'Needs ID' pile, and identifications

[fffffffff]

If you know that they can’t be ided further, then mark them, if you’re not sure it’s better not to.

[Star3]

@shanesmicroscope

My focus is on microscopic observations, where often it is non-trivial, even for experienced observers, to place an organism in the proper kingdom(!).

I joined the “Microscopic Microbes” project (and several other projects, like “Intertidal Zone”, “Beach Finds and Washashore”, etc)…they often have organisms I can’t ID past “Life”, so I hope project members can do better. Of course, that has its own issues:

1. There aren’t notifications when observations are added to projects, and
2. they seem to be listed in order of when the observation was addded to iNat, not when it was added to the project.
   • so an older Unknown observation added to the project may end up on page 2 or 3 of the project’s observations list, rather than being on page one to show members “hey, this is new to the project, any ideas?”

[sedgequeen]

Marking the dandelion observation “cannot be improved” is reasonable. Most of them truly can’t because the necessary details were not photographed. Also, observations marked “cannot be improved” at the genus level will go to Research Grade. Should be easy for any future Taraxacum expert to find because he’ll be searching on “Taraxacum.”

[fluffyinca]

I asked essentially this same question in a different topic.

@fluffyinca

Is it acceptable to work through dandelion observations (Needs ID and/or Research Grade), bumping them back to genus and checking “ID cannot be improved” to make them RG at genus level? I did this to a page or two but then realized it might offend someone - will it? If so, is there a better solution? It bothers me that there are so many with Community ID at species when they can’t really be identified that far.

These are the responses I got:

@upupa-epops

Theoretically a dandelion observation that shows a good view of the leaves should be identifiable to section/macrospecies, and if it shows leaves and the bracts under the flower it could be identifiable to microspecies. The only issue is that there’s only like one person in North America who’s confident in identifying to that level. And without knowledge of even which sections exist in which states it’s hard for others to start. There’s maybe 2-3 people on iNat in Europe, but they’re not big identifiers.

If the images wouldn’t be sufficient to distinguish T. officinale and T. erythrospermum, which are both accepted by FNA, then it should probably be at genus level anyway given that both are common and widely distributed.

@annkatrinrose

I don’t think doing this indiscriminately to all dandelions is a good approach. It depends on location, the identifying features shown in the pictures associated with the observation, and the keys available for that location. For example, the floras for the southeastern US only have two species listed (with a note that more may exist), T. officinale and T. erythrospermum, and a key how to distinguish them. If an observation shows the characters noted in the key, I don’t think it’s appropriate to bump it back to genus just because there are different keys published for other locations or based on the assumption that things are more complicated and current keys are insufficient. However, if the pictures show none of these features (e.g. no leaves or seeds), that’s different as it cannot be keyed out beyond genus, at least not using the key in the southeastern US flora. It seems more work needs to be done on sorting this out for the eastern US but that’s way over the heads of the average iNat observer or identifier. Meanwhile, I think using existing keys should be acceptable and not be bumped back to genus.

@charlie

whether it’s appropriate depends on what taxa scheme we buy on to. I mean personally I don’t really ever use that “no further id “ button unless I believe the ID is actually wrong, but that’s a debate that happened long ago and I know people are allowed to use it how you do.

[fffffffff]

@headsoup I’ll answer you here, yes, it is a needed work to search for mistakes, and if expert can look through all verifiable observations it’s the best scenario, but we lack iders, they’re rare and endangered. Another problem is as observer you often don’t know what is a correct id and what is not, plus it’s mostly not species-level ids, I’d say if that was in the reverse, pressure on iders would be much less, and needs id that way would go down pretty fast.

[headsoup]

Thanks for moving the conversation to the correct place :)

I agree in general, I guess what I’m proposing would be ‘phase 2’ once we just get enough general IDers going to work through the broader pile. I’m just cautious of IDers that have expertise in particular areas focusing on bringing down the pile where they could be enhancing the quality of existing records (and therefore lead to better AI recommendations and then better ‘first guesses’ by observers. Tough to do I guess while the pile is so big!

[fffffffff]

But cv uses not only RG observations, so experts are working to this goal anyway.

[That_Bug_Guy]

Could this ‘pile’ of needs ID be the result of more citizen scientists joining iNat than experts?

[graysquirrel]

@shanesmicroscope

The problem, not-insignificant in my opinion, is that an observation will only ever make it into my feed if the very first ID placed it into one of my subscribed taxa. If someone observes something and labels it “State of Matter Life” (a very common ID for microscope observations), then you come along and say “Hey, this is a rotifer, let’s ID it as such and someone with more knowledge will be able to help” … it will never make it into my feed and I will never see it unless I go out of my way to search for it.

Firstly, I absolutely agree that this needs to be changed, and it should happen automatically. But if you’re interested, I may have a workaround for you. I took your favorite taxa from your profile and made a custom URL - this will bring up an identify page that includes all observations anyone has ever identified as one of these taxa, regardless of what the community ID is currently: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?ident_taxon_id=335333%2C203636%2C467532%2C126917%2C1276374%2C1094458&place_id=any

If you bookmark that URL and use it as your main identify page, it should circumvent your problem.

[fffffffff]

That’s not a question, but a fact, though anybody can be an expert, so it’s the result of many people not trying to id at all.

[mamestraconfigurata]

Nah. Get the wrong ID, flashing red lights and sirens, followed by ‘GAME OVER’!

[annkatrinrose]

Now there’s an idea to make the next botany practical more interesting, mwhahaha! Education nowadays is all about ‘gamification’, right?

[arboretum_amy]

@headsoup

enhancing the quality of existing records

To a point, sure. But I have barrel cactus obs with 8+ confirming species IDs, and that makes my blood boil. If all those people like cactus and have the time, why can’t they spend it on some other genus…?

[lynnharper]

Because they’re afraid of being wrong? Because they want to show off their knowledge? Because they really, truly are an expert and they are checking the quality of RG records and clicking Agree is easier/faster than clicking Reviewed? (Is it actually faster to click Agree than Reviewed? I never use Reviewed, so I really don’t know.)

I might have a bit of bias that’s showing here, because when I see the number of easy-to-ID unconfirmed observations out there in my area (New England, which is thick with iNatters), I wonder why they haven’t been confirmed in three or four or eleven years. Dare to be wrong, people! (Just keep it to, say, less than 1% of the time.)

[fffffffff]

Please explain why if they’re true experts they check easy species and don’t check anything little bit more complicated? Why many people only check RG observations and have many thousands of such ids, how their id number 4, 5, 6, etc. make those records worth more? I don’t wanna link here anything, but 8-9 ids on Great Tit photo is just too much and it happens each time.

[annkatrinrose]

It seems to happen a lot on birds observed in Europe, but not on US birds or e.g. plants and such. I wonder if maybe European birders are more prone to “subscribe” to their favorite species and interact with every single observation on those rather than using iNat’s Identify function?

[arboretum_amy]

Lots of discussion about this here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/changes-to-the-agree-button-functionality-and-addition-of-markdown-in-comments-and-id-remarks/14566

I brought it up because I got notications about two of my barrel cactus observations this morning needed to vent hahah.

[graysquirrel]

The annual flood of students taking blurry photographs of cultivated plants and uploading them with whatever unlikely organism the CV suggests is now beginning in earnest, at least here in California. My least favorite time of the year!

[lynnharper]

You make a good point about whether they are true experts or not.

[egordon88]

Post an identify portal link in the IdentiFriday thread and we’ll help you out