Please, read my first message in this thread where I clearly address the dichotomy of beliefs related to the purpose of the crowdsourced projects in general and iNaturalist in particular. Without solving this dichotomy, it makes zero sense to discuss any solution or even some issues since the base premise haven’t been established.
And this
is heavily based on a personal assumption and a biased belief. You simply reject other not-so-nice options by making a statement such as this one.
This part? Very much the point I am making!
In your opinion it might be “pretty much everything good about it”, but I see the tagging in of other identifiers as being a reinforcing of relationships… building community. For a start, I need to know who to tag, so it forces me to get to know the strengths and specialisations of other iNat identifiers.
Key things to remember here, are that the observation belongs to the observer, that identifications belong to the identifier, and there is no “wrong” or bad contribution in terms of either. That is a completely subjective determination that will mean different things to different people. Some contributions might be “more right” than others, but they are still valid contributions! There are cases where people have switched photos after an ID has been made… it was a good ID at the time it was made! Take the herculean effort on a certain beaver which even after it got “corrected” still receives almost daily contribution, testament to the strength of the community that iNat has built around such dissention.
For me, this will always be about the “Agree button”, what I see as the greatest source of problematic IDs in terms of “overzealous identifications”. And even then, it is only problematic in terms of the extra workload it creates, but that is why I show the other “positive” side of that problem by pointing out the reinforcing of the relationships that tagging in to counter-weight brings. It builds community to have to toil together!
Eh. It’s a community as you state. And as such the goals of the community are what defines what it is for as much so as any mission statement. It takes on a life of its own in a sense. And while I partially agree with you that fear of overzealous IDs is overblown, throwing away this huge data baby in the name of “connecting with nature bathwater” makes no sense.
iNat isn’t just about connecting with nature. That’s super broad - hiking, meditating, hunting, watching an Attenborough film, using Inaturalist are all ways someone might connect with nature but Inaturalist in particular is for people to connect with nature by sharing what they see. and understanding and sharing what it is. otherwise they could just post a pretty photo on Instagram. Many people share not only for fun but also because documenting biodiversity is important for a lot of reasons. And yes the data matters. INat is a turbo field notebook. While it was essential that Charles Darwin or Linnaeus or various other people connected with nature, what matters now hundreds of years later is the data, results, and discoveries. Which inat makes global and reduces the social and financial barriers to.
@kiwifergus: “It builds community to have to toil together!”
Doesn’t that mean that you would like to see processes developed where quality is improved through communication with contributors, e.g. those who make poor IDs. A contributor who actually makes bad IDs can learn to do a better job. If the characterization of the contributor is wrong, iNat learns how this happens and can adjust their process.
I understand that putting up demands will discourage participation by some users and I don’t see a need for that (except for fighting purposeful destructive behavior). But I think having an opportunity to learn something is a great motivator. Sure, it should be done in a suitable way that doesn’t frustrate inexperienced contributors.
Again with the “Bad IDs” !
The overzealous identifier is involving themselves with the process. That is to be encouraged! Could they spend more effort in identifying than just clicking an Agree button without actually looking close enough to have any certainty with the ID? Sure! I could look a bit closer on a lot of mine, having been caught out on what should be “simple IDs” a few times too many. And how much is “more effort”? Maybe I should only make IDs if I have been university educated, or better yet… only if I am the author of the taxon?
It makes no sense to you, because the data is what you value. The same could be argued on behalf of advertisers wanting your shopping habits (should we give them our credit purchase history, just because it is what they would value?) or political parties wanting to sway public opinion in the lead up to an election (should we let facebook data get into their hands?). Just because data exists, doesn’t mean it is to be valued above all else.
For example, there is plenty of “range data” available on the katipo, but that doesn’t stop a proposed walkway from destroying a colony here in Gisborne. What does stop that loss is a passionate iNatter who before joining iNat knew next to nothing about them, but has developed a passion for spiders through being “allowed” to have a go at identifying spiders in iNaturalist. When I heard of the proposed walkway, I stepped in and advocated on behalf of that colony. As a result, a survey was undertaken of the area and the extent of the colony, as well as the impact of the proposed track, are now being considered. That survey and it’s data is NOT on inat, although I have put up a few highlight observations of it from my part in that survey. In other words, the data is not what saved this colony… it was from someone developing an appreciation for them, and valuing them enough to step in.
