Observer not correcting wrong IDs / problematic practices

General
1

Hi y’all,

I think this has probably been discussed before, but I just wanted to ask about an iNaturalist user who uploads very high quantities of single photo observations always with species-level IDs, many of which are either definitely wrong, or completely lacking in necessary photos to confidently ID. (A good portion of their IDs are right too, in fairness.) After someone corrects their ID, they never withdraw their original ID, address the comment, or engage with the ID or comment in any way. In at least one occasion, they observed the same individual and gave it two different IDs. (It was observed on two different days, so it could definitely be an honest mistake.)

I have messaged the user and when they asked for advice, I recommended they use higher classifications, and gave detailed explanation of which to use, e.g. Liliopsida for monocot flowering plants, or Bryopsida for mosses in our area that aren’t Sphagnum, Polytrichaceae, or Tetraphis. Their response was pretty weird and confusing (basically didn’t respond to what I said at all and brought up a relatively unrelated topic) and they haven’t changed their behavior at all.

In my opinion, this kind of behavior is really not what iNaturalist is about, as (based on the details of their behavior and their messages to me) it has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to learn or care about nature. I think it really runs counter to appreciating and valuing nature. The user told me they use the CV suggestions (which in itself is fine of course), and has never shown any desire to want to know more about correctly IDing what they are observing. They continue to upload the same quality of observations, etc etc.

This kind of thing is totally understandable for someone who is just starting to use the app and doesn’t understand how it’s supposed to work. But after being kindly told how the app is meant to be used, they don’t want to do that. Sometimes this type of behavior bothers me quite a bit, as I’ve decided to ‘follow’ various taxa in areas near me, but specifically don’t follow the location where they observe things, as I don’t want to be inundated with masses of low quality observations from someone who doesn’t really care and has literally never changed their ID on something. (Edit-) In itself, someone making an incorrect ID is totally fine and doesn’t bother me at all, but with this user making thousands of low quality, incorrectly IDed observations in my area, it is a bit harder to ignore.

Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but really I’m wondering- is this type of behavior formally against the rules of iNaturalist? I sincerely think iNaturalist would be better off without these kind of users, and I think no data is better than wrong or bad data, though I could see an argument for both sides. Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts or recommendations.

Edit- I’ve added some clarifying edits, but I can see how with my explanation it isn’t necessarily clear that the person’s behavior goes against the iNaturalist mission or is “in bad faith.” Based on my messages with the user I feel I have very clear reason to think those things. I think I’ve heard everything I needed to regarding advice for me, but wanted to clarify this for future users that may see this topic.

4 Likes
2

To me, it seems odd if a higher level observer changes their ID to agree with a later ID that is more specific. You should not be afraid to not know something. If you didn’t know what something is there need not be a rush to get it to RG, this removes it from other experts that might disagree with the initial identifiers take. Leave it for a few other more knowledgeable people to ID and a consensus is reached.

3 Likes
3

Sorry I don’t understand your comment. The user I’m talking about always uploads observations with species-level IDs from the start. I just edited the post to make that more clear, sorry if it wasn’t at first!

4

I almost exclusively use iNat for fish. However, sometimes I will upload a picture of a plant or other animal that I may not necessarily be familiar with hoping that it may be useful to someone. I typically choose the top option from the suggested list. How then, am I, an uneducated person in plants and non-fish supposed to know that the first identifier to come along is a trustworthy source? Is it not better to leave it be and allow the community as a whole to reach consensus about the ID?

2 Likes
5

This doesn’t answer your specific question about the rules, but if you just don’t want to see that person’s observations at all you could make a collection project that (1) includes the places and taxa that you’re interested in, and (2) excludes that specific user.

3 Likes
6

I think you do have a good reason to be concerned about this type of behavior. However, if this user seems like they’re going out of their way NOT to correct their behavior, I think it may be a misuse of time to try and communicate your point to them. If your explanation is anything to go by, than they’re clearly not interested in learning how to correctly ID, or fix IDs.

