deleted, although I don’t know why
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Ok, I’m super confused now. I was just trying to clarify what you were referring to in that comment. Not saying you had to delete it or it was offensive
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Oh sorry. My comment briefly said that but then I removed the delete part because it seemed too harsh. I guess I did it too slowly.
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This problem of a reviewer IDing the wrong subject seems to come up again and again. Although the submitter provided the initial ID for the organism that is the subject of the photo, I suggest – as I’ve suggested elsewhere on the forum – that if you want to make clear (or make clearer) what the subject is, add some notes under Description (e.g., the subject is the tree, not the hawk) and perhaps reference the URL for the duplicate record where the other organism is the subject.
It doesn’t take that much extra effort and it just might prevent such tangled messes.
Example:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/16177385
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/16177338
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This quote is being misattributed to me. I did not say “So everyone else’s opinions are okay, mine aren’t–gotcha.” Would you mind editing that so it doesn’t look like I said that, but simply responded to someone else saying it?
There is an arrow in the corner of the box where you are quoted. If you click it it will expand and you will see it is a quote of you quoting another user and will clear up confusion. I agree it looks misleading when not expanded.
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I think it should be hidden until fixed.
I’ve edited @cmcheatle’s post to make it more clear who is being quoted. Nothing in the content was changed I just made the quotes more clear, look better to you, @sgene?
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yes, thank you
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How much clearer can I get that my initial ID? Sure its easy to make a proposal making a comment, but I’ve done that on previous obs and it was also ignored. At this point, the easiest solution is @sgene’s, which is a popup box when kingdoms are changed. The onus should’t be on the observer to ‘correct’ actions that are within totally the guidelines. Get a popup, and suspend people like @dep who stubbornly continues to act outside the guidelines.
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Hm, I’d think instititution of a new popup box, which would require extra coding on the site, and could lead to the unintended consequence of adding extra distraction on kingdom-crossing observations that do properly need to be changed*, would not be the “easiest” solution.
The human observer’s simply adding a few words to an empty comments field that is already coded into the site seems like a low effort, easy solution for almost anyone. Even if not every identifier is properly attentive to that, it goes a long way to help other, more attentive identifiers interact properly with your observation.
*(slime mold/fungal confusion, anybody? heh)
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Whatever the ultimate consensus solution for the State of Matter issue will be, I strongly feel that unilateral actions by uniquely privileged iNaturalist curators borne out of frustration should not be part of it.
By all means, look for policy or technical solutions. Don’t throw your personal weight around. That doesn’t help anybody else who has to deal with inattentive or malicious identifiers.
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Policy solutions would need teeth to be effective and fair. We have a policy without teeth.
I proposed a pop-up window under the mistaken impression that identifications of the wrong organism were inadvertent. It won’t work in cases where identifiers intentionally identify the wrong organism or where identifiers did not intentionally identify wrongly but then refuse to correct. (It might not work where identifiers are the type that ignore notifications and messages either.)
So a technical solution does seem like it might have more widespread effect. Are you thinking of something like a button that only the observer can use that says something like “Wrong Organism Identified,” which would automatically make the ID ineffective? That would also cover observations where the identifier is long gone.
Another technical fix that comes to mind is to make searches of a taxon also bring up observations stuck in “State of Matter Life” that have at least one ID with that taxon come up in the search.
those would be helped a lot if they showed up in searches of fungi and slime molds
People (including me) do this, but all the time I find observations with comments and descriptions that are in State of Matter Life a long time, so I think it’s a good idea but not sufficient.
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