When/Who Checks “No, it’s as good as can be” under “Can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” For example, 6 people have agreed to a Species Observation. . . How many need to agree? Does original observer check agree? Thanks!
Generally, we use that button in cases where an organism can’t be identified all the way to species. (There are lots of insects, for instance, that can’t be identified to that level without dissection – kind of hard to do from photos.) In the case of a genus, the observation can still be considered Research Grade if that button is marked. So, my advice is don’t hit that one unless you actually know that it’s not possible to go further.
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On the vast majority of observations, the “Can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” box is never used. Typically the observation is created, two or more people add an ID, and when enough of the species-level IDs agree, the observation goes to research grade. How many species-level IDs need to agree? If there are no conflicting IDs, then just two. If some of the IDs conflict, then a subset of them have to come together to make a 2/3 majority–this could take a lot of identifications if opinions are very mixed! The situation that you’re describing, where agreeing IDs keep piling up, might be one of two things: 1) those IDs are not species level or 2) “User has opted-out of Community Taxon” (explanation to follow)
So who does check the “No, it’s as good as can be” box and when? Anyone has the capacity to do it (that is, the box will function for any user) but sometimes a little knowledge is required. In situation #1, someone who is knowledgeable about the taxon in question can check the box if they feel the observation can never reach species level. As @psweet said, fine identification of some organisms requires key features not visible in photos, and so it just can’t be done for the average iNat observation of those organisms. In this situation, observations with a community taxon lower than family will become research grade when “No, it’s as good as can be” is checked, while those with higher community taxa go to causal grade.
So what’s situation #2? iNaturalist has an option where the observer can chose to override everyone else’s IDs, meaning the observation will always display as the taxon the observer said it was. The problem with this is that sometimes the observer has either given the wrong ID, or they ID’d to a higher level and subsequently remained unresponsive to refining IDs. This would cause IDs to keep piling up without the observation ever becoming research grade. In this case, frustrated identifiers check “No, it’s as good as can be” to kick the observation out of the Needs ID pool.
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There’s one other common use of “No, it’s as good as can be” that sounds like it does not apply to your situation, but I’ll include it here for completeness.
The last common use of “No, it’s as good as can be” is when an observer has created an observation using photos of multiple species. The iNaturalist definition of an observation requires it contain only one species. However, new users especially often don’t know that, and instead create one observation per location, using a large pool of photos showing a mixture of organisms. The polite thing to do is to ask the observer to split the photos up into separate observations (I provide the link to my own tutorial on how to do that) but many times the observer either can’t be bothered, or they’ve gone inactive entirely. In those cases, identifiers put a high level ID that encompasses all the organisms, and then check “No, it’s as good as can be” to make the observation go casual grade.
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I will check that box with some moth species Complexes. Once I agree, and there is no possibility that it will ever get to species (dissection of genitalia, etc) I’ll send it to research grade to get it off the Unknown books.
Oh, and @aparrot1 Welcome to the Forum!
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I just use it for the Gray Tree Frog Complex and trout lilies.
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I tend to tick it when you need a microscope to ID species: no one’s going to take a photo of a male fly’s genitalia to confirm species later, for example, so I click the box when it’s down to genus and I’m certain a species ID is not possible.
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Is there a protocol for using it with photos with are too blurry/far away/missing a key ID angle or detail? i.e. A photo that just shows a silhouette of a flying gull. I can tell you it’s a gull but a better picture would be needed to ID to species.
Basically, is that button reserved for cases where species-level determinations aren’t possible because of the organism, or can it be used when species-level determinations aren’t possible because of the photo?
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I had not thought about that. I’ve come across my share of photos that I think can’t be identified, but I have not checked off that box. Should a Noctuid that is nearly impossible to ID further because of photo quality come off the Unknown ‘books’. I would be interested to hear what others think about it.
EDIT Welcome to the Forum @mydadguyfieri!
Thanks @arboretum_amy for your thorough and helpful answer to my question. Your Tutorial is very good–clear and concise.
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An important thing to note here that seems to get forgotten is that it’s for the Community Taxon, not the Leading ID. So it’s important to only check that box after the Community Taxon has reached the ID level which cannot be improved. If you think it can’t be IDed past genus-level but you are the only one who has IDed it to genus, then by checking the box you remove it from the ID pool and others will not have a chance to confirm and refine the Community Taxon, so it’s important to wait until someone else has confirmed!
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Yes that was a big problem for me; when I first started identifying I didn’t know the community taxon was not the name displayed big across the top of the page. Took me months to realize.
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Good question. I think sometimes I am unrealistically optimistic about other people’s ID skills. For example, if I personally cannot ID that flower way off in the distance of the photo, I’m still tempted to believe someone who knows that plant or that location really well could do it. Honestly though that’s a stretch and probably not great for data quality purposes.
That being said, I’ve also seen photos so utterly bad that I’ve marked “Evidence of organism? No” because I couldn’t even guess a kingdom to put it in.
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I have learnt that birders can ID from pictures where my own skills are limited to … here is a bird …
It doesn’t take long for birders to get to species / subspecies.
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I agree with this. In regards to image quality, I will only check the box if I know there is a particular character that you need to see to definitively ID the observation, and the image quality is not sufficient to see it. I never check the box just because “the image quality is so bad that I’m sure no one can ID this”, because it’s surprising what people can ID
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Of course it is used that way most of the time, just take in consideration that taxa higher than genus will get casual if you mark them so.
You can’t id a ton of observations past Larus sp., no ornithologist will id it as Caspian or Herring from a tiny gull figure from a phone pic, so surely bird obs are often marked as impossible to id further.
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True. To toot my own horn, I take pride in being able to identify poor images of Noctuid moths, at least to subfamily or genus. I have, however, run across some images that are so beaten up or badly photographed that I don’t even try. I’ve never marked them as impossible to ID because more experienced folks may see things I don’t.
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