I am not suggesting or implying that any other IDer should do this. I was responding to the suggestion that people do it only to get on the leaderboards. Honestly, I would consider actually learning to ID MORE plants (to help with the backlog of those that still need an ID) if I could prevent myself from being on the leaderboards. I’ve actually stopped IDing some species to prevent the leaderboard thing.
I’m not spending hours adding IDs to things that are already RG (as somehow seems to have been implied). Here is why I do it in specific situations:
Many native plants where I live are being vigorously outcompeted by invasives and this is causing the collapse of an entire ecosystem (the Oregon dunes). I enjoy looking at these native plant observations and also learning where they are to help a non-profit I work with that is trying to save portions of the dune ecosystem here. While I’m in those observations, I often will add a third ID for the reason I stated…because I DO want these native plants and their locations to remain RG for research and conservation work; this doesn’t negate that there might be additional serious problems when someone deletes an account, but the chance that some of these specific obs could fall out of RG does matter (even if just to me, for now).
This “extra” ID is not reducing the number of other things I ID. It does, however, enhance my enjoyment and feeling of purpose when using iNaturalist. Take those two things away and there is less reason to come out here and do any ID work at all.
I do this, I choose to id a species sometimes and I go back YEARS. I think it’s useful for inat to have a confirmation. There might only be the original id, or the id might be wrong. I check how many ids i make of a species so I can avoid being near the top on the leaderboard. Sometimes people from other countries ask me to id their observation, as they’ve seen me on the leaderboard, but I’m not familiar with the flora and fauna of other countries and I don’t want to make a mistake. So i decline.
My opinions on various things. First, whenever I try to communicate that people should add a third or fourth observation to an RG observation, some people seem to hear that I want people to go through RG observations just to add a third or fourth ID. NO. What I am advocating is that if a person is looking at an RG observation for any reason and can add a confident confirming ID, they should do that. That doesn’t take much time.
Totally agree. We’re volunteers who can go off and play with the dog instead. We even get to play with iNaturalist as we wish, as long as we do no harm.
Also, being annoyed with the motivations of the people adding “extra” ID’s is a serious waste of annoyed energy. (There are so many more important things to be annoyed with in the world right now.) You don’t know why a person ID’s what he does. Serious effort to clean up ID’s in a taxon? Mindless recreation? Exploring new and interesting taxa? Getting as many local observations to RG as possible? Climbing up leaderboards? And does it really matter? I think that what matters to us should be whether the ID’s are correct.
I agree that the long delay in getting ID’s some times is discouraging. And people who are discouraged do make up motivations and get hurt by them. Not sure how to stop that. If I thought people not adding “extra” ID’s would significantly help, I might oppose them doing it, but I don’t.
Posting photos on iNaturalist and providing ID’s are fundamentally different in ways that extend beyond the obvious. The photos are our own property, posted for any number of reasons including but not limited to helping others. I think we should be able to remove them, though I’m (usually) sad when people do. Identifications and comments are contributions, posted to help other people, (except in the case of some jerks who we understandably remove). To me, removing identifications and comments is like saying, “I gave you that hat as a birthday present. Now I’m taking it back.” (Yes, we should have the ability to remove individual ID’s, but just wipe them all out? No.)
iNaturalist does warn people about to remove their account that doing so will remove ID’s and comments as well as photos. I think we should instead warn them that removing their accounts will not remove ID’s and comments, unless they click on this button and go through a couple more steps perhaps including communication with humans. The effort has foundered on questions of how to anonymize accounts and the fact that people haven’t been warned the change is coming. I could comment about that, but this paragraph is already wandering to the edge of this topic so I’ll stop.
I think it would be nice if, someone is suspended for reasons not having to do with bad identifications, or leaves on their own accord, their IDs remain, but are sort of grayed out in a way that lets people know they aren’t on the platform anymore. Or, as you said, there is an extra step in deletion to address identifications for others.
Here to undermine, apparently. I haven’t forgotten the made-up story about a professional being paid for what a volunteer IDer did for free. The story was eventually admitted to be untrue, but it took round after round of questioning to get there.
At a certain point, what it comes down to is: Do we want more people to make more IDs, or not?
If we want fewer people making fewer IDs, then sure, by all means, let’s discourage people from making IDs that we consider unnecessary.
And, while I kind of wish I wasn’t on certain leaderboards, if moving up the leaderboard motivates someone to make high-quality IDs, how is that a problem, exactly?
People who add further IDs primarily to get on leaderboards are possibly also people who will delete their account in a fit of pique if they don’t receive enough warm fuzzies. If this is true, the problem would be self-resolving.
I wish that I could say I’m here to help, but given that my ability to contribute in Vietnam seems to be limited to moving a single un’ID observation of Cirsium down to genus, I’m mostly just here to add to your pile.
While I’m pleasantly surprised to find myself on some of the leaderboards, racking up numbers is not my goal. On the other hand, I am amused that The Doctor now describes me as the Queen of the Plains Forktails.
