Optimal recruitment

[jmillsand]

Wow, a lot to unpack. Let me take a step back since I think it’s easy to get lost in specific hypotheticals.

I’m with you about the importance of metadata. Where I think we differ–and tell me if I’m wrong–is in our opinions of donations as metadata. I won’t try and claim that donations are identical to other forms of info such as engagement, but I will argue that they’re similar enough that many of the same issues are likely to arise. Possibly some worse ones as well.

Here are some of my larger sticking points at this stage:

1. You mention youtube’s rankings, which I think is a good example for our discussion. What evidence is there exactly that donations would not lead to a similar issue (albeit likely a different specific ranking)? i.e., if the vast majority of people seem to be wasting their time, why would we inherently expect them to be more responsible with their money?

2. I do understand the ideas of sacrifice that you’re getting at from the philosophical standpoint. However, these efforts can be difficult to evaluate from an outside perspective. Say I gave $5–how much of a sacrifice is that? What if I only had a total of $5 in the first place and gave all I had? What if I could have given $500 but only gave $5? Do we evaluate those donations equally?

@epiphyte78

i should have the opportunity to sacrifice enough money to get out of debt to him. in this case he wouldn’t get the money, inaturalist would, but he would see my sacrifice and so would anyone else who saw his observation.

@epiphyte78

you saw my paragraph, but i’m pretty sure that even most people who’ve read any part of this thread have not.

3. I fail to see the meaningful difference between these situations. What of all the people–likely the vast majority–who would never encounter that observation? Without eyes to see the donation it loses its impact as much as your paragraph does if no one reads this forum post thoroughly. Admittedly, you touch on this in the following paragraph with the potential to sort by sacrifice. However, this would be dangerous as those with the highest sacrifices would then be seen more–likely leading more people to donate to those as well, possibly never even encountering other observations that deserve more sacrifice (especially newer ones, which by definition would have few to no donations immediately upon upload). Such a system would simply change our ignorance–not solve it. We still would not be able to consider all observations since the volume issue would not change.

To continue point #3 because I think it’s particularly vital:

@epiphyte78

let’s go out on a limb and say that a total of $2724 was donated for this tree. in the grand scheme of things this doesn’t sound like much. but if the city officials had searched inaturalist for "ficus elastica"and they sorted the observations by importance, they would have learned that this particular specimen was the most valuable ficus elastica tree in california. and maybe america.

I of course added the bolding above. Even in a system as you propose, it would fall on the officials to look for the relevant information. And frankly, I have no reason to believe the vast majority of people not already aware of the tree’s importance would go to the trouble.

4. You keep talking of value to society, but monetary value is not necessarily the best example of that. Look at how vital many of the lowest-paying jobs were during the Covid-19 pandemic, immediately being rebranded as “essential workers”. How to properly value things has been the topic of intense philosophical debate and reducing it all to a monetary donation seems to be ignoring the complexity of reality. You use the shrimp example to say that no amount of impact studies can reveal what that shrimp species was worth to us–but do you really think that donations would? Especially in the face of a commercial project like the rose bowl? The economic value of the latter would almost certainly outweigh the former, as much as I wouldn’t want that to be true. But does that really mean that shrimp had so little value? I don’t think so.

5. The previous point also hits at an important point: money can easily be used to game a system. Not everyone has equal resources, and those with the most resources may not have the expertise or moral compass to make these decisions. What would stop a company from making accounts to donate to an observation that means nothing to them just to distract from an actually important observation that they were affecting?

For what it’s worth, I want to be clear that I’m not against persuasion. I think anybody should have the opportunity to try and get other people to notice and care about what they value. I also think that we should have the financial freedom to donate where we want and to support what we think are just causes or those that deserve it.

I work with an NGO in Panama that I have personally devoted time and money to on numerous occasions. They work with literally dozens of species yet to be described, and often rely on donations to describe and study these species, and for their wider conservation efforts. That’s great. I donate because I think that’s great. I recommend others donate because I think it’s great. But I draw the line at valuing their work based on the donations they get, especially at comparing to other NGOs and how much they receive. Because:

a) their practical reach is significantly lower than larger organizations, so not enough people have heard of them to even consider donating in the first place

b) some things cannot be directly compared–how do you even value the importance of describing a new snake species in Panama vs anywhere else in the world? we don’t even know enough about them to make a comparison in the first place

c) I wholeheartedly believe that their work has intrinsic value that is poorly reflected by the donations. In both directions by the way. For example, this group runs a set of private nature reserves. People are nearly throwing money at them to expand the reserves, but no one seems willing to donate to pay for rangers to actually manage and practically protect the reserves. Goes back to #1 above–why should we inherently expect people to give donations in a more responsible manner than they give their time, attention, rankings, or any other measure of importance?

