Yes I do - because I think, that allows taxon specialists to filter out ‘orchid’ rather than wading thru millions of planty on the off chance of finding an orchid. Not going to happen.
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I do want to see the community ID, because when I come upon a species that I don’t know, the best ID I can give the observation is often very general, like Hymenoptera. Sometimes I can refine the ID further myself, but often the community gets it to Research Grade species before I get around to looking up what kind of hymenopteran it might have been.
I don’t think I’ve opted out of community ID on any of my observations.
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I’m kind of flummoxed by this. You think we’re opposing “opt-out” because we want to seem like good community members? That hypothesis doesn’t fit the data I see. I mean, community approval just isn’t that important to me. I strongly suspect it’s not all that important to most of us, given that we’re fascinated by nature and willing to spend a lot of time on-line posting and identifying things – not well accepted behaviors in real life, at least where I grew up. (Well, we didn’t have the internet when I grew up, but spending lots of time on this interest and being unsocial were disapproved of then, too.)
As to the basic question: I always want to see the correct identifications on my observations. Although I’d like to think that my ID’s are correct, and they often are, I have abundant evidence that sometimes they’re not. I want the iNaturalist community to be able to correct my identifications when they’re wrong.
I’d like to effectively correct others, too, when they’re wrong (or incomplete, having ID’d the observation to a higher level when species ID is possible).
One of the irritating things about people who opt-out on all their observations and then don’t change ID’s if they get disagreement is the implication that they think they’re right and the rest of us are wrong, or at least irrelevant. One useful thing about this thread is the realization that people who opt out for all their observations might have clicked on that choice when they were clueless newbies.
There are cases where I know something about the organism that doesn’t show up in the photos, that allows me to ID correctly when iNaturalist identifiers can’t. I usually deal with that through a comment. I could see using opt-out in those few cases. I can’t even see why I’d want to opt out for most observations, though.
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Imagine the following scenario: You’re trying to get a better understanding of Hymenoptera and you’ve got an identification key to your local species. You go out into the field, identify some bees by sight, and identify those you don’t recognise as “Hymenoptera”, planning to key them out after you get home.
When you get home you’ll want to be able to pull up all of the observations you identified as “Hymenoptera”, right?
I haven’t made that claim here. However, I refer you to this statement from @jasonhernandez74:
One of the reasons I opt out of community ID is that I want to identify and learn from my mistakes. This means I don’t want the ID to change until I’ve had a chance to review and evaluate other suggestions—if the ID changes and I don’t notice, it’s great if that means the observation now has the correct ID, but corrections I don’t notice are corrections I don’t learn from.
Also, if I’ve misidentified Astragalus gracilis as Astragalus flexuosus, my next step is to pull up the set of other observations I’ve identified as Astragalus flexuosus to see if this was a one-off or a systematic error on my part, and hopefully to get a better understanding of morphological and geographic / ecological distinctions between the two.
If you disagree with someone’s ID, I assume you’d prefer to see that observation labelled by your ID than kicked back up to genus or higher.
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Well, yes, but if the observer hasn’t opted out, my disagreeing ID will at least get the observation out of the wrong identification. I’m willing to wait for others to confirm it and get it posted as what it really is. Or correct it if my correction was wrong.
This is a different approach from my own. I do research why I was wrong for some things, but I post a lot of organisms in groups that I don’t particularly want to learn how to ID, like spiders. Your using these cases to learn is great! And presumably you do change your ID’s if you feel they should be change. Presumably you remove the “opt-out” to get the observation to Research Grade (and out of the way of most of us who do ID’s), whether with your original ID or the changed one, if you agree with the community ID. It’s the people who just let the observation hang there, opted out forever, who frustrate me (and presumably most others).
I’ve seen “opted out” observations with six or more agreeing ID’s! All we identifiers can do to get those out of the way is click, “No, it can’t be improved,” which shifts the observation to casual although it would be a useful observation except for the opt-out.
A few days ago I got Christmas wrapping paper out of my wife’s office closet without noticing the large box she was using to store Christmas gifts to me, so I know it’s possible to not notice even the most obvious things. However, I usually do notice corrections on my observations because the notifications show up on my dashboard. You find that method ineffective for you?
By the way, I disagree with the comment by @jasonhernandez74 – I think there are lots of ways to use iNaturalist, though I don’t like some of them.
I am impressed by how you’re using iNaturalist to improve your ability to identify. Using opt-out is part of your method. It works for you. It can have ramifications that annoy me, but if you’re keeping on top of the identifications that is minimized. Enjoy.
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One can easily check for those observations using this link and swap “ajott” for your own nickname
https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications?user_id=ajott&category=maverick
This also seems not too hard… I looked at your observations… that would be a total of 10 observations to check. You could do this quite quickly on the overview page… if it is RG and only one more identifier you were obviously right. You would have to only really check those that have more then one additional ID besides yours (again, the link above would help here actually) or check the ones hanging at genus level… which would anyways be the ones you would be interested in if you want to use your keys.
I really don´t get your workflow
The first thing I would prefer to see is that this observation would be kicked out of the wrong ID (and wrong location maps and lists). If I and other IDers are able to push it to the right ID - even better. Especially if the right ID is more exciting… it´s a pitty that so many wrongly IDed opted out observations will either stay in the wrong ID mixing everything up or disappear in casuals…
One case comes to mind where two observers are the only ones having observed a certain species in their country. Both have IDed it wrongly, opted out and do not react to my messages … actually, one did but refuses to do anything because the new ID was suggested by a taxon swap, which was a mistake… I even linked to the flags where the curator duscussed her mistake… still that observer did not change anything about their opted out observation. I am happy that both of them at least did not realize (or do not care) that they are casual now
The species now does not occur on the lists and maps for this country, which is a shame, as this also presents a way for others to learn about biodiversity around them.
