So I’ve been doing some broad ID on “unknown” observation for the past few weeks, and I try to help with DQA whenever I can. This is what I understand each item is for:
Date is accurate: what it says - I haven’t found a case where I’ve had to use this yet
Location is accurate: this isn’t a middle-of-the-ocean observation with pictures from a forest
Organism is wild: ruling out animals in captivity + cultivated plants
Evidence of organism: there is/isn’t some living thing in this photo
Recent evidence of organism: ruling out fossils
Evidence related to a single subject: if it has multiple pictures, they’re all from the same organism
Evidence accurately represents organism or scene: the picture is/isn´t extremely zoomed in, blurry, dark or otherwise visually unidentifiable
Can the community taxon be improved?: can the organism be more specifically identified than it already is? (i don’t usually touch this one since i mostly do kingdom ID)
My question is: I see many many pictures of landscapes, with lots of plant species visible but no indication as to what needs to be identified. I’ve even seen pictures of rainbows with a tree or two in the corner, and the comment “rainbow” added in by the observator.
Are these valid? Should I try to bump them down to casual? Try to identify whatever the heck I feel like can be most accurately identified in the picture? I always ask what are we trying to identify if the account is active, but lots of these are from accounts that haven’t had any activity on the site for years, so I don’t expect an answer. If the solution is to get it to casual grade, which of the DQA items is the correct one?
Since the observation is often from a single picture, I can’t check “single subject”, and since a good chunk of them are honestly beautiful and HQ pictures it doesn’t feel right to check “evidence accurately represents…”.
I’ve found it very rewarding to broadly ID an observation from three years ago and have it reach research grade in a couple days, and I really want to keep helping with this as accurately as possible!! Hope I got my point across lol
I’d say don’t stress too much about landscape shots. As long as you check your notifications so you can update your ID if the observer suddenly comes in with a different ID (like – you missed the tiny bird blob in the corner!), I think it’s fine to just go with identifying whatever seems most identifiable. I often go with things like plant, flowering plants, dicots, palm tree, etc.
This is the standard answer, and what most people will recommend. However,
This is the result 99.9% of the time I ask anything about an observation when identifying, so in practicality, asking for clarification doesn’t usually help. Therefore,
This is what I usually do. If they come back with a comment saying they want to change the focus to something else, it’s easy enough to change the ID.
It’s not recommended to use the DQAs to “get it to casual grade” if it doesn’t clearly violate one of the DQA options. A single photo with organisms in it and no clear subject definitely doesn’t warrant any DQA downvotes. So I’d say don’t send them to casual in this case.
For landscapes pictures, I’ll often add a comment asking what the subject of the observation is, although I pretty much never get a response back. I don’t think any of the DQA’s typically work since there is an organism in the photo - just unclear which one is the subject.
For observations like your rainbow picture, I’ll add a comment from the Frequently Used Responses page to remind them that iNat is for organisms. Frequently Used Responses · iNaturalist
For example: Someone scans an old photo from the 1970s. They upload it today. The date on the observation says that they observed it today. (This does not happen very often, and when it does, there’s a fair chance that user is paying attention enough to fix it if you leave them a comment.)
Instead of asking “how can I push this to casual?”, I find it helpful to frame it as, “how can I make this observation more useful?” And if that makes it casual, it makes it casual.
For example, if there’s a problem that needs to be fixed to make the observation eligible to be Research Grade, then using the correct DQA identifies that problem, which is adding value. Observations of cultivated plants are easier to find if they are correctly marked cultivated. And so on. People might be looking for observations with the wrong date, who knows???
If you just can’t tell what the focus is intended to be (or if you suspect the focus is something that is not eligible to be identified), you can make the observation more useful by picking something to identify, even if the best you can do is “Plants”. (If you really think no one can possibly do any better than that, then also mark it “as good as it can be”, which will push it to casual in the correct category.)
I hope you also comment to let users know when you use a DQA that makes their observation casual. Users don’t get notifications about DQA votes, so they may not know that there is a problem (or what they need to do to fix it) unless someone tells them. Some people who review a lot of observations by new users have developed standard comments that they copy-paste from a document or a text expander.
This DQA is not about identifiability. A dark or blurry photo is not a basis for making an observation casual. If you can’t identify it, skip it or add the best ID you can.
The DQA is intended for situations where the photo has been manipulated in such a way that it might distort parts of the photo evidence relevant for ID (e.g., adding or erasing details).