Anyways, hope that’s organized enough to make sense.

[epiphyte78]

there’s a youtube guy i subscribe to, florida natural farming (fnf), who created a 10 acre tropical fruit forest in vero beach that’s incredible. he also has a few miniature zebu cows on the side. he recently bought a much larger place further north, primarily for the zebu cows. but he does plan to have a much smaller area to start a new tropical fruit forest. however, he put his 10 acre vero beach tropical fruit farm on the market.

personally i’m far more interested in tropical fruit farming than any kind of cow farming. so if fnf gave me the option to divide a donation between tropical fruit and cows, i’d donate 100% to the tropical fruit. how would everyone else divide their donations? does it matter?

the most prestigious botanic garden in my area is the huntington botanic garden. actually, a more technically correct name would be the huntington library, art museum and botanical gardens. i’ve been a member on and off for decades. if they gave me the option to divide my membership dues between the library, museum and gardens, i’d allocate 100% to the gardens. how would everyone else divide their dues? does it matter?

let’s say that netflix split into two separate organizations… one dedicated to nature and the other dedicated to everything else. how would i divide my membership fees between the two organizations? 99% to nature and 1% to everything else. how would everyone else divide their fees? does it matter?

let’s say that inaturalist split into two separate organisations… one dedicated to plants and the other dedicated to animals. how would i divide my donations between the two organizations? 70% to plants and 30% to animals. how would everyone else divide their donations? does it matter?

let’s imagine if tomorrow, everybody in the entire world decided to become vegetarian. well, it would be too late for a ton of turkeys since tomorrow is thanksgiving. but should this drastic and sudden change in the world’s meat preference make any difference? according to a quick google search, 77% of agricultural land is used for livestock. should this percentage stay the same despite the fact that nobody in the world would have any interest in eating meat? nope. the percentage should, and would, drop to 0%.

in this thread my main point has been that inaturalist should be a market, so that our preferences, as revealed through our donations, directly influence the supply of observations and ids. you clearly have reservations, and so does everyone else who has replied. but the only alternative to the horse (our preferences) leading the cart (the supply), is to put the cart before the horse.

to be fair, it seems you’re fine with the cart being led, but you don’t feel like the horse (money) does the best job at this. the horse should be replaced with an elephant (time) or a camel (words) or a rhinoceros (votes).

elephant (time): netflix knows how i divide my time between nature content and non-nature content. but it’s not like i’m going to watch the same handful of nature shows 1000 times each. once i’ve seen a nature show i’ve seen it. i’m not going to keep rewatching it.

x = how divide my time between nature content and non-nature content
y = how i would divide my fees between nature content and non-nature content

x and y are completely and entirely different. x is essentially a big fat lie. don’t believe it. believe y instead. y indicates that my preference is for netflix to have a much larger supply of nature shows. this is 100% the truth.

camel (words): actions speak louder…

If a woman told us that she loved flowers, and we saw that she forgot to water them, we would not believe in her “love” for flowers. Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love. — Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

rhinoceros (votes): exhibit a and exhibit b

it’s not like you need to take my word for this. we can science the poop out of it. everyone can submit their observations for a contest. we’ll select 100 observations and have everyone judge them by votes, time, words and donations. voting will be a “thumbs up”. time will be a timer counting how long before the judge clicks “next observation”. words will be a long drop down box to choose from ranging from “terrible” to “incredible”. donations will be a donation, which will all be given to inaturalist. afterwards everyone will have the option to sort the 100 observations by votes, time, words or donations. the 4 rankings will be completely different. everyone can decide for themselves which sorting is best.

the cutest and most fuzzy animal will get the most votes. the rarest and most endangered animal will get the most donations. not sure about time or words. in any case, the proof is in the pudding.

i’ve been a member of inaturalist for a decade. i’ve only submitted 3 observations… all of the southern alligator lizard. hah. 1st observation was 10 years ago, 2nd was 8 years ago and 3rd was 7 years ago. evidently i’m really interested in southern alligator lizards? not really.

so far the only feedback i’ve received on my observations was a confirmation of the ids. not sure why my intrinsic motivation has been so meager. and it’s not like i don’t take nature photos. i have 2 google photo accounts nearly filled with nature photos. but for some reason i’ve had no interest or desire to submit them to inaturalist. this would change if inaturalist became a market. there’s a huge demand for hummingbird pics? i’m on it. there’s an even bigger demand for ficus pics? i’ll satisfy the demand single-handedly.

regarding your specific points…

1. i feel i addressed this with my netflix example of how i allocate my time being very different from how i’d allocate my fees.

2. you’re correct that $5 is a much bigger sacrifice for a poor person than a rich person. but we’re looking at sacrifice in the aggregate, in other words, demand.

