I think “non-established” observations should show on range maps by default, this would help fix the problem of missing past observations of a species in an area. I think they should also export to GBIF.
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“Should captive/cultivated observations be called research grade (though still be excluded from searches by default)” could be a thread onto itself.
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I would first like to say I’d very much support effort spent on the outlined “more ambitious alternative”, whether or not a “non-established” data quality assessment section is added to observations. That is, splitting off wild vs. not wild as a determinant of whether an observation is Needs ID or Research Grade. (Hi to 2018!)
As Scott mentioned, captive/cultivated (aka “not wild”) observations would still remain hidden to all users by default, but you could optionally select to view these observations if they’re a focus of interest. Or did you mean something else?
The differences between how this would apply to plants vs. animals seem significant and I’ll share more thoughts later, if others don’t beat me to it. :)
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Title of the post still shows as the same for me after reloading:
It looks like the title in the text of the post itself is broader, but not the top of the forum page. It also shows as the original title in the forum sidebar on iNaturalist.org…but this is probably more a technical thing and a little off-topic! (sorry).
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the original title was “Options for the best way to handle escaped/released pets” is the updated title “Options for the best way to handle non-established obs (e.g. escaped/released pets)” still problematic?
That is the second version of the title. Before he changed it, it read something like “best way to handle observations of escaped pets.” I admit even the changed version is not what I had in mind, but I can’t quite articulate what the best title would be.
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Is this thread meant to be only about animals / pets?
Plants explicitly NOT included?
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If there’s a fundamental difference in how animals are to be handled as “introduced, not established” versus plants, would be good to clarify that upfront. I’m not sure myself what the differences might be…
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While its clear there are animals that aren’t captive(under the stricter interpretation) but aren’t established (like most tropical pets released in temperate latitudes) - and thus would benefit from a way of being separated out from (strictly) captive and established and fall pretty squarely outside of this ‘field guide’ set we’re aiming at being able to filter. Its not totally clear that the same middle ground exists for plants. As has been mentioned they are ‘waifs’ but these are often included in floras. Curious what people focused on plants think about whether being able to track plant ‘waifs’ would help towards the goal of being able to wrap one’s head around a regional subset of taxa to look for mis-ID’s and biogeographic outliers
I don’t know if there is a difference since I know nothing about animals! Sorry.
I am actually using iNaturalist now to help a local botanist write an update of our county plant checklist (to be published as print book.) I’m not the author so I’m not really the expert in the topic of writing “floras” or other botany guide books, but as I understand it waifs are things which are not included in floras, because they’re few in number and not reproducing. I also get the impression that what to include or exclude in a list of plants depends a lot on the author’s choice. Specifically he said some writers wish to include weeds seen in gardens and some do not.
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Apologies for not mentioning it above - but as with not showing captive/cultivated or not-established observations on the explore page by default, we would also not show them on the taxon page range maps by default (there is an existing sticky control to to toggle on captive obs and we could add a control for toggling on non-established obs).
This screenshot of what the map of Bearded Dragon (which has no known established populations outside of Australia) would look like were all the escapee/non-established obs flagged as wild?=yes shows how under our existing map styling (which would also be ambitious to change) this will increasingly obscure biogeographic patterns as the site continues to scale and the beaded dragons that exist in terrariums everywhere there are people continue to escape and be observed
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Using your Bearded Dragon example, is there a simple way to “flag” the extralimital records within the record itself (such as in the DQA) such that those outliers are illustrated differently? Different color maybe? Or I suppose it’s more basic than that … we need to categorize those records in a completely different manner than wild/established so that they are in a separate bin of records.
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You’re right … too much to read. I’d suggest it should be “population is established” not “organism” since that could be interpreted as an individual.
Added note: Keep in mind of course that migrating native birds, bats, and other animals might not be “established” at a given location within their natural range (i.e., they don’t breed there) but are expected there as part of their natural seasonal movements. I include migrating birds that get off course all on their own and show up as rarities in some location.
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Right. I understand that. And I think other people could be made to understand that, after an initial period of tirades by those fixating on “captive species can now be called research grade,” without reading the fine print, so to speak.
I am reading too much into it, or my bias is too extreme, but to my mind Scott’s “more ambitious alternative” represents a fundamental shift in the underlying culture of iNaturalist. I’m exaggerating a bit with my language choice here, but the current system gives me the message “we really would rather you not observe captive species, but since we can’t stop you, we will throw them in the same trash bin (the casual category) as observations missing vital statistics like the location and date, and not give them essential search functions which would facilitate their ID (that is, doing a search for “cultivated/captive” on identify brings up all observations which are “cultivated/captive” regardless of how many people have already ID’d them.)” This new idea of separating them out from casual seems like a much more welcoming “we will hide your captive species by default, but otherwise our programming will treat them equally.”
I think my qualms about the title of this thread are rooted in the belief that this proposal includes a possible big change effecting far more than a few escaped pets.
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And 2017 as well. 
I like the idea of including captive and non-established obs in “Research Grade” (or whatever the name may be) but hiding them from view by default. If that doesn’t distinguish wild and non-wild enough, maybe we can have an additional tag on the top of observations, beside the Research Grade tag, that can say “Captive/Cultivated” or “Escapee/Waif”?
I don’t see a reason for keeping them visible because regular identifying is necessary anyway to mark them as non-established. If a bunch of observations start coming through, I would think identifiers would be observant enough to notice a pattern? I do think my perspective on distinguishing escapees/new populations/vagrants is biased by living in a place with cold winters though. Several wild Brown Anole observations have been posted in Ontario, but there’s no question that they recently came from imported plants because there’s no way they’d survive the winters here and establish a population. That’s not the case in say, California.
Also, in the vast majority of cases bird vagrants are pretty easy to distinguish from escaped pet birds so I don’t see a reason for them to be involved.
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The reason vagrant birds would be involved is because it would be hard to find a wording that excludes them. After all, vagrants are definatley not established.
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How about: “Organism is wild“ (yes/no) followed by “Species introduced/not established” (yes/no).
So like @loarie suggested, but as a dependency/branching path, rather than 2 DQA attributes that are each separate?