i would think that any observation deleted after another person adds an identification creates this sort of annoyance. observations deleted after a disagreement is just one subset of that larger set, right?
i used to add a lot of text about how i came to some of my identifications. occasionally, i would try to go back to these notes and found that they were no longer available because the observations had been deleted (presumably because those observers decided they no longer needed their accounts / observations after getting an identification). that was annoying because that effort was lost, but my way of solving that problem is that i no longer leave a lot of explanations for my identifications for other folks, unless they specifically ask. easy.
observers have always and will always delete their observations for all sorts of reasons. the only solutions you have for wasted effort as an identifier are based on things that you actually have control over:
don’t get annoyed
limit the time / effort you spend on any single identification
limit the time / effort you spend on identifications for specific people
I didn’t read that as @neylon attempting to misquote or misrepresent you, just indicating which of the several points you made that reply was a response to.
By quoting it the way he did, anyone can click the little ‘v’ down-caret on top right of the quote block to see the entirety of the context it was quoted from.
English can be an awful ambiguous language to try to be brief with people you don’t know unless everyone starts from “assume good faith”.
I would pass the sequence on to help at iNaturalist.
Grounds for suspension ?
If it is suitable for copypasta? I much appreciate that tiwane showed us text expander. Click click done. And I have the text ready and waiting for next time.
Thinking about it maybe it’s a good thing? Deleting an observation rather than leaving it misidentified, unless they are re-uploading and re-misidentifying them.
Observers retain the rights to their observations unless they specifically release those rights. It might annoy identifiers who want to prove them wrong but that is irrelevant. As best I understand it all iNat users can remove their observations for any reason.
That happens a lot that I’ve seen. One guy recently did that and when someone asked me to ID his re-upload (I was nice about it, included a brief explanation), I saw he just deleted again. So presumably, also re-uploaded. Huge waste of time.
I don’t think anybody wants to “prove them wrong” (unless we shouldn’t ID if it offends?). But considering that we have people coming on the forum asking why it takes so long to get an ID and I have seen multiple users delete and re-upload with their original wrong ID, and these go to GBIF, why shouldn’t I be annoyed when my time is wasted.
Unfortunately, than we’ll have have people complaining that we don’t give explanations.
I haven’t dealt with that level. Good luck that on lot.
True. And the section of mine you put is not the complete quote of mine. So if you want a full response here goes:
Not a workable solution unless iNaturalist removes its GBIF portal.
I can’t speak to that, I have had friends agree on my ID’s when I asked them, but have also had them disagree with me.
But in this case, they aren’t curating their data: they’re deleting their observations when someone disagrees and reuploading them, sometimes multiple times.
Agree. In many of these cases we’re talking about poor photos. But if I ID’d to species, it still wastes my time when I run into again later.
What about observations that are really broad like fungi or carnivorans, even if they have a lot of IDs marking them as such? I’ve deleted some like those but only because I thought they weren’t useful to the community.
Sorry but again, just put them on your ignore list, and forget about this.
If they are making you lose your time, don’t spend even more time complaining about their behavior!
So… ? Again, to me you are nitpicking. Gbif just automatically uploads and downloads data from other sources, it’s up to them to handle these cases of deleted observations, the same way they have to handle changes in ID in observations that had been already downloaded long ago, because some identifier suddenly disagree with the previous consensus!
And that’s the reason I’m trying to offer some clues when I disagree with an ID, but here I was just giving an example of “identifiers” behaving just as bad as “observers” as you call them (for me there is no clear boundaries between those 2 groups) but I don’t feel the need to post a thread complaining about them ;-)
Maybe they have good reasons to believe their IDs are correct - just like you have your own.
I noticed that too, in some cases they get fresh information in return, some rarities with geolocation for example…
I would flag that if I came across it. I hope that iNat could confirm ‘bad behaviour’ behind the scenes. Difficult for us to prove, but we know what we have seen!
I leave Duplicate comments - with links to the other obs, and refuse to ID at all, if the same picture is uploaded multiple times (with the same subject intended in all of them). But that is the situation that I come across.
You missed part of the point. These observers are not just deleting when someone disagrees, they’re re-uploading with their wrong ID. Hoping that someone comes along and just agrees, which would send it to GBIF. GBIF does not have a workable solution to get rid of faulty records.
That’s probably because you only have 100 ID’s. I saw a metric published on the iNat blog that said that the top 1000 identifiers placed 70% of the ID’s, and the 2nd 1000 placed another 17%. At the time that was 1.6% of people who had placed ID’s on someone else’s observations. 1.6% doing 87% of the work. Yes, there is a pretty clear difference between observers and identifiers.
My good reason to “believe” (odd word choice) that I’m correct stems from the fact that I do this by the hundreds daily, and other identifiers agreed with mine. One guy who disagreed said he disagreed based on the online chart he found.
Interesting take on it. Have you noticed how often they are the ones that found the rarity hiding out in a higher level or mis-ID’d, in the first place?
I’d say it depends, if there is discussion on the observation, then I’d leave it up. Though I may check the Can’t be Improved box to get it out of the way. Also may be worth tagging the person who put a disagreeing ID, and ask if there is another photo angle that would help make the ID.
Deleting and reuploading observations is not the way to handle disagreements in IDs. Observers can add comments elaborating on why they think their ID is the correct one and/or tag knowledge identifiers; these are the same tools available to identifiers when they disagree with an ID. If the observer really wants their ID associated with the observation, they can withdraw from the community taxon, which will move their observation to Casual Grade if there is a consensus against their ID.
I have had this happen to me recently as well. An observer was positive of their ID despite 5+ disagreeing IDs with several identifiers taking the time to explain the diagnostic characteristics indicating the correct ID. They deleted the observation (though they did not reupload).
While it is indeed annoying, I don’t think there is much to be done. Users that do this are relatively few. Flag directly insulting comments, and for observers that persistently delete and reupload trying to force their ID through, I’d contact help@inaturalist.org, preferably with screenshots showing what’s going on. For those that simply delete their observations, just move on.
@swampster The problem is that sometimes an identifier comes quickly after uploading an observation and then never responds to a comment and a tag. Then it makes sense to just delete the observation when the ID is just bogus typically id’ing a different organism (even disagreeing with an existing correct id) or missing a comment about a rare taxon that must be added to iNat from the web and adding an id about something similar and common, but wrong; and when the observation was there for less than an hour anyway. I have just one very recent case of such quick wrong ID so I will let it be and try to wait as an experiment.
You’re describing an entirely different situation from what the OP is describing. That being said, I still think it makes more sense to tag other knowledgeable identifiers, in combination with adding a comment explaining the intended organism of the observation, if the original identifier is unresponsive. Though, in the “piling on” situation described by duncanross and others, it may indeed make sense to delete the observation and reupload with better proactive comments explaining the intended organism.
I think a continual pattern of deleting and re-uploading observations becuase they disagree with IDs of others, especially if they have been told how to opt out of Community ID, is not great and is antithetical to how iNat works. I’d say the first thing to do is tell them how to opt out of Community ID, that’s the solution for people who don’t want to trust community feedback, with the caveat being that if the Community ID doesn’t match their ID, the observation won’t be reserach grade. If they don’t want people adding IDs to their observations, they shouldn’t be posting to iNat. You can submit a ticket to iNat about it.
