North American Sinea ID and the Sorcerer's Apprentice problem

[dhasdf]

@spiphany

The thing is – normally its suggestions should also include a genus-level Colletes, or perhaps a general “bees” in the first case (conservative top-level suggestion) and the other species (all of which are in the CV) in the second case. In other words, users are not selecting the wrong suggestion because the CV presents them with no other option, but because they are actively choosing that option. Because they think it looks right, or because the idea that the insect they see visiting ivy must be an “ivy bee” is too irresistible, or because they have no idea and are therefore randomly picking one of the suggestions, or some other reason that is not clear to me.

On the web version of iNat, the suggestions always^[1] start with a “We’re pretty sure this is in the genus: [genus]. Here are our top suggestions: [list of species].” The “pretty sure” option is always at the genus level or higher, even if the CV only suggests one species, even if the genus only has one species in it.

The (old) Android app works the same way.

The new app (iNaturalist Next, now default on iOS) does not work this way, unless it has changed in the last few months. It can put a species as the top suggestion, for reasons explained here and here by @tiwane. The rest of that thread (and this thread we are in now) explain why this is a problem and a step backward.

edit: sorry, I missed where you had already mentioned this

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1. unless the CV really doesn’t know what it’s looking at, and isn’t “pretty sure” of even a high-level taxon ↩︎