On the other hand, one of my recent observations has the most IDs I’ve ever gotten, and a couple of comments about what a great photo it is, so there’s that. I thought that the shot was pretty good, but the feedback was a much-needed mood lifter. So I guess my takeaway is that, yeah, anything over what’s needed to lift an observation safely into a correct RG maybe superfluous, but you never know when that extra validation might be brightening someone’s day.
Well said! Whenever I embark on learning about a new group of interesting critters, I read my resource material and compare it to research grade observations that are identified by known professionals. That gives me the comfortability to distinguish small characteristics with quality pictures and get in contact with the people I know are well educated on the genus or species. iNaturalist is the best form of educational “social media” that exists right now in my opinion and I personally feel like we need to encourage as much stimulating, educational conversation as possible!
It’s occurred to me to mention that when I add a “superfluous” ID, it’s usually when I’m going through observations looking for some similar species that tends to get misidentified. If I’ve gone through the effort of clicking on and enlarging a photo of a particular observation to look at it more closely (yes, a small effort to be sure but still an extra effort), I might as well add an ID, even if it’s already been well established.
When IDing common obvious birds in my area that for some reason where left unattended, I was so surprised after putting my ID suddenly seeing more than 10 IDs agreeing. I felt like I was wasting my time and I should have just waited a bit longer for the army of birders would handle it. The same with some other species like turtles… But again I found some cases left unattended for few days and hours after my ID (moving out of needs ID) another agreeing avalanche.
Only now I understand it’s for leaderboards. But also I don’t understand why I got slightly bothered in the first place . There’s just more people looking at charismatic species than eclectic ones and I’m one of them.
Yes this is what I’ve done, it works a treat. I personally don’t mind people adding on extra IDs, but the notifications get so muddled up that I sometimes miss disagreeing identifications. It’s a simple solution which works well
Some people may find that the option to turn of notifications for agreeing IDs is not fine-grained enough. E.g., one might like to receive notifications for the first confirmation on one’s own observations but not subsequent confirmations or confirmations on other people’s observations, or one might like to see notifications of agreeing IDs for certain taxa but not for others.
So we may end up weighing the advantages and disadvantages of both options and deciding which results in the fewest problems for our usage of iNat.
I do feel with some taxa that it is appropriate for me to add an additional confirmatory ID, particularly where one might doubt the expertise of the initial identifiers or if the record could be considered suspect for other reasons (such as photo quality or the state of the organism). Of course, that additional confirmatory ID should only be added if I am certain - if I’m at all uncertain I might as well leave the observation be if its already at RG anyway.
It is true that changes in taxon circumscriptions are an absolute pain, and happen fairly frequently with the taxa I deal in (if they’ve even been described in the first place), and are definitely a major precipitating factor for why I disagree with things - and are a cause for why there are taxa which I could identify to species or even variety that I steadfastly refuse to go past genus (or tribe or subtribe, in some particularly aggravating cases), because I do not even slightly trust that circumscription to hold up. The number of identifications I’ve disagreed with that were entirely correct at the time they were made are certainly non-negligible. Of course, in cases where there’s a lot of issues with extra IDs due to a change in circumscription it should hopefully be possible to coordinate with at least one additional person to handle that messiness. This is a community effort after all, I’m given to understand.
@DianaStuder Interesting approach I had not thought of. I have thought about muting someone who is now going through identifying everything I identified in one category over the last 10 years - could be thousands - and I get notified. But once in a while they @mention me about something significant so I would think with your technique the @mention would still come through wouldn’t it without notification of the IDs on the observations? How do you make a decision on when to unfollow or how do you fit that into your routine?
When to unfollow is a snap decision. I have given that obs my best - cannot, will not, learn more about that taxon. Or I have already @mentioned one or 2 - now that obs must take its rightful place in the queue. Oh ! now that one IS interesting - I will stay with that discussion … till we get there - those grass bucky balls are the current challenge. Which creature did that, and WHY??
I have only muted one person - to pre-empt mutual irritation. Checked, 2 more I had forgotten - all 3, like me, are active identifiers and then the notifications can rack up too high.
You can always UNmute again when your batch of thousands has cleared.
There are many positive and enlightening responses to this post on why observations receive ongoing Compare, Agree, or Individual RG search suggestions.
These are a few additional positive considerations that may be assessed:
Is the identifier recognizing variation attributes in the observations that are relevant to specific research, location, or other needs?
Can three or more positive suggestions reskill or upskill the identifier competency and boost the machine-learning capacity of the image-recognition process?
Is the identifier searching for species to identify and demonstrate confidence in future suggestions?
During the identifiers’ search, are there RG species with two suggestions that need further subjective support from a different location to validate the collaboration effort?
There are RG suggestions with iNat taxon change suggestions that remain open for extended periods. Is it appropriate for identifiers to add support suggestions to taxon changes?
Is the identification process subjective?
Is the identifier focused on offering suggestions to support the iNaturalist.org mission and guidelines, with no concern for competing with anyone?
Agree, disagree responses to this reply are welcome.
. There’s just more people looking at charismatic species than eclectic ones and I’m one of them.