Options for the best way to handle non-established obs (e.g. escaped/released pets)

[aspidoscelis]

@DianaStuder

Meanwhile some people deliberately leave their obs as ‘Wild’ until they get an ID. So ‘Wild’ includes some Captive.

I’m familiar with that behavior and consider it anti-social.

[sedgequeen]

“I’m familiar with that behavior and consider it anti-social.”

I consider it a necessary work-around while iNaturalist fails to treat captive/wild as a dimension different from needs ID/identified. That would be a much better way to deal with this issue.

[arboretum_amy]

@aspidoscelis

I think the labels are working as intended if they allow people to find and interact with the observations that they personally consider important…I encourage those who believe captive / cultivated observations are important to treat them as important

Except that I am hindered from identifying captive plants by the fact that there’s no way to sperate those which have not been fully identified from those that have. I may consider them import but the user interface of the website does not.

[jwidness]

Just a reminder that there is already a feature request for making captive/cultivated needs id. Please use that thread as needed and keep this discussion on topic. Thanks!

[arboretum_amy]

The very first post of this topic introduces discussion about making captive a seperate category from casual. This thread proposes two alternatives
-making a new DQA line or
-making casual observations elligable for RG.

@loarie

More ambitious alternative

Another more ambitious/disruptive alternative would be to bundle this work with additional work to remove ‘wild? No’ from casual as in the graph below…The advantages would be that captive observations can become ‘research grade’ which might encourage people to identify them.

[aspidoscelis]

I think that’s a good reason for a “captive / cultivated and needs ID” filter to be added.

[aspidoscelis]

I can understand the motivation, but I still think this is anti-social. When I see captive / cultivated observations in the needs ID pile, I mark them captive / cultivated and I don’t ID them.

[aspidoscelis]

My experience is that just about every space dedicated to native & wild plants eventually becomes a gardening group. While I’ve nothing against gardening, I’ve learned that if I want there to still be spaces to observe, ID, and discuss all the plants that aren’t in gardens, the border needs to be patrolled vigilantly. Ergo, misrepresenting cultivated plants as wild in order to try to trick me into identifying them is something for which I really have no patience.

[sedgequeen]

Trick you? No, that’s not the intention. Just trying to keep the observation in the pile where they may get an identification. I would imagine that most people who do identify them know very well these are cultivated plants. It’s clear you do.

[fffffffff]

Other than people on forum all botanists I talked to don’t see any value in spending their time on iding planted things while there’re so many actually wild plants with no ids, there’re separate apps just for iding plants in cultivation and they’re good at it, if user needs id (and not just post observations you like), it’s better to use those.

[aspidoscelis]

I interpret deliberately incorrect data as an attempt at deceit, whether successful or not. :-) In any case, clearly we have different viewpoints.

[arboretum_amy]

@anon83178471

It’s less about the actual wording and more about people’s attitudes towards those labels because there’s a clear difference in how they’re treated, which causes problems.

@aspidoscelis

My experience is that just about every space dedicated to native & wild plants eventually becomes a gardening group. While I’ve nothing against gardening…

@fffffffff

there’re separate apps just for iding plants in cultivation and they’re good at it, if user needs id (and not just post observations you like), it’s better to use those.

Right so that’s the thing, there are strong opinions about this on both sides. Therefore if any change is made it’s not a little change.

Loarie brought up this idea “what if we made captive and casual observatios sperate” as a solution for a problem he feels has come up regarding escaped vertebrates. Sure, maybe we are a little off topic in discussing our reactions to his proposal in a manner emphasizing cultivated plants. But the proposal has such big ramifications for plant people and the underlying culture of iNaturalist regarding plants, if staff is really going to discuss this seriously they need to take that into account. How big of a problem are obs of escaped pets really, and do they justify such a big change?

[DianaStuder]

@aspidoscelis

anti-social

as @sedgequeen as explained it’s a workaround forced by iNat.
We each have different ways of using iNat. I always evaluate ‘wild’ with a jaundiced eye. Is it? Really?

[jasonhernandez74]

@fffffffff

all botanists I talked to don’t see any value in spending their time on iding planted things while there’re so many actually wild plants with no ids

I take it these botanists are not into Araceae. A number of Araceae species have been discovered and described from cultivated specimens; and not all have been re-found in the wild, either.

[fffffffff]

Well, those people definitely can look cultivated observations, so others don’t need to, that’s another reason to mark things correctly.

[sedgequeen]

One of functions of iNaturalist is to serve people who post plants, etc., wanting identifications. Therefore, I consider identifying even cultivated plants to be one of our obligations as identifiers. Identifying them in a timely way if possible.

Once they’re identified, I like to see cultivated plants correctly classified as cultivated.

[jnstuart]

So what does it mean when a plant is downvoted in the DQA to “not wild” and the voter is iNaturalist?

I’m looking at one of my own records of an exotic, which I considered not planted/cultivated based on the available evidence: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/32470446

[fogartyf]

I think there is an algorithm that does that based on proximity to other records and their DQA status. It’s definitely not perfect, and I have seen it make mistakes before. Luckily, your own vote on the DQA is sufficient to override it.

[jwidness]

more info can be found in the DQA pop-up

[jnstuart]

Thanks. Not sure I like the idea of an algorithm overriding an observer’s decision since it can’t know the context of the record. I realize the decision can be eventually overridden by human votes but it seems like a mechanism that can obscure records that might be legitimately wild (in the iNat sense) and that possibly provide evidence of the early stages of naturalization of an exotic.