I appreciate the replies. I agree that there are ways to appreciate and connect and still stay true to the mission.
Recently, I went through about six months of Casual observations for my area. It was fairly satisfying. There were a lot of trees, which is good for me, since I’m knowledgeable about the locally adapted horticultural trees, so I was able to offer a number of IDs and confirmations.
I also got wise to paying attention to the number of IDs (shown on the Identify gallery page) before deciding to open an observation. Sequoias and gingkos get a large number of IDs, but as you know, observations are not removed from the pool if they already have plenty of agreeing IDs. Looking at that number is roughly equivalent to removing the RG obs from the Needs Id pool.
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We need a new category for Not Wild but has Community Taxon.
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I think you can say how beautiful the plant is and yet also mark it “cultivated,” maybe even comment that you’re marking it cultivated. (If they’re newbies they won’t know how bad the implications of that are on iNaturalist.)
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As someone who often uploads observations of garden escapees and volunteers which are wild/naturally spread to the spot to, for example, record potential starts of invasions - and who unfortunately also happens to live somewhere where the GPS coordinates aren’t always reliable, and sometimes forgets to check whether the location is just right - I humbly ask that before marking observations cultivated, please please first make sure that the observation in question IS cultivated. When uploading a lot of observations, it gets really tedious re-voting them all back to wild. If there’s not enough data to go from in the pictures or text, maybe ask the observer before making the final judgement.
Personally I do try to make sure to write in each one what the habitat is like, to verbally confirm that no it’s not cultivated, and even how close the nearest assumed-cultivated occurrence is, if I am aware of it. Sometimes even this doesn’t help: people just look at the photo, don’t read the extra info (that also takes quite a bit of time from me to write with all the caveats), and downgrade immediately. This is especially likely to happen if there’s something in the background hinting towards a garden setting. One should keep in mind that that can be misleading. E.g. Scilla sp. might not be cultivated even if they are in a lawn, as lawn-nesting ants love spreading them. Spiraea, Aruncus and Syringa sp. spread by seeds especially within and adjacent to gardens - and this is also often how an invasive plant begins spreading. It’s not an instant invasive meltdown.
If I remember correct, iNat doesn’t recognise the concept of “nearby escapee = not actually wild”, which is popular in some purist/less invasion alarmist circles at least here in Finland. Because of this non-recognition, I would find it quite important to make sure you’re downgrading actual plantings and not their escapee brethren as well.
The phenomenon of people not reading the observation info and just slapping “cultivated” on them is frustrating enough that I have considered just starting to use a GPS and a notebook and uploading my escapee/feral plant observations directly to FINBIF (laji.fi) instead. So far I have decided against that as iNat doesn’t require me to type them down after coming back in from the field.
Just to clarify, I am absolutely not against collecting and maintaining good quality data. On the contrary, that is exactly what I’m trying to do. I’m just asking that the effort would be respected when it’s there. I’d really appreciate it if folks didn’t get too jaded to remember that sometimes those “garden plant observations” aren’t from cultivated individuals. I recognize that mostly the (real!) issue really is people just going on an observation spree in a flower bed or an arboretum. I sometimes mark observations as cultivated myself as well, if I have the time to browse iNat and find the mistakes, and I always do that for my own observations in the rare case where I realize on the spot or later that the individual actually must have been cultivated.
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You’re doing valuable work, @kaiuosma , as you know, documenting the beginnings of potential invasions. I hope you continue despite the frustrations.
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Kind of an edge case. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/218632357
I hate to mark this fish “Captive/cultivated” but it was stocked in a nearby pond and we can be sure it didn’t get itself to where it is (and doesn’t want to be there). Sigh.
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Well, the definition for that category is that humans intended it to be at that time and space - and I do not think that ‘up in the air in the talons of an osprey’ is where the fish was intended (or expected) to be 
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This is probably the most sensible/secure thing to do, for data points that somehow matter. You can’t ascertain that data you enter on iNaturalist won’t be “downgraded” “downvoted” “casualized” or whatever by Well-Meaning Community Vote in the long term, essentially hiding it.
Whether you also upload these data points to iNat is up to you, however if FINBIF exports its dataset to GBIF it may be wise to mark equivalent iNat observations as “do not export to GBIF” (e.g. by applying © to it), to prevent useless duplicates.
Thanks for doing that! Marking Taxodiums cultivated is one of the next things I plan on doing after I finish reviewing Ohio’s conifer observations.
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I tend to add an explicit note mentioning it is escaping. Otherwise I mark many observation as cultivated myself although I also often post observations of escaping plants. Soemtimes one even cannot be sure or the border is blurry. Some would call escaping even an individual just in the lawn few decimeters from the bed, I tend to require more for my observations, usually escaping the whole garden.
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Ah, I love garden projects! Here’s mine https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=206431&verifiable=any
Most of what I have in the project is natives (I have some ornamentals but I don’t really bother to track them) so I’m quite diligent about marking what was intentionally planted by me and what was a volunteer - I feel like which-is-which is pretty obvious to any local IDers, because most of the volunteers are fairly aggresive species in asteraceae that really like disturbed environments .
That said, I want to reiterate @kaiuosma’s point about not being too aggressive about marking something cultivated just because it is in a yard/garden environment. A big goal in my garden is to get to the point where I can let these plants go to seed and start spreading naturally with minimal input from me - if I start getting rattlesnake masters popping up that aren’t the original plant, I’m absolutely going to be marking them as not-cultivated and would be a little bit peeved if I had to go back and remove captive markers. Mind, I will 100% be noting in the observation if I do get any self-seeded second generations like this, so it hopefully won’t happen, but I’m sure there are people out there with volunteer garden plants that justifiably should not be marked captive
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Just a note that if the offspring are still in the garden/cultivated area itself, it is reasonable for people to mark them as cultivated. iNat’s help gives an example addressing this:
“garden plant that is reproducing on its own and spreading outside of the intended gardening area”
My tomatoes often reseed for the next year in my garden bed, but they are still cultivated/not wild - I intend for them to be there and cultivate by weeding, fertilizing, watering, etc.. I think this is pretty analogous to animals that reproduce naturally in zoos but which are still definitely not wild.
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Oh true. But my intention is to minimally cultivate parts of my yard, the difference between volunteers and intentionally planted is going to be… nebulous.
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Identifiers should never feel required to tag observation as captive/cultivated. They are making an essential contribution to iNaturalist and there are too few knowledgeable ID’ers w/ way too little time.
Asking ID’ers to mark cultivated/captive observations – as the title “Please mark observations cultivated while ID’ing” suggests – is different. That’s an excellent idea.
I also believe that the iNat Identification tab should provide a one-click means of inserting the Frequently Used Responses as comments when an ID’er makes a DQA downgrade. But the suggested response for not-wild observations should be improved to mention the reason for the rule. E.g., “Please mark all planted trees and plants as “cultivated/not wild.” This makes it easier for someone using iNaturalist records for research to distinguish which species are naturalized in your area. Thanks! [I marked this one for you.]”
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