I use the “green button” a lot to support the ID at a higher level when I can’t definitively say anything about the finer ID. ie if I know something is a Gelechiid moth, someone suggested Chionodes formosella as an ID, I don’t know if that’s right or not, so I add an ID of “Gelechiidae” so that if someone else comes along and suggests some alternate ID in a completely different family, I’ll have preemptively disagreed with what they suggest, as I’m sure of the family level.
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maybe the reason we’re thinking different things is because it might depend on what level the ancestor disagreement occurred at?
suppose you had ID X, then ancestor disagreement A, then ID Y.
when A = the nearest common ancestor of X and Y, then A does not seem to disagree with Y even if X has not been retracted:
when A is the ancestor of the nearest common ancestor of X and Y, then A does seem to disagree with both Y and X:
without having multiple accounts for testing, i’m going to have to think a bit about how to find cases that i can push one way or the other… but i’ll have to do that later when i have more time.
The level doesn’t make a difference per se. The ancestor disagreement is applied to taxa that are ancestors of the taxon being disagreed with and all descendants of those taxa. I was being somewhat imprecise when I said that it disagrees with everything below that level – if the new ID is for a taxon that does not have any shared ancestors with the original ID (i.e., it is on a different branch of the taxonomic tree that starts directly below the disagreeing ID), the disagreement will not be applied to this new ID.
(In practice, really high-level disagreements (Plantae, Insectae) often end up being a disagreement with everything lower because most of the time the original ID was broadly in the right order/class.)
In your examples, Panicoideae is a disagreement with Andropogoneae because that is an ancestor of Sorghastrum – it is saying not Sorghastrum and not any of its ancestors before Panicoideae. Panicoideae ends up being a disagreement with Andropogon because Andropogon is also in Andropogoneae. If the new ID had been something in Paniceae instead, there would be no conflict, because Paniceae is not an ancestor of Sorghastrum.
But when the disagreeing ID is Andropogoneae, it is only disagreeing with ancestors up to Sorghinae. Because Andropogon is in Andropogoninae and not Sorghinae, the disagreement is not considered to apply.
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prior to the change in quesiton, wouldn’t this kind of disagreement have disagreed with all descendants of Andropogoneae?
The disagreement works the same way as it did before the change – if the original ID is not withdrawn.
The only difference now is that if the original ID is withdrawn, the disagreement only continues to apply to the taxon of the original ID, and not any of that taxon’s ancestors.
hmmm… if a branch disagreement has always started at the nearest descendant of the ancestor ID in that line rather than at the ancestor ID itself, then i guess i’ve misunderstood how branch disagreements work this whole time.
it doesn’t make sense to me why when making the latest change they wouldn’t have just replaced branch disagreements with leading disagreements altogether or why they would have started disagreeing at that nearest descendant instead of at the ancestor ID itself, but it does look like that’s what it’s doing now.
Not sure if this is a correct way to think about it for me, but I consider the green button “safer” as I’m not doing a hard disagreement if I really don’t know that the lower taxon proposed is correct or not. Yellow (caution!) is a hard disagreement with the lower taxon. The yellow button has more repercussions to getting a better ID if I’m not correct that the lower ID is wrong.
Edit: it’s like traffic signals.
Green — you can proceed with little to no risk of making an error.
Yellow/orange — caution, be sure you want to make this decision.
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correct.
In this example if you choose the green one, it means that you do not know if it is or is not that genus, but you can only identify it to family.
If you choose the orange one it means that you are certain it is not that genus, but it is a member of that family.
Green means you don’t know if it is this genus or not.
Orange means you know it is not this genus.
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In my opinion, the green button is helpful because the evidence provided might be enough to get a decent identification, it’s just that whoever is identifying it might not be experienced enough to id it. For example, here’s a badly photographed observation by me (because I have quite a lot of those) :
It’s a shirka, but the photo might be too blurry for some people to identify it. If you’re sure it’s a bird, but think that someone more knowledgable than you can further identify it, then you select the green option. If you are 100% sure no one else can identify it further because the evidence is bad, then you select the orange option.
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Which is green and which is orange? They are two different shades to me.
I find the wording confusing. I think it would be better like this:
-
I know it’s in the genus Ara, but I can’t tell what species.
-
I know it’s in the genus Ara, and I can tell it’s not Ara militaris.
That makes it clear what you’re disagreeing with. It may need more disagreeing buttons if there are other IDs that your ID may disagree with.
As far as I remember, this dialog box has come up for me only once, even though I think I’ve IDed something as a higher taxon more than once. It should be clear how to bring up the disagreement dialog.
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This is when the change was made
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/change-to-ancestor-disagreement-implementation/49276
@That_Bug_Guy
Ah, yes. Did not think of that.
i was looking at this for some time now and I could not find a use for it, but this does make sense.
@phma
The upper choice is green (I do not know …), the lower one is orange (No, but it is …).
Actually I thought it was like you wrote at the beginning of my iNat journey, but if you read the wording carefully, it actually is not;
The options you are given now are:
-
I do not know if there is enough evidence if this is Ara militaris (soft disagree, it implies there might be evidence, but you do not know it)
-
I know there is not enough evidence this is Ara militaris (hard disagree)
What you are suggesting is splitting the second option into two:
-
There is enough evidence to say this is NOT Ara militaris (still hard disagree, like before)
-
There is enough evidence this is Ara, but not enough to say which species
(an even harder disagree, this is current hard disagree + clicking the this is as good as it can be in QA).