3. i have no idea how many people have seen my 3 observations. is there a “views” somewhere but i’m just not seeing it? if donating was an option, then i wouldn’t have donated much, or anything, when i submitted my 3 observations of alligator lizards. again, alligator lizards just aren’t that important to me. it’s a different story if i submitted my pic of the ficus thonningii at the la arboretum…

would i even be allowed to submit this pic as an observation since it has people in it? tried searching online but couldn’t find a definitive answer. in lots of nature pics it helps to have people or a hand for scale.

anyways, in this case i’d make a donation for this observation when i submitted it because for the longest time this tree with all its aerial roots turning into trunks was easily my favorite tree in all of california. but it was recently dethroned when i randomly learned on inaturalist about the wondrous ficus tree.

i don’t want to randomly learn about the best trees or anything else. i just want to sort california trees by importance and learn which tree here is considered to be the most important. then i could filter the results by ficus, and learn which ficus tree here is considered to be the most important. then i could conduct a new search to see which bird here is considered to be the most important, and so on. i want to be educated in this way, and use my donations to help educate others in this way.

if i’m planning a trip to nepal, obviously i’m going to keep my eyes open for ficus timlada. but what else should i keep my eyes open for? it should be really easy to find out. i just go to inaturalist, search for nepal, and sort the observations by their importance. everyone would have essentially prioritized the organisms that i should try my hardest to observe while in nepal. they basically made me an effective and accurate treasure map because they all want me to be the mvp of inaturalist. they want me to score the most goals and baskets because they would all greatly benefit from this. they really wouldn’t benefit if i overlook all the most valuable organisms while in nepal. nobody would benefit from me dropping the ball left and right.

4. regarding the rose bowl versus the shrimp… the shrimp would have received far less money locally, given that football is a popular sport, but only in america. outside of america nobody cares about football. they care far more about a tiny freshwater shrimp, the underdog, and we’d see this with donations. there’s a positive correlation between rarity and importance. sparrows are a dime a dozen, condors not so much.

5. the rose bowl backers would have created numerous fake observations of the shrimp in other areas to make it seem far more common than it actually was? well, they wouldn’t have needed to spend any money for this. so is there any precedent for this happening with developers creating fake observations?

6. i think it’s reasonable to perceive that some ngo’s get too much money while others don’t get enough. we can only donate money based on the information that we have available to us. the basic problem is that there’s a massive disparity between the supply of information and the demand for it. this is a direct consequence of so many missing markets.

in a market, it matters whether ficus carica and ficus opposita are graft compatible. but since there isn’t a market in taxonomy, this characteristic is completely ignored. it really shouldn’t be, but it is. in my report on ficus timlada i made a list of 28 characteristics to compare it with ficus auriculata and racemosa. but many of these characteristics are things that taxonomists give absolutely no weight to. again, this is simply because the taxonomic cart is not led by the horse of what’s truly important to society as a whole.

so you’re right that lots of people spend their money poorly. but this isn’t because there are too many markets, it’s simply because there aren’t nearly enough markets. if we create markets everywhere then the most important information will be impossible to overlook. people will make much smarter spending decisions and the world will be an infinitely better place.

whenever you find something good, whether it’s new information about graft compatibility, or a new species, or a delicious new recipe, or a wonderful new youtube channel, or whatever, you should have the opportunity to easily make any size sacrifice to bring it to more people’s attention.

[spiphany]

I don’t see how more monetization of science and conservation is supposed to improve anything? Shouldn’t we be trying to find ways to make it less dependent on monetary flows?

And what does this have to do with recruitment of users/experts on iNat?

[ItsMeLucy]

@epiphyte78

in this thread my main point has been that inaturalist should be a market

No thank you.

[epiphyte78]

i don’t know which organisms on inaturalist you’d sacrifice the most money for. you’re the only one with this information. since nobody else has it, then for sure it’s not going to have any influence on recruitment. so it’s a given that recruitment is going to be extremely suboptimal.

[ItsMeLucy]

To be clear, you or anyone else would be perfectly welcome to start a different application that is market based to test your theory that it would be superior in any particular aspect.

I however am disinterested and wish iNaturalist to remain a non-market based system.

I have nothing further to add, word or not word-based, so wish you well but as I am completely disinterested will no longer be participating in this particular thread, though I was glad to at least find a brief summation of your premise amongst your posts.

[jnstuart]

I tried to read this thread but honestly got lost in the verbosity.

Is the idea that we should tag our donations with what taxa we want focused on by experts? Experts on iNat are not paid to do IDs. Donations are used to maintain the website which benefits all taxa and taxon fans alike.