It’s interesting how after you reached out to them, they responded in such an odd manner…

While certainly annoying, I wouldn’t call it problematic. To call this type of behavior “against the rules of iNaturalist” would be a bit of a stretch I think. Now, if it was, where would we draw the line? At what degree would this somewhat careless attitude go from “problematic”, to being in violation of iNat’s rules?

I think you’ve responded it the perfect way, reaching out to them and all. You’ve done everything you really can do. It’s on them at this point, and if they keep on doing it, I’d say just leave them be.

6 Likes
7

When we upload something we’re unfamiliar with, we have a few options:

  1. Identify as “Unknown” or “State of Matter: Life”. Can’t be wrong, but also means that specialist identifiers won’t see it.
  2. Identify with a high taxon rank, like Class Insecta or Family Orchidaceae.
  3. Identify with the first suggestion made by the computer vision.

I tried to go with option 2 here. It can take time to work out the appropriate rank, but I often learn new things about the possible taxa I might be looking at.

Sometimes I still find that multiple subject experts are disagreeing with me. While the most prominent option in the interface is to hit “Agree” to change my identification to theirs, I agree this is not always the best option. But I will often “Withdraw” my identification. You can find this option on the website under a ⌄ symbol.

iNaturalist withdraw identification
iNaturalist withdraw identification206×285 17.4 KB

Is the “Withdraw” option is available in the iOS or Android apps? If not, it may explain why some observers aren’t using it.

3 Likes
8

While this is annoying, it’s not really against the rules, nor does it necessarily imply a lack of interest in nature. They could be a young child, or just not want to change their behavoir, or not understand what you’re asking for some reason.

Plenty of people use iNat this way, and it’s just how they interact with nature. One user near me is a dedicated birder, but all of their bird photos are grainy game camera pics of the same few species from their property, ever day. Others only take photos with their cell phones of distant birds. Some people never edit their original IDs, either because it’s too much work or they just don’t want to.

If the observations can’t be identified past a very course ID, then mark them as can’t be improved in the DQA after giving that course ID.

9 Likes
9

If you really have no idea what it is, rather leave it Unknown. If you can add a higher level ID which you know is right - that works too.

Imagine if I call my fish a ‘Pacific salmon’ (way down South in Cape Town). If I refuse to change my ID, it will need THREE identifiers to overturn my wrong ID. Not helpful. Not a fishy person - I will ID those Unknowns as fish. End of.

To the original question - you could mute or block that user.
My solution is to pull up their obs, and methodically Mark that batch as Reviewed. You have done the Be Kind.

2 Likes
10

If that’s how iNat is meant to work then Unknown needs to be the first entry offered to the user, whatever is up the top of the list will always be chosen by the vast majority of users who do not know, that’s rudimentary to interaction design.

I don’t think observers assigning wrong ids to their observations is a problem, this is to be expected as typical, and the community id model addresses that in terms of accuracy. I think the real problem iNat has, and will have increasingly so, is that the mechanics of the community id don’t scale to the number of observations being added, so most observations are bound to have no objective value, just being subjective personal records.

2 Likes
11

I will never say no to additional identifiers, but I don’t think we should measure the value of an observation entirely on its status or whether it has a specialist’s ID.

On the about page, it says: “iNat’s mission is to connect people to nature and advance biodiversity science and conservation”.
So observations as subjective records are equally if not more important as/than their potential to be used in research.

3 Likes
12

this sounds like it may be a user who only uses the app, among other things. Do they know that the website can be a much better way to keep track of older observations? I know people who only use the app and while they do try somewhat to keep up with things it’s really easy to miss notifications and such. The new app may make this better, but most users won’t have that yet.