PS: And yes, of course I want to see the community ID. If I am not sure how it was derived, I can still go an try to learn about it. I think you are in the minority with your preference and find it interesting that you think you are not.
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In reference to seeing the Community ID - yes, I always want to see it. While I am a lifelong naturalist and professional biologist and know some groups of organisms well, in other cases, such as ferns or spiders, I lack the expertise to identify to species level, and rely on the community.
In the cases where the community gets it wrong, that can be resolved through discussion and explicit disagreement.
I can see that opting-out of Community ID might be useful on the rare occasion when these methods fail, but then it seems more appropriate to use it just for the specific observation affected. Perhaps the Notifications revamp will make things easier for those who can’t keep up with Notifications and risk missing that someone has identified their observation to a finer level than they should.
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Of course, the same is true from the other direction. If I opt out of community ID, it doesn’t mean other people’s IDs disappear—all the IDs are still there and can be accessed via inaturalist.org/identifications.
Don’t bring more attention to it, I was sleeping, hah, changed it.
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For that workflow - others have asked for a draft mode. There is a feature request.
I make few obs (and prefer to help with the ID explosion) but I follow all my notifications and look at every ID my obs get. Even a Research Grade consensus, can shift when someone with better knowledge comes along with - no, actually that’s a … then we all reconsider.
I really don´t think those are comparable. If I look at a certain place, I will see the opted out wrong IDs and I am not able to change that. The observer on the other hand has very easy access to their own data. For example the maverick page will usually only show a hand full of observations that is much easier accessible then what you proposed here.
Also, if a case like Marina mentioned happens - an opted out observer ist not able or willing to be active on iNat anymore - those observations will linger there forever and nobody can change that. It is very different the other way around.
I am not asking to delete the opting out function if it is so important to some users. But limit their impact on maps, lists, needs ID would still give the observer these functions if they wish, but don´t interfere so much with others experiences on iNat, which I feel is the issue here.
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Here it is (without the help of opting-out):
https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications?user_id=aspidoscelis&taxon_id=139637
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There’s a lot of important context over which it is hard to generalize. For instance, “seeing the opted out wrong IDs and being unable to change that”—in some contexts, you absolutely can, e.g., by marking them as reviewed in the Identify interface. And, yes, the specific case in which I’m only interested in those IDs where I’m marked as a “maverick” works pretty well through inaturalist.org/identifications —other cases don’t work so well, e.g. if I want to see a map of observations I’ve identified as a particular taxon.
I don’t think the situation is as simple as “the user has good alternatives and others don’t”.
Also, if a case like Marina mentioned happens - an opted out observer ist not able or willing to be active on iNat anymore - those observations will linger there forever and nobody can change that. It is very different the other way around.
I agree, that’s a problem. However, I’m not arguing that the current opt-out system is good—it isn’t.
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Possible with the API.
https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/docs/#!/Observations/get_observations
For instance, I identified this observation as Senna polyphylla (taxon ID = 335152) but it’s community ID is still Senna surattensis (taxon ID = 168854), Research Grade:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140157059
Although its current ID is not my ID, it is possible to retrieve this observation by searching an identification by me as taxon ID = 335152 (+ filtered for the place Singapore for getting only that observation):
https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/identifications?user_login=jeanphilippeb&place_id=6734&taxon_id=335152
Result displayed in a Json Formatter:
Unfortunatey, if I change the API URL above into an Explore page URL, we get nothing:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_login=jeanphilippeb&place_id=6734&taxon_id=335152
So I can get the observation desired from the API, but can’t display it directly on the map.
It’s a good try, but it’s missed!
Conclusion : I suggest a feature request:
the results returned by the API request above should be displayed by the Explore page.
This should not be too difficult as we already have the API request returning the correct results and we already have an Explore page that can display observations on a map. What remains to be done, is connecting the results with the display.
With this feature, you wouldn’t need anymore to opt-out.
Let’s go for it?
The Explore page URL displays the observation I am looking for only if I put as filter the ID of the current community taxon:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_login=jeanphilippeb&place_id=6734&taxon_id=168854
taxon_id has a meaning with https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/identifications different from its meaning with https://www.inaturalist.org/observations or https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications
We just need a slight variation to get the feature requested, something named taxon_id_from_user working with https://www.inaturalist.org/observations and that would be exactly the same filter as taxon_id when working with https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/identifications
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My understanding of the situation is that different people sometimes have different, and perhaps context-specific, preferences for what name is attached to an observation in the iNaturalist UI. The needs of all groups can be met outside the UI through more or less straightforward interactions with the API, although how easy that is will depend on the context. For instance, you could implement an alternative community ID system that ignores user opt-out settings, although I expect that would be at the difficult end of the spectrum.
However, there’s a reason people want to do it through the iNaturalist UI—the UI is well-designed and easy to use. So, do I want to push myself over to a crappier user experience? Well, no, not really.
(Parenthetically, one feature of inturalist.org/identifications that is especially unfortunate and user-hostile, in my opinion, is the use of “taxon_id” numbers.)
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Yes, and mostly I have the time to do that follow-up. Why do you ask?
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I wanted to show that iNat is (technically) very close to satisfying your need (but it is not available).
The workload for getting this feature is likely low, and this is in principle important when prioritizing the future features.
I was not telling to use the API as I did for getting the desired observation(s).
So, the question is open: do we ask this feature, how many people here will vote to support it, are we going to get it realized?
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It’s a context in which you’d want to access the ID you put on an observation, rather than the community ID. There are a lot of these, this seemed to be the example closest to hand given your prior comment. :-)