So why donate to iNat if you want experts to focus on certain taxa? Wouldn’t it be more efficient for you and other Ficus fans to pool your money and pay an expert directly to focus on Ficus on iNat?

[larry216]

@jnstuart

Is the idea that we should tag our donations with what taxa we want focused on by experts? Experts on iNat are not paid to do IDs. Donations are used to maintain the website which benefits all taxa and taxon fans alike.

The OP included a number of complaints, but you’re right about the continuing discussion about donations.

• All observations on iNaturalist are made by volunteers.
• All identifications on iNaturalist are made by volunteers.
• iNaturalist, as an organization, does not pay anyone for these, nor does it have any significant influence over what species are observed and identified. Each of us make our own decisions about that.

Right now, iNaturalist has 220,050,079 observations of 497,905 species. Attempting to solicit donations earmarked for each of these species (and/or for each of the higher taxonomic groups to which they belong) would be an administrative nightmare.

[jmillsand]

A lot of your arguments feel inherently conflicting. You say there’s too much info out there, and donations would help focus attention. Then you say we need more markets not fewer–more places to divide attention, donations, etc. It’s just more information, more to keep track of, under a different title/system.

Even more broadly, things are not as black-and white as you seem to claim. For example:

@epiphyte78

x = how divide my time between nature content and non-nature content
y = how i would divide my fees between nature content and non-nature content

x and y are completely and entirely different. x is essentially a big fat lie. don’t believe it. believe y instead. y indicates that my preference is for netflix to have a much larger supply of nature shows. this is 100% the truth.

This is not an either-or. Both your wish for more nature content and how you divide your time are true to your preferences, just in completely different ways. You’re not being forced to spend your time a particular way. Same with what you upload: it may not be a perfect reflection of your interests, but it reflects something about your preferences nonetheless.

@epiphyte78

not sure why my intrinsic motivation has been so meager. and it’s not like i don’t take nature photos. i have 2 google photo accounts nearly filled with nature photos. but for some reason i’ve had no interest or desire to submit them to inaturalist. this would change if inaturalist became a market.

Yet many, many people are already uploading, identifying, and otherwise interacting with a shocking variety of observations already without the financial incentive to do so. This may be an issue for you, but that does not mean it is inherently an issue.

To be honest, I’m not sure if we’ll see eye to eye on this. I’m struggling to keep up with what I feel is a lot of jumping to conclusions in your reasoning, and muddied use of poorly defined terms. I may still follow this thread, but I’m unlikely to comment more so I’ll try to end by summarizing my current position as succinctly as possible.

Donations are certainly a way of indicating preference. One of many. I believe they all tell us useful information, albeit in different ways. I see no reason to hold one specific one (donations) up as a “holy grail” solution. Furthermore, I simply don’t believe that the system you suggest would lead to a more ideal result. Frankly, I think we’d get a worse outcome–markets are all too easily corrupted.

Also, I am still unconvinced that we need a better system. Your ficus example is a very personal one, and one that I personally struggle to care about. Honestly, re-reading this thread feels a bit uncomfortable because it can sometimes seem like we’re arguing about whether iNat should be changed to suit you and your preferences rather than to create a better system. You simultaneously seem to expect preferences measured by donations to result in an ideal outcome while disparaging the outcomes of other measures of preference like YouTube rankings. Yet what if those are accurate measures of preference, and they simply don’t match yours?

Frankly, a shift to what you recommend would likely lose my involvement from the site as it would suck away much of the current enjoyment I glean from it. Would it be worth losing others like me to gain those that would respond to the market system? No idea–I can’t even begin to weigh that fairly.

Anyways, apologies since I’m not sure I’m likely to add much more useful stuff here. As may be evident in this post already, it’s starting to feel a bit emotional for me and I don’t want that to corrupt my logic. Good luck to all, we’ll see whose preferences win out in the end.

[paul_dennehy]

@epiphyte78

let’s imagine the total donations for ficus and palms…

ficus: $746
palms: $30

i’d show this to D and he’d immediately drop the 400 page palm manuscript and rush here to help out with ficus.

Would he really? Would you? I certainly wouldn’t. I’m currently identifying moths on iNat- thousands of them per month, and for no pay at all. If you offered me $100 per month to drop my moth IDs and learn to ID Tasmanian mammal scat instead, I’d decline that offer, because moths are what I enjoy identifying. Currently there are zero dollars being given to anyone to do any of the observing and identifying on iNat, yet we still have thousands of experts adding millions of IDs. Sure, some areas have more experts than others, but that has nothing to do with iNat. The reason there are more bird experts than Ficus experts on iNat is simply that there are more bird experts than Ficus experts in the world. Birds are, overall, more valued by society, so there’s more money in Ornithology than Ficus-ology. The market forces have already spoken, the “more valued” species already have more researchers working on them, and fraction number of experts you see on iNat for any taxon are probably pretty similar to the fraction of experts involved in that taxon in general.

