Just venting a minor frustration. For ID requests on various social media platforms, I frequently see people commenting that, “Google Lens says it’s this”. I want to say, “Do you realize that Google Lens is just scraping iNat, and you can actually join iNat (the source) and make IDs, and contribute to making things better for everyone?”
But I don’t say that, because:
It would take too long to explain
Google Lens is getting more accurate all the time
So I just sigh and mentally “Click Reviewed” (I move on). But I do wish I could wave a magic wand to make this more widely understood.
This is similar to the scores of people who say “Merlin says it is X”. Usually these people are just trying to shift the blame away from themselves if their ID is wrong; basically, they feel subconscious about their ID because they know they shouldn’t do it like so, but unfortunately they mention it as a form of self-justification to themselves so they can still do it and feel fine.
I don’t claim that this is every time, but it is at least the majority from what I’ve encountered when talking to users/trying to help them out.
So, if you have the time copy-and-paste your educational response to help them out. If you can’t/don’t have the time, don’t worry. The people who take the time to make that message usually have their reasons.
Equally, I’ve seen someone on iNat respond with, “The book that knows everything says it is [Z]” and then refuse to engage further. I’ve also seen iNat users refuse to accept that there is a difference in authority between official government publications and books by enthusiasts who lack formal training. The problem originated earlier than Google Lens.
Without going as far as “join[ing] iNat” (might be overkill if they’re content with a quick rough answer every so often), they could at least use the iNaturalist CV demo.
I moved this to Nature Talk because it’s not about iNaturalist.
The forum is specifically not for complaints. Do you have a suggestion for how to improve this? Did you want to ask people about how best to handle these situations?
in a prior field I worked a lot with government agencies at different levels (primary state, city and county). I would not posit that “official government publications” are the final say in accurate information.
I would absolutely take the 59-volume Flora of Australia, written by trained botanists who have examined the full range of herbarium specimens, over hobby projects by non-botanists who have observed only what grows near them. I write that consciously as a non-botanist and a hobbyist. At some point, you need to acknowledge the limits of your knowledge base.
Sure, I don’t think anyone is denying there are painstakingly written, completely trustworthy and excellent government-published resources, but there are also inaccurate, hastily written ones, just as there are excellent, well-researched amateur publications as well as confused inaccurate ones. I agree the former tend to be more accurate than the latter, but both exhibit a wide overlapping range in quality, and I wouldn’t agree there’s a truly universal
Actually, let me expand on that, because it disturbs me that people are putting likes on anti-authority comments.
The entire structure of iNat rests on the official taxonomy established by central bodies. No matter how many hours you have spent examining a group of plants (an activity I greatly support), if you want to get a plant taxon added to iNat, you had better show a curator that it is accepted by Plants of the World Online. If it isn’t, you will have to validly publish it following recognised standards, and professional botanists will need to agree that you have clearly distinguished it from other known taxa, and once it appears in POWO, a curator can add it for you. In cases where you aren’t dealing with a new taxon but just identifying plants as belonging to an existing one, your final authority still has to be a formal species description, not a private definition.
In brief: books by hobbyists, no matter how much effort the hobbyists put in, can’t have more authority than formal species descriptions because formal species descriptions are the architecture that iNat is built on.
that’s an entirely different discussion than if a government published document is error free. Hell, my state doesn’t even try to publish comprehensive list of native flora and fauna. And even field guides that are generally good can have gaps as ranges change and more eyes are on an area to find species. I’ve got older field guides that don’t list narrowmouth toads Palo Duro Canyon for instance, but they’re definitely there.
Whilst I agree with most of your argument, this is way too strong. Charles Darwin was a gentleman amateur naturalist who never worked for a living and didn’t have any formal science qualifications (he only had a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cambridge). One of the main reasons why he delayed publication of The Origin of Species, was because he felt underqualified. In order to prove himself as a practising scientist, he therefore spent eight years studying barnacles (in his own home, and obviously entirely self-financed) before publishing a four volume monograph on them that remains authoritative to this day.
This is may be broadly true, but the process of peer review doesn’t exclude amateurs. If their work is good enough, it should stand up to scrutiny and can thereby gain the authority it deserves.
