The idea is that I get species for a given region from iNaturalist and present them in quiz form. Many ways to do this, but one is to show four images in multiple choice form.
I am posting here for advice, not to advertise. First off, is my use allowed? Second, what do people think of the general idea - carried out by me or officially by iNat coders?
I have no wish to profit in any way and would be happy to hand over the code and ideas. I just think it is a cool use of the data that so many have helped put together.
Welcome to the forum! Threads that ask for feedback/look to start a conversation (which this one does) are fine, even if they have links to personal projects (though it might be problematic if the projects were for profit in some way). Threads that promote projects/apps, etc. or just post a link without attempting to start a convo may be delisted, authors asked to reframe, etc.
If you are using photos, you should make sure you abide by whatever Creative Commons licensing (or lack thereof) choices the observers have made for those photos. Some people have reserved all rights on their photos.
I picked North American mammals and played it up to 35/39. Here are some comments:
The “New” button does what I’d expect a “Next” button to do.
I suggest sampling without replacement. I’ve seen the mule deer and the coypu at least twice each. I knew the mule deer by his antlers; the white-tailed deer lives here, and I’ve collided with one. The coypu I didn’t know, but figured out from the genus name that it’s a rodent (Myocastor means “mouse beaver”).
You could make difficulty levels. For easy, you can present a squirrel, a mole, a donkey, and a deer (that’s what it’s showing now). For hard, you can present four rodents.
These quizzes are great. I played both of the ones your linked to. My only complaint is that at first it was confusing to figure out how to get to the next animal in the quiz. I would suggest changing the “New” button to “Next” instead. You might also want to put a little credit line under the photo to show who took the photo. Any chance you’d want to make one for Arachnids?
Thank you phma. The program is supposed to keep track and not re-show a species until it goes full cycle but may be a bug. If you just chose “Mammals” it is often very easy, so try one of the other choices. I can make it harder by using species with fewer observations, which I have done for the birds of California. But hard to generalize as some places have few species and observations.
Hi Zygy. I was able to make that change, to add the attribution. That was a great idea, thanks!. The beauty of my approach is that I can just change the taxon and make it do anything. So I will add one of Arachnids for sure. Good suggestion. I may add fungi as well, as people like to learn those too.
One way to make it more challenging (and for me at least more useful for learning) would be to draw on the “Similar Species” tab of each species’ taxon page to present organisms that are frequently confused with each other. For example, if the correct answer is Song Sparrow, and the other three choices are Cooper’s Hawk, Mallard, and Turkey Vulture, I only need to know very approximately what a sparrow is to get the right answer. If the other three answers were other sparrows, I’d have to think and look at lot more closely. I did the bird quiz, set to my county in California, for 88 questions, and only once were there two species in the same family to distinguish between.
As @phma said, it would be helpful to have a harder setting, and using similar species as the other choices would be one way to achieve that.
I will look at the similar species idea, that could work. Thanks! One problem is that some places have very few species, but the idea would be great for large areas. As I said, I can use rare observations and another thing I have tried is to use all images, so not just the good ones that you see.
I wish the mammal quiz would be a bit harder. For example, I am given a picture of a lynx, and the 4 options are Canada lynx, red fox, domestic horse, and white-footed mouse. I think most people can see that the lynx is not a mouse without much (or any) knowledge of my area’s mammals.
The problem is with leaving the default “Mammals”. Try choosing a different order and/or place. I agree that is is too easy when faced with Dolphin/Fox/Bear/Rabbit :-)
I have taken your advice and added “Random order” as default. This restricts choices to a singe taxonomic order. I added an alert for cases when there are too few species in that order for that place.
You’re right. I tried one of the other options, and it was much more difficult. I did have one on Artiodactyla that was pretty humorous. The photo was an oryx, and all other options were cetaceans. Another of a Sperm Whale where one of the options was Sheep.
FYI, I just did a quiz and twice the quiz had a repeated question - including photo and all options - immediately afterwards.
Selecting Random Order sticks to that order for multiple questions by pressing Next. The Load button randomly selects an order for the next question. Is this working as intended? It probably is, but just making sure.
Edit:
The California Bird quiz is another example of where the random options makes it too easy when selecting All Orders. The first quiz generated had a Phainopepla, with the other options being a cooper’s hawk, a great blue heron, and a yellow-rumped warbler. Granted, some people might be confused as to whether it was a warbler, the other two could quickly be disregarded.
Maybe the bird options can be pulled from the same Order, even when the All Orders dropdown is selected? In the above example, both Phainopepla and Yellow-rumped Warbler are in the same Order (Passeriformes), but the hawk (Order: Accipitriformes) and heron (Order: Pelecaniformes) would not be an option.
I was going to suggest Family, though some bird families are very small. The Phainopepla is 1 of just 4 species in its family, with the other 3 being from Mexico or Costa Rica.
Keep up the great work. This is fun. Apologies if this feedback is unwarranted. I am not being critical. I love this kind of stuff.