If, as you suggest, money could be donated to support experts being brought in to help iNat with IDs based on perceived “value”, I’d expect exactly the same taxa that get disproportionate attention in society at large to be the same ones that get disproportionate donations. Rich people in western countries donating millions for Monarchs and Honeybees, big charismatic megafauna like pandas and tigers getting showered in money, and the myriad obscure little brown moths known from only one specimen worldwide that no one has heard of would continue to be overlooked.

@epiphyte78

let’s go out on a limb and say that a total of $2724 was donated for this tree. in the grand scheme of things this doesn’t sound like much. but if the city officials had searched inaturalist for "ficus elastica"and they sorted the observations by importance, they would have learned that this particular specimen was the most valuable ficus elastica tree in california

This is exactly the way that most ecologists do not want conservation to work. In fact, this is precisely the form of conservation that receives the most condemnation from many experts in the field. Just because one tree has a massive societal or cultural importance does not mean that it has much ecological benefit. Millions of conservation dollars are poured into projects every year because they support what society “cares” about, to the detriment of ecosystems or taxa that would be much more ecologically beneficial to receive those funds. A recent example I heard of was a very rare sandplain habitat hosting some globally rare species destroyed by “conservationists” to plant a longleaf pine forest, because “longleaf pine restoration” is where the money’s at. The species wiped out to plant the forest were much rarer than the ones the longleaf pines will support, but they’re mostly obscure little insects that don’t get monetary donations. This is where the “base conservation on who donates the most money” plan leads to. The system you seem to be describing of conservation efforts getting funneled to the places where rich people want to focus their money is pretty close to what currently happens in reality. I don’t think it’s a good way of doing things though, and I definitely wouldn’t want iNat to follow suit.

@epiphyte78

why the huge pause in progress? basically, nobody had the opportunity to use their donations to say, “stand on condit’s shoulders!”

What do you mean? Everyone has had that option for over 50 years. Literally anyone could have spent any amount of money to encourage this research to happen at any point. They just didn’t. There was no hampering of the free market, no one preventing this research from being funded, just no one with money who felt this was the best way to spend it.

@epiphyte78

there’s no real difference between the following two opportunities…

1. dividing your donations between wikipedia and inaturalist
2. dividing your donations within inaturalist between plants and animals

I fundamentally disagree with this assertion. Wikipedia and iNaturalist have two different mission statements and different purposes. iNat doesn’t divide its work between different taxa- it simply hosts whatever people post and serves as a platform. Your issue seems to be that there aren’t enough people using the platform who share your interests. But that’s not iNat’s fault- again, it’s just a result of certain taxa having fewer enthusiasts and fewer experts in the world. When I donate to iNat, it’s because I support their mission to “connect people to nature and advance biodiversity science and conservation”. I don’t want to funnel my donations into recruiting people with specific interests- I want to support the platform itself. If I want to recruit more people with my interests, I can still do that. I’m sure if you have enough money to throw around, you could find some Ficus experts yourself and pay them to ID stuff on iNat, but there’s no need for iNat itself to go paying people for using the platform.

[jasonhernandez74]

@jmillsand

Honestly, re-reading this thread feels a bit uncomfortable because it can sometimes seem like we’re arguing about whether iNat should be changed to suit you and your preferences rather than to create a better system.

Should have been a Feature Request

Honestly, I’ve been having a hard time evaluating if this thread is for real. I had to click through to the Fig Fanatic article to see that this thread is a follow-up to What inaturalist is, versus what it should be. And as it turns out, one of my replies in that thread still applies in this one:

@jasonhernandez74

That’s where the subjectivity comes in: who “should” change for whom.

[epiphyte78]

@paul_dennehy

I’m currently identifying moths on iNat- thousands of them per month, and for no pay at all.

• picking up litter at local parks - thousands of pieces per month

• sowing non-native seeds in wild areas - thousands of seeds per month

• spray painting random poems in public areas - thousands of poems per month

• handing out fliers for inaturalist - thousands of fliers per month

please rank the above activities based on your perception of their usefulness to society. whether you do this or not, it can be done. no two activities are equally useful to society.

if you say that you’re id’ing thousands of moths per month, regardless of how useful this activity is to society, it doesn’t sound quite right. alternatively you could say that you’re id’ing thousands of moths per month, and this activity is very useful to society, this begs this question of how, exactly, you measured its usefulness to society.

recently i crossed ficus carica and ficus opposita. this is the very first time that these two species have been crossed. i was inordinately proud of myself. my partner, not so much. i told her, “you seem more impressed when you manage to make yourself coffee in the morning.” she replied something like, “let’s see how much your hybrid sells for.” well yeah, i can’t argue against that. the market is the ultimate test of usefulness.

if i churn out 1000s of paintings per month, but haven’t managed to sell a single one, then my use of society’s limited resources isn’t benefiting anyone other than myself, which is nothing to brag about.