I look back at some of my overzealous early IDs and I shudder, especially when other iNatters that I am helping to get more involved, send me links asking “why did you call this a …”. It also reminds me of how far I have come on this journey…
Interesting that you bring up Linnaeus. He was chastised by his “employer” for making his field trips too much fun. :)
the data is one thing i value. I value the community a lot and i think the community is largely built around um, making and identifying organisms, it’s the whole freakin point. ‘Connecting with nature’ is so broad to be totally meaningless. People are here because they want to identify and map things. Your other comments about advertising data (why?) and inferring that data is valued ‘above all else’ are odd and divergent.
Not alone. But if you don’t know it is there, no one would know that there was even something to lose. If it got erroneously identified as a black widow or wolf spider, and no one knew it was something rare and special, no one would have cared. You need both. We can’t ‘save’ nature when we don’t understand it, you don’t get good conservation results that way.
Nothing wrong with fun at all. What’s wrong is this idea that iNat data is a ‘secondary byproduct’, ugh
When I read these I am reminded of the following quote which for me defines the goal of the project, the base premise, and the place data and scientific research had in the founding of the platform:
The above is echoed at:
And I suspect that this ethos is the secret sauce that has made iNaturalist the rather massively successful platform that it is.
There’s been plenty of argument about the scientific importance of accurate IDs, but it’s worth thinking about how a resource like iNaturalist helps people connect to nature.
It would usually start with someone posting an observation of something they saw and said “I wonder what that is?”. They post it on the site and get an answer. However, if they get an answer, and two months later they find out it’s wrong, that might put them off posting in the future.
To that end, it does make sense that identifications are as accurate as possible - to help drive that engagement and give new observers the answers they want.
Why is that wrong?
I don’t think it is… the people behind iNat don’t seem to think it is… but you obviously do… THAT is what I meant by “you value the data”. Just the fact that it is referred to as a by-product (and what a wonderful by-product it is!) seems to always rile you up!
I wouldn’t be upset if someone called the saving of that katipo colony a by-product of iNat… I would say “give me more of that by-product, please… what more can we save!”
this kinda comes off as troll-y or trying to rile me up in and of itself or something. I care about it because i think the data is crucially important. Did anyone expect iNat to grow this big? Maybe not. But it’s now important to conservation in more than one way. That’s a good thing not a bad one… The bottom line is we are all here one way or another because of data and classification, or to be part of the community associated with that. We just are.And yes I know what Ken-Ichi said but that doesn’t mean i automatically agree with it. Reposting it to annoy me is again, kinda troll-y.
Just for the record, I didn’t re-post it. I’m not trying to be troll-y, but when you state that calling the data a by-product is wrong, I am going to challenge that, because I think that it is that view that is wrong.
There is a big difference between calling something wrong, and stating that you think it is wrong. Especially as a forum moderator, with the “authority” that might be implied by that, of course I’m going to point that difference out!
I think it is wrong. And I’m not speaking as a moderator now. As you know.
Observations (data) are the unit of iNaturalist. If the community does not value the basic unit, it will become meaningless. That the data can be used by other people than the observer can be considered a byproduct, but should not be dismissed as a byproduct.
To loop back to the original questions,
Only suspending a user will remove their ability to identify. The site curators and staff make the decision whether a user should be suspended.
No.
Since the questions have been answered and the rest of this has been discussed at length here and in other topics, I’m going to close this topic for now. We welcome folks to continue the related discussions, such as the value and pitfalls of crowdsourced data, gamification, or the mission of iNaturalist, in separate topics, or propose relevant feature requests, but only after reading through the existing material. If you find yourself in a quick, heated back-and-forth, please consider stepping away or moving the discussion to private messages. Thanks!
See related topics: