Doesn’t matter whether they are deliberately cheating or not - they are devaluing iNat data. Should be ‘flagged’ for date is wrong.
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I’ve heard it mentioned that some bioblitz organizers give awards or prizes for most observations. If no awards/prizes are being given, and it’s an individual that is making it a personal competition, then probably the only thing that can be done is to educate all of the participants on the negative impact they would be having if they posted images taken at different times or locations. For this one person, I see nothing wrong with just telling the person that something appears “off” with some of their observations and ask them to verify the accuracy of their observations–in addition to pointing out the negative impact if they’re not accurate. I’d avoid accusing someone outright unless the evidence of guilty intent was incontrovertible.
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I would definately try to make sure first that it indeed is not a misunderstanding. I also uploaded quite a bunch of observations where I had to adjust the date in retrospect, because a) I did forget to set the date in the camera right or b) the camera went back to factury setting mid trip and I realized at some point by accident that I had observations reaching back to 2001… when I was not even involved in photography yet.
Please do not just DQA these kinds of observations without getting back to the observer about it.
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Understood. Would you suggest doing this before using the DQA? …and perhaps a boilerplate to use that expresses the assumption that they meant well?
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Personally I’d use the DQA if there’s evidence the date is wrong, and if they fix it you can remove your vote.
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Do notifications alert you to DQA changes? I thought that got put on the backlog.
DQA votes do not currently generate notifications.
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Sorry, I misunderstood.
I meant to ask: do changes to dates or locations generate alerts, or would Bob need to keep checking the observation to see if the user changed thouse so he could rescind his DQA downvote?
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No, they don’t.
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What I sometimes do if using DQA is writing also a short message that I am happy to change it if the problem is fixed (or explained to me such that I can agree that there actually is no problem) and I am tagged
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We should make people understand, either young or adult, that the prize is knowledge, not the highest number of observations (often, during bioblitzes, they are represented by misidentified and/or badly photographed and/or unflagged non-wild taxa).
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I have participated in our local biioblitz, however I am also regularly contributing whatever I find either with real camera or phone. I often take more pictures on my weekend walk or early in the morning and then don’t have time to post. Sometimes I post a ‘camera roll’ a couple of days later, when I finally work on them. In that sense you may be able to accuse me to post pictures that I had taken a week before within the timeframe of the bioblitz. All not ill intended. I also sometimes post a picture that I originally discarded when I find a similar specimen for comparison. And yes, the software is not counting those pictures with the bioblitz and likewise when I am crossing the borders of our village during my walks, the finds are not counted towards the local bioblitz and deducted automatically. I personally think bioblitzes are a great way to get people to start with nature observation. After contributing for a longer period, I rather avoid duplicate mass postings of ever the same species.
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None of yours are remotely dishonest. We all have different workflows. Someone said they can only use iNat on a computer once a month - which has made me think hard and reassess no internet access each time we are hit with loadshedding, a few hours perhaps, and then not every day!
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Anytime there is a “competition”, people will cheat. It’s why I dislike leaderboards and tallies. INaturalist wasn’t always about numbers, leaderboards or competition. I preferred it that way, it was more about appreciating nature for natures sake. What can be done about it? Stop making it a competition (not likely to happen). It’s just like photography competitions, people will use photoshopped images, then claim they never used CGI. Competition ruins many things
I would assume that bioblitz is designed to look at observation date, not reporting date? If not that seems like the the obvious solution.
I am the poster child of why does one participate in and win a bioblitz. I won our citywide Most Observations and Most Birds and won a pair of inexpensive binoculars that have outlasted the prior four pairs I had prior to that and that broke and wore out in just a couple years. I learned the value of contributing to citizen science by not only posting observations but by identifying other’s observations. I met others who were also interested in nature and have since introduced people to INaturalist whenever I am out and about and also trained fellow Master Gardener volunteers in the benefits of contributing to citizen science and making the process to learn simple for others.
I am physically challenged and spend much of my time in bed but I learned how to ID sites ahead of time with many potential observations to post to maximize my time over the three days.
Prior to today I did not even recall I had been to at least one other Bioblitz. I left that earlier one not even knowing what a bioblitz was or how to use INaturalist successfully as for some reason the photos wouldn’t upload. Although at that bioblitz I learned a lot about the organisms and species I did not learn how to successfully upload items to INaturalist and even understand what INaturalist was. Our citywide nature challenge was well publicized and we learned how to use INaturalist, the purpose of it and how to teach and encourage others to participate with many training sessions ahead of time .
Perhaps INaturalist came naturally to you but the Bioblitz with competition spurred me on. So hopefully that answers your question in a positive way.
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Sorry, but how it solves the cheating problem? Projects only look at observation date which can be easily changed manually, you can even change EXIF if you really want.
Personally I enjoy the mildly-competitive aspects of iNat - it encourages me to go a little bit further, take that last observation, or just to go outside at all when the depression is kicking my butt. I’d be really disappointed if it that taken away, and probably not participate nearly as much.
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I didn’t even realise what leaderboards were until someone told me i could tag someone in them to ask them if they could help me ID things. As a new and even moderate user in the low hundreds of observations, I thought they were part of the iNat system like ‘appointed people’ for things (like curators or somesuch). I had no idea until that comment, how they were created.
I recently found myself listed on a leaderboard when I uploaded an observation of my own (I tend to check in on them to make sure they got up correctly) and I was like…woah…COOL! Sometimes people tag me now for a few these things to help them, it always makes me a little silly-giddy-excited 'cause I love helping people so that little stupid thing definitely increases my desire to keep helping others and working through ID piles.
Or even project leader boards…I had no idea how many fungi we had. I joined as a paid member of AMS because they offer prizes for their scavenger hunt to members, and I was like, heck I could use more ID books sign me up, and then I can go foraging with them too for free (since now a paid member!). So…positives too.
People will always cheat who want to. Really nothing is going to stop it. Yeah it sucks if they mess up some data, but this site’s data is not going to be Perfect with a capital P ever, anyway, no mater what is stopped or changed or anything, because people are by our own nature imperfect.
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