@paul_dennehy

If, as you suggest, money could be donated to support experts being brought in to help iNat with IDs

this isn’t quite what i suggested. i suggested that we use our donations (to inaturalist) to “grade” the work done on inaturalist based on our perception of its usefulness. if somebody thinks your id of a moth is useful, they could give it any amount of money. inat would get all the money, and your id would get the grade. this would allow us to sort all the ids and observations by their grades. we could quickly and easily find the single most useful observation and id on inat. this information would influence which experts were attracted to inat, like moths to the flame, except for the getting burned part.

@paul_dennehy

big charismatic megafauna like pandas and tigers getting showered in money, and the myriad obscure little brown moths known from only one specimen worldwide that no one has heard of would continue to be overlooked.

with democracy, how many people would give an obscure little brown moth a thumbs up? you and 2 other people? with donations, how big a sacrifice would you 3 people make for this moth? i have no idea. it would be entirely up to you 3. you all want to collectively spend $1,000,000 for this moth? nobody would stop you. and for sure your big sacrifice would put this moth on everyone’s radar.

right now you have the option to crowdfund a billboard for this moth. nobody would stop you. but 1st you’d have to overcome the obstacle of coordination and logistics. this is not a small obstacle. my only suggestion is that there shouldn’t be any obstacles to making collective sacrifices for the plants and animals that we want everyone to know about.

@paul_dennehy

A recent example I heard of was a very rare sandplain habitat hosting some globally rare species destroyed by “conservationists” to plant a longleaf pine forest, because “longleaf pine restoration” is where the money’s at.

people spending their money wrongly, which admittedly happens way too often, is not, or should not be, an argument against giving people the opportunity to spend their money rightly. essentially you’re worried that there are too many ignorant people on inat. this is a serious issue regardless of the opportunity to use money as a feedback mechanism. if this opportunity allowed us to easily and quickly identify these people, then that would be half the battle. the other half would be educating and informing them.

@paul_dennehy

Literally anyone could have spent any amount of money to encourage this research to happen at any point. They just didn’t. There was no hampering of the free market, no one preventing this research from being funded, just no one with money who felt this was the best way to spend it.

it’s impossible to fund research that you’re unaware of. i’ve been collecting ficus for the past 3 decades, but it wasn’t until 3 years ago that i learned that it was even possible to artificially hybridize ficus. i don’t remember the 1st email that i ever received, but i sure wish it had been from my future self informing that it was very possible and very easy to cross-pollinate ficus. sadly, i can’t send such an email to my past self. however, i can send such a memo to everyone who still hasn’t figured out that ficus hybridization is possible, easy and desirable. but again there’s the significant obstacle of the coordination and logistics of crowdfunding to put this memo on a billboard.

@paul_dennehy

Your issue seems to be that there aren’t enough people using the platform who share your interests. But that’s not iNat’s fault- again, it’s just a result of certain taxa having fewer enthusiasts and fewer experts in the world.

it’s not inat’s fault if it doesn’t eliminate the obstacle (coordination/logistics) of crowdfunding to create a “bat signal” that attracts the attention of anyone even vaguely interested in ficus? obviously it can’t be inat’s fault. inat isn’t even a person. if it’s anyone’s fault it would be mine for failing to effectively explain how beneficial and useful it would be if we could use our donations to inat to promote the plants and animals that we most love, which would attract to inat all the people in the world who also love those plants and animals.

@paul_dennehy

I don’t want to funnel my donations into recruiting people with specific interests- I want to support the platform itself.

this is a misunderstanding based on my poor explanation. all the money to which i’m referring would go to inat. the only difference is, we’d have this option to use this money to improve the rankings of our favorite plants and animals. naturally everyone, from novices to experts, would see the rankings and this would influence their decision whether to participate on inat in order to improve them.

let’s say that we were given the opportunity to use our inat donations to rank all the plants and animals. despite my big sacrifice, ficus is last place. out of all the plants, it’s the very lowest rank. an outsider who loves ficus sees that it is ranked last on inat. what do they think? how do they feel? would it discourage them from joining inat? or would they feel motivated to join inat to try and improve the ranking of ficus? maybe they’d be curious who donated for ficus?

it’s like the most complicated game of tug-of-war where each plant and animal has a rope being pulled on by its supporters. team ficus is pulling on a rope but they are losing ground. someone from the sidelines sees this, and they care about ficus, do they join the game and help team ficus pull on the rope?

