Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this, i still don’t understand how i am maent to engage with this forum and keep getting told i am off topic or using these topics wrong but also am not meant to make that many new threads. But…
Does anyone know why i can’t vote ‘can not be improved’ for my own observation when i think it can only be identified to genus level?
For instance: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/241162955
I don’t have achenes, petals, or sepals, so i don’t think it is possible to determine whether it is A. triviale or A. subcordatum. i want to mark ‘no further ID needed’ to indicate that i think it should rearch research grade at genus only. But it is ghosted out and i can’t click the no option. Any ideas on how i can do this? I recognize there’s no value in clicking yes without more than one ID, but in this case clicking no seems to make sense.
For example, this prevents people from using the DQA for marking observations where the same species is not present in all photos if the observation has only one photo, and it also prevents new users from checking “ID can be improved” when uploading observations because they think they need to do this to get an ID.
The box should become active as soon as you get a second ID.
this is unfortunate for this particular use case. Any chance we can get ‘no further ID needed’ still available with just one ID, even if the other option for ‘ID can be improved’ is not? If not is there some other way to mark something as not needing further taxonomic ID rather than having a bunch of people review it and leave comments about how there aren’t diagnostic features when i already know that and agree? It seems we should have ways to note that especially with the current insistence to add cryptic hypersplit species to iNat taxonomy…
Can’t you indicate this using the notes section? I realize not everyone reads notes, but a lot of people do.
It seems like there would be some potential problems associated with being able to mark something as “not in need of review” with only a single ID. While you may want to use it to indicate that the ID doesn’t need to be refined any further, the basic principle that an ID should be confirmed by at least one other person seems like it still applies even if it is a genus-level ID and not a species-level one. I could see people trying to use such an option to bypass the community review process altogether.
(The “ID cannot be improved” box never had any effect until there was more than one ID, by the way – the greying out of the box hasn’t changed this. All it does is make the observation RG once there is a community ID.)
I find it a bit problematic as well because I have agreeing ID notifications turned off, meaning I won’t be notified when it does actually have a community taxon (when their ID matches mine).
I can sort of see the rationale for not allowing it. If I set an observation with a single genus level ID as “CID can’t be improved”, and then someone adds a phylum level ID, the CID will now be at phylum level and marked as “can’t be improved.” That’s not really what I meant by the initial flag though. Not sure how to solve this unless that flag was somehow attached to individual IDs (like discussed in pisum’s thread). So we’re left with those observations sitting perpetually at needs ID.
I think, since observations marked “cannot be improved” still reach Research Grade even at broader-than-species community taxon, such a feature would not make sense. Instead it would probably just create a massive amount of images which are taken out of the ID pool, but also will never reach research grade.
I personally think the “cannot be improved” feature should be used more often by taxon specialists, but I can also understand the hesitation and the argument “maybe it can be with a different key”. But in practice, it likely never will be improved.
I agree that this situation is annoying, but it does seem like the alternative would be worse. Can you just ask someone else who knows the taxon to agree with your genus-level ID? That would create a Community ID and allow you to check the “cannot be improved” box.
Yes, but it isn’t really a great option for a lot of reasons. Most importantly, unless the other person who adds a coarser ID happens to check the box for ‘no further ID needed’, it keeps getting more people reviweing the ID which can’t be verified to species, thinking they may be able to improve it. it’s not efficient or respectful of the time of identifiers.
To clarify, i totally agree. I’m still seeking research grade here, but just to genus rather than species level (or section, or whatever the case may be).
Oh i know. but given how wonky my memory is and how many observations I have, the chance of me returning to it after it get smore IDs and checking the box then is low.
I suppose it could be a problem if amateurs to that taxa check it, but given most people want finer ID not coarser, there doesn’t seem to be much motivation to do so. I wouldn’t click it unless i was confident no species level ID is possible… which is often the case with difficult taxa i am well familiar with, such as Carex species. I might know no ID is possible without peregynia, so why have several others review it when i can just mark it? There are many taxa there’s still much value in identifying to genus or section, even if they can’t be identified to species level
I don’t know whether I understand your argument correctly. Apologies if not.
I agree that there’s value in having the data from genus-level (or even broader) IDs on these taxa, so it would be a shame if those could never reach research grade.
But to make that data available for research, it needs at least two agreeing IDs. And when having at least two IDs you can then mark it as “cannot be improved”, so you will have a RG-observation at genus-level.
Your proposed “no further ID needed” feature would mean that your observation could not reach research grade because no other IDer would be able to agree with your genus-level ID.
The current wording is “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?”
My use case is that the community taxon can not be improved, but can be confirmed.
I am looking for a way to mark it as not needing species level ID when I know it is very unlikely to impossible, so it doesn’t accumulate multiple genus level IDs and people repeatedly telling me it isn’t identifiable to species. But i still want the genus or section improved.
Maybe a different option than using the checkbox would be better, like a way to mark the level to which it can be confirmed. But maybe that’s too complex.
Writing something in notes isn’t a solution to my use case. I do usually put something in the notes, but it doesn’t seem to affect the responses of others and it does nothing to affect the identification algorithm or stop it from retaining ‘needs ID’ even with multiple genus level IDs
Does this make sense? I know it’s confusing… sorry.
Ah. Yes, thank you for clarifying :)
Perhaps writing something as a separate comment instead of putting it into the notes will be more visible to identifiers? But it is also not ideal.
I have no better idea than that though. I personally never really had this problem. People usually just agree with my broad ID and move on without leaving a comment.
Well, I and five others clicked through and could not provide a second ID even at the genus level. If somebody can, that will solve the problem because it will then have a community ID.
Here’s a suggested solution to your “wonky” memory without needing to opt-in to confirming ID notifications:
On those observations where you would have marked them as “not able to be improved”, immediately after submission mark them instead as “not reviewed”.
Then bookmark an identify-mode query on your own observations. Sort descending by date updated.
Check that bookmark weekly or however often seems appropriate. Then you can mark them as “not able to be improved” once they have a confirming ID to the appropriate level.
This might potentially work for me as a work-around, but to be honest i’m pretty buried in other iNat stuff I need to do, and it’s probably not super likely myself or others with this use case will end up doing this stuff. I guess my point of posting is asking the iNat admins/devs to stop greying out that box with just one ID, or to offer another similar option. If they aren’t able or willing to do that… i’m aware of these other work arounds, but they aren’t really the point of this post. I am hoping for site functionality to address this, not work arounds, though i do appreciate those who are trying to help. Thanks.
It’s easy to ignore notes, true, but comments are harder to ignore, since we scan down the list to check other ID’s. Putting your comment that it can’t be ID’d past genus there might be effective.
I don’t understand the difference between comments and notes. I think we are talking about the same thing. But like i said… i’m hoping they will reverse that change to how the check box works. But that will only happen if others are also concerned about it, which sounds like from this thread people aren’t. So i guess there’s nothing else to say here. I don’t need workarounds, i just wanted to see if anyone else was struggling with the change.
It sounds like I and others have been offering the wrong kind of “help.” I apologize.
I’m using “notes” to refer to what you write on an observation when you upload it. At least in the form I see iNaturalist observations, they end up between the photo and the various identifications. By comments, I mean what you write after an observation is posted. They end up among the list of identifications.
Oh, you didn’t do anything wrong. I just didn’t communicate well. I don’t put in feature requests on the forum because i don’t understand the process or the form. But maybe that would have been better, or else nothing at all. But thanks anyhow.
