try to check with them to point out where it is, and if it turns out that their subject escaped before they could take the photo, I will explain that we need a photo of the organism in question in order to suggest an ID. If there are other organisms in the photo that might be IDable, I might ask whether they want an ID for one of these instead. This is more likely if the scene is a natural landscape rather than a human-made one, but sometimes there may be other identifiable organisms on a section of sidewalk or street scene.
without seeing the obs, I would presume the ‘tree thru a rainy window’ is the focus - and they have given it an ID of something they know. ID Blurry tree. They are following iNat’s Engage with Nature as best they can.
For rocks, generic landscape, lunar eclipse - I skip the DQA and leave a comment.
If an object is man-made, I add a Human ID. If not, I use the DQA. sometimes I’ll do both.
I have noticed that observations without any ID, when getting an ID, can have funny things happen to their DQA votes (eg, “multiple species” votes might disappear).
Always add a human ID (or ‘‘life’’ ID with disagreement), if you don’t have time to do both human ID and DQA.
If you only do DQA, the ID of the observation don’t change, and when someone look for that taxa including casual observations, it will still show up. Some people might think that no one includes casual obs, but sometimes casual obs are interesting records (e.g. fossil), so it’s good to consider this.
If the focus of the observation seems to be something made by humans (e.g. plastic flamingo), I mark it human.
If the observer labeled the observation for a species that really isn’t there, I mark it “no evidence of organism,” meaning “no evidence of that organism even though there may be other organisms in the photo. For example, a photo labeled as a bird and there is no bird though there are lots of plants. Usually. If there’s another species that can be easily identified from the photo, I may try to shift the ID to that one, with or without asking the observer. I’m most likely to shift the ID arbitrarily if it’s an older observation and the observer seems to be gone.
I think this assumption is where the disagreement ultimately lies. In my mind, if the person genuinely thought there was a snake there, but the snake is merely a rubber toy, then “no evidence of organism” seems appropriate. If the person was knowingly taking a photo of a toy snake (manmade object) and uploading it as an observation, then they’ve knowingly uploaded a human artifact- IDing as Human now seems appropriate.
Remember, we’re supposed to honor the observer’s intention as to the focus of the observation. IDing something as Human because the photo was taken by a manmade camera or because there’s a bag of chips sitting in the corner is ludicrous, because those clearly weren’t the observer’s focus. We shouldn’t be asking “is this photo’s existence evidence of any organism”; we should be asking “is this photo sufficient evidence of the organism that the observer believes they have observed”.
Obviously, the challenge is that you can’t get into a user’s head and know what they “thought” they were observing if they don’t say anything. So you have to make an educated guess in a lot of cases. If I think the user was clearly intentionally posting a photo of a manmade object, I ID it as Human. If I think they’ve genuinely mistaken something that isn’t an organism for an organism, I vote “no evidence of organism”.
The observer decides what they claim to have seen, and present a photo as evidence of that. If their claim is “I saw a piece of trash”, and the photo shows that, that’s evidence of their claim, i.e. an encounter with a Human artifact. “No evidence of organism” seems wrong here. If their claim is “I saw a Snowy Owl” and the photo shows no evidence of any sort of bird whatsoever, then “No evidence of organism” makes sense.
If the observer’s intention indicates that they were interested in the object, it would be appropriate to identify the object; if this is a human-made object, then an ID of “human” is appropriate. The fact that they were mistaken about the identity of the object is no reason to ID as “no evidence of organism.” Otherwise any observation with a mistaken ID (flies mistaken for bees, etc.) should be marked as “no evidence of organism” rather than correcting the ID.
If the observer doesn’t include a note as to what they were trying to photo, which is a common situation, then it is fair game for the identifier to knock it to Casual via the DQA whatever way they want.