and perhaps you’re thinking, it’s a useless game. there’s no benefit to anyone participating in such a stressful and hard game when the current relaxed system works perfectly fine. except, in real life, everyone who donates to inat is currently pulling on a rope. there’s also a rope for wikipedia, and a rope for facebook, and a rope for youtube, and one for google and one rope each for all the other sites. the supporters of each site are pulling for limited resources, like talent and attention. the harder that supporters pull on the rope, the more resources their site can use. because this is how and why the market works. the amount of resources allocated to any site is entirely determined by how hard its supporters are willing to pull on its rope. this is a good thing. none of the alternatives make sense and they would all result in too many or too few resources being given to a site.

right now inat is in a market, but it’s not a market. so how our limited resources, like time and attention, are distributed among all the different plants and animals is wrong, really wrong.

if inat became a market, not only would this correct the current distribution of resources within the site, but it would also improve the current distribution of resources outside the site. way more people would pull harder on inat’s rope, so it would compete far more resources away from the other websites.

[epiphyte78]

@jnstuart

So why donate to iNat if you want experts to focus on certain taxa? Wouldn’t it be more efficient for you and other Ficus fans to pool your money and pay an expert directly to focus on Ficus on iNat?

i just addressed this in my previous reply, but since it’s so easy to overlook things, i’ll be a bit redundant.

right now i have the option to spend my money to put ficus timlada on a big billboard that maybe thousands of people would see. but it’s not like i’m mr money bags, so it would be ideal if other ficus freaks could chip in to help cover the costs of the billboard. maybe i start a gofundme campaign and spam the link to all my ficus friends?

there are logistical and coordination problems that combine to create a rather significant obstacle to making a ficus timlada billboard a reality. ideally, this obstacle could be eliminated. therefore, inat.

why inat? why not inat? in theory there should already be at least some ficus freaks, if not fans, here. then we just need to pool our pennies to put ficus timlada on inat’s homepage where it will be seen by thousands of people on a daily basis. inat gets all the money and ficus timlada gets the attention that my ficus friends and i feel it deserves. the minor detail is… all the other plants and animals that also deserve way more attention than they are currently receiving. so everybody should have the opportunity to use their donations to collectively decide which species deserve to be on inat’s homepage.

inat would get 1000x more more money, and the most deserving plants and animals would get 1000x more attention.

inat could easily afford to spend some money on a billboard. which plants and animals should it feature on the billboard? there’d be no question. inat would already know exactly which plants and animals we think are most deserving of that coveted billboard space.

a few people have concerns that people would primarily donate for the charasmatic species, like pandas and monarch butterflies. in my mind though i’m thinking, does anyone not know about these species? would people really spend that much money to promote a species that’s already on everyone’s radar?

let’s say that we’re making a list of 100 fruit that more people should know about. naturally we’d rank the list by donations. would people really donate a lot of money for apples, bananas and oranges? why would they do this when everybody already knows about these fruits?

[epiphyte78]

@jasonhernandez74

That’s where the subjectivity comes in: who “should” change for whom.

i’m a bit too lazy to look up the exact quote or source but it goes something like, the reasonable person adapts themselves to the world, while the unreasonable person adapts the world to themselves. all progress depends on unreasonable people.

am i being unreasonable to want inat to adapt to my preferences? here’s a quote that’s easy to find because i added it to the wikipedia entry on creative destruction…

But have you ever asked yourselves sufficiently how much the erection of every ideal on earth has cost? How much reality has had to be misunderstood and slandered, how many lies have had to be sanctified, how many consciences disturbed, how much “God” sacrificed every time? If a temple is to be erected a temple must be destroyed: that is the law – let anyone who can show me a case in which it is not fulfilled! – Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality

let’s say that i’m correct and inat should become a market where we can use our donations to improve the distribution of time and attention within the site. but for whatever reason, inat doesn’t adapt. so i save up my pennies and start a site basically just like inat, but it’s a market. my creation would destroy inat. well, this is how evolution works. kinda.

here’s something else i added to the same wikipedia entry…

In the Origin of Species, which was published in 1859, Charles Darwin wrote that the “extinction of old forms is the almost inevitable consequence of the production of new forms.” One notable exception to this rule is how the extinction of the dinosaurs facilitated the adaptive radiation of mammals. In this case creation was the consequence, rather than the cause, of destruction.

i can’t even remember how long ago i wrote that. must be easily more than a decade ago.

somebody can look at wikipedia or inaturalist and say, “look at what can be accomplished solely with intrinsic motivation!” my response is, i haven’t contributed to wikipedia in a very long time. and it’s not like i can show you my contributions which don’t exist, but would, if the correct extrinsic motivation had been used.