3 Likes
13

Yeah, the “old” app has the major disadvantage of not allowing you to “withdraw” an ID. I think this problem may be helped out by the ability on iNat Next to withdraw an ID in-app. Frequently I’ll make a “guess” on an ID, someone else will suggest something else, and I just withdraw my original ID if I really have no idea which one is correct and want to come back to it later. On the app, the only options are to agree with the new ID suggestion (which I won’t do if I’m unsure if it’s correct), add a broader ID (which I prefer not to do as it sometimes gives the impression that I’m “soft disagreeing” with the other suggestion), or leave my original ID (which I now suspect may be wrong). None of these are good options, and I prefer to just “withdraw” my original ID, which the new app allows users to do.

7 Likes
14

I appreciate that you are giving the person the benefit of the doubt. I probably could’ve done that more. However in this case, after talking with them, I know that they are not a child but actually a professor in a scientific field. After explaining my rationale for suggesting they could make just a small effort to make higher quality observations, they completely ignored that and changed the subject (even though they initially asked for advice). I agree that people should be able to relate/connect to nature in a wide range of ways, but with this person’s behavior, how they’ve responded to messages, and indicated they like having high numbers of observations, to me it is clear they are not really motivated by a sincere interest in nature. And that just really bums me out, and I wish there were a way for the app to incentivize genuine interest in nature and learning. But I think I am hearing what I really already knew- that the best option is to just ignore them and not give it more thought or energy.

1 Like
15

? you have a handful of obs from 2020?
CV is a suggestion - but the ID would carry your name. You say this is a picture of That species. iNat expects us to be able to explain to Enquiring Minds Want to Know, why we say it is that ID.

16

I came across a historian - who effectively said - iNat was some fluffy fun, not serious like their history.
I explained that other scientists take their biology seriously. We seemed to understand each other.

17

On the about page, it says: “iNat’s mission is to connect people to nature and advance biodiversity science and conservation”.
So observations as subjective records are equally if not more important as/than their potential to be used in research.

Totally agree here! I think often the research value of iNat can be overstated, especially given how the vast majority of observations are of very common, widespread species and don’t include even phenological data that could make them maybe of potential research interest. But if those observations helped someone learn more about and connect with nature, that is awesome!!

(Also, I say this as someone who worked in a biology lab and used iNat observations to identify potential collection sites). I think the opportunity for learning and connecting with nature and other nature lovers which the app provides is many times more significant than the occasional direct conservation benefit it has. Even extending the known range of a species, which happens in a tiny fraction of observations, rarely has significant direct conservation benefits. Which is totally fine and great when it does happen! But also this is getting into another topic, and might be somewhat controversial!

2 Likes
18

I think you are probably right that they are using the app, that is a good point. Maybe I’ll let them know about the website, but based on our past communications, it probably wouldn’t be of interest to them. Unfortunately I don’t think they are trying to keep up with things at all. Hopefully the new app makes some things like this better!

19

While certainly annoying, I wouldn’t call it problematic. To call this type of behavior “against the rules of iNaturalist” would be a bit of a stretch I think. Now, if it was, where would we draw the line? At what degree would this somewhat careless attitude go from “problematic”, to being in violation of iNat’s rules?

Yeah, that’s totally fair. It wouldn’t be possible to draw a clear line. I think in this case I feel confident that the person’s behavior isn’t “in good faith” and isn’t in line with iNaturalist’s stated mission, but there isn’t a specific thing they’ve done to break a rule or anything, except in a few cases that could be attributed to carelessness. I have tried to explain the situation very accurately, and have left out specific details of our conversation that would only make their behavior more objectionable, I think. Recently they did identify at least a very similar looking organism (probably the same species) as several different things which don’t really look like the photographed organism, in several different successive observations, but I think it is largely just carelessness.

I think you are right and I will simply try not to pay it any mind. I appreciate your understanding my frustration, it is reassuring. I wish people didn’t act how they were acting, but that isn’t really possible to control by me or by the app.

2 Likes
20

If it isn’t, I’m sure there is an old, forgotten feature request somewhere saying that it should be. Everyone has their own ideas of how other people ought to use iNaturalist.

1 Like