[epiphyte78]

@larry216

Right now, iNaturalist has 220,050,079 observations of 497,905 species. Attempting to solicit donations earmarked for each of these species (and/or for each of the higher taxonomic groups to which they belong) would be an administrative nightmare.

let me clarify how my proposal might work. i make a $10 donation to inat. inat gets all the money. in return i get 1000 tokens. each token is basically the equivalent of 1 penny. i visit the entry for laelia albida. on its page i see $0.00 which indicates that nobody has given any tokens to it. this is a problem for me because out of all the wonderful smelling orchids i’ve personally smelled, laelia albida has by far my favorite fragrance. plus it’s relatively cold and drought tolerant, so it’s really good for growing outdoors in southern california.

i could give it 15 tokens on this page, or i could give tokens to the most useful observations and/or ids for laelia albida. here’s a neat observation of laelia albida growing on a cactus. i give it 30 tokens, which subtracts 30 tokens from my balance. this observation will be the 1st one people see when they sort laelia albida observations by usefulness. and when people sort all observations by usefulness, this particular observation will show up 30 tokens higher in the results.

with this system we’re not pretending that all organisms, observations and ids are equally useful to everyone. we’d use our inat donations to rank organisms, observations and ids by their usefulness to us. this metric would strongly influence the distribution of time and attention on the site.

basically, we’d all have the opportunity to use our pennies to promote the best content on inat to each other and to the rest of the world. when visitors checked out the inat homepage, they wouldn’t see random content, or the latest content, they would see the most useful content, as defined by our donations to inat.

[jmillsand]

So I said I probably wouldn’t reply any more, but after stepping away and letting my head clear I think I managed to sort my emotions out. As you finally provided a clearer explanation of the system you propose, I would like to re-engage (I’m a sucker for debates sadly hahaha).

However, I think we need to slow the pace a bit. Too much is getting thrown out in our arguments all at once, and numerous things were never clearly defined.

So, just to be clear, you’re suggesting a system wherein:

• When people donate to iNat, they receive some digital measure of their donation–say, tokens.
• Individuals can then give tokens to observations as a measure of how important they consider them.
• The amount of tokens would provide the ability to rank observations by importance.
• Individuals (both observers and identifiers) should then adjust their behavior accordingly to focus on the most important things.

First things first–is the above correct?

Second, let’s start defining terms. Numerous times you have referenced importance and societal value (I think interchangeably?). Can you provide a brief definition of what, exactly, you mean by these terms?

[upupa-epops]

@epiphyte78

with this system we’re not pretending that all organisms, observations and ids are equally useful to everyone. we’d use our inat donations to rank organisms, observations and ids by their usefulness to us. this metric would strongly influence the distribution of time and attention on the site.

How is this be functionally different from the current favourites feature, and how would it cause people to behave differently from how they currently use that feature?

The usefulness of the fragrance of Laelia albida or of how it looks growing on a cactus is subjective, so if we take that example then it’s quite possible that ranking based on these tokens wouldn’t be more aligned with “usefulness” than the current ranking of most-faved observations.

[epiphyte78]

@jmillsand

First things first–is the above correct?

yup, that’s basically it. the process that i outlined, ie “tokens” is just a rough draft idea. ideally the process is no more difficult than clicking a “thumbs up” button.

@jmillsand

Second, let’s start defining terms. Numerous times you have referenced importance and societal value (I think interchangeably?). Can you provide a brief definition of what, exactly, you mean by these terms?

not sure if this is the best definition but basically… worthy of sacrifice, specifically money. this is the definition i use for “useful”, “important”, “value” and probably a few more words.

at a farmer’s market you can go up to a vendor selling watermelons and eloquently express your interest and desire for one of his watermelons. but in order to actually persuade him to give you a watermelon, you 1st need to offer proof of demand, in the form of sacrifice of an appropriate amount of money.

in evolutionary terms, we can imagine some groups that didn’t require proof of demand in the form of sacrifice. these groups didn’t last long because they incorrectly distributed their limited resources among themselves.

[jmillsand]

@epiphyte78

not sure if this is the best definition but basically… worthy of sacrifice, specifically money. this is the definition i use for “useful”, “important”, “value” and probably a few more words.

This does help, thanks. What I’m wondering though, is what makes something worthy of sacrifice? Does the mere fact that someone is willing to spend money on it count, or are we discussing some sort of wider importance?

Let me provide a small example that will hopefully contextualize what I mean: Penicillium mold. People are likely already at least peripherally aware that this mold inspired some incredible advance in medical technology. What counts as value here–the way people perceive this organism or the effect it had on society?

I realize these are not mutually exclusive.