The big difference is the current green option (I do not know …) does nothing to the CID, just announces you do not know what you are looking at*
- which has been explained to me is not without uses
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So I understood it correctly,
and it was strange to me because it looked like it did nothing and was just there for people who had nothing to add to discussion, but still wanted to participate; and it was kind of annoying because I always chose the orange one anyway.
So basically it does not do much; BUT
other users have pointed out situations where it can be useful, both in cases it can add something to discussion, as well that sometimes engagement can be enough for certain purposes.
So I guess this is this explained for me; and while it will still be slightly annoying, I at least know it is not for nothing.
This is exactly the useage case that bothers me.
If you are not sure, why say anything?
As this option only comes up if someone already made a finer ID; I do not think it makes sense to make higher level ID, beacause you are not ceratin if it is or it is not.
I do not see the benefit in doing so (although it is also not detrimental, so i guess it does not matter).
It has been explained to me that sometimes in some cases it is useful (for engagement, subsp. ID etc., in difficult groups of invertebrates).
I do not care either way, and do not wish to change it.
it is just something I was windering about, as it is slightly annoying.
(a bit off topic but birders are absolutely insane with IDs, I got an identification on a poorly visible blue streak on a blurry, fully zoomed in picture of Alcedo atthis)
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… Actually, that’s a good point. That’s a very good point. I can’t really think for a counter argument, so for now I just agree with you. If I think of anything, I’ll add it here.
I think it can be a useful expression of doubt or uncertainty in situations where a hard disagree is too definitive of a response. For example, I am the top identifier for North American Rallus rails. Sometimes I am certain that a photo doesn’t contain the necessary features to be diagnostic, so I bump it back with a hard disagree and a note (e.g., “this photo is too far away to tell if this is a Clapper Rail or a Virginia Rail”). Other times I may be somewhat doubtful that the photo shows the necessary diagnostic features, but I recognize that I am not the only one with knowledge of the species. So I might do a soft disagree and a note (e.g., “I agree the proportions look good for Virginia Rail, but their appears to be some gray streaking on the back which matches better for a Clapper. Maybe just an effect of the light”).
I will usually provide a note with the first scenario, but I will always provide a note with the second scenario. As an observer, a top identifier or someone I know who is knowledgeable in a taxon adding a soft disagree to an observation would still be useful in that it would get me thinking, but of course a note that tells me more of their thought process is better.
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Well, the prompt is asking you if there is sufficient evidence;
which should be a yes/no question; so if you, as an expert, cannot decide, there is not sufficient ecidence.
If some other expert doisagrees, that’s a (wellcome) discussion.
In cases like this (and in taxa I know well), I still do a hard disagree (in a perhaps vain assumption if I cannot see the species right, other experts also cannot), if someone else comes along and differs; i’Il ask why, if they did not provide reasoning, and then we can have a discussion and hopefully both of us learn something?
i think this way is better to prevent dubious records gaining RG, but otherwise the result is probably the same (helpful discussion).
but at the same time, this is just some redundancy, and that never hurt anyone.
Exactly. I see the green button as a sort of “preemptive” disagreement with any further suggestions outside that broad taxa. If I’m sure it’s a Warbler, I can add Parulidae as an ID without disagreeing or agreeing with the specific Warbler suggested. This way, a subsequent ID of Vireo has my vote against it. I’ve seen cases where 3 or 4 people “green-buttoned” a family ID on something with a species suggested, and then someone comes in and suggests an off-the-wall ID in some other family, and their ID goes straight to Maverick. If everyone had just ignored the observation because they aren’t expert enough to say whether the species is right or not, a single wrong ID could tank the CID and send it way back to “Perching Birds”.
That being said, adding a broad ID like “Birds” or “Animals” does seem pretty useless on an observation where there’s no question the subject is a bird and there’s already a species suggested, as there’s not really a scenario where that ID will be useful.
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It is hard (maybe impossible from photos) to distinguish Pinus flexilis from Pinus albicaulis from photos without cones in the area where I add most IDs. When I disagree on observations without cones, I
- add the ID Quinquefoliae (most specific ID I can confirm),
- leave a comment as to why, and
- choose green.
Many observers who see my ID update their ID to agree with mine or withdraw. Some people add comments to support their species selection.
Aside from spreading knowledge, this is reducing the chance that observations without sufficient support reach research grade and impact range maps. If someone else comes along and questions the species ID, they may feel more confident in adding a hard disagree if someone else looked and also didn’t see cones in the observation.
The other scenario where I choose green is if someone has added a subspecies ID to a Needs ID observation and I can move it toward research grade with a species level ID.
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I disagree. A “I don’t know” is perfectly acceptable even for experts. The vast majority of the time, I am certain that a photo doesn’t show the necessary diagnostic characteristics. But sometimes I’m uncertain if sufficient evidence is present. In such cases, I think it’s way better to add a soft disagree because someone may come along and say, “well I do feel like feature x is diagnostic, but swampster is an expert so I’m sure he would have noticed that if I’m right.”
A soft disagree doesn’t preclude this.
This should only be true if someone doesn’t follow up with their notifications; you can always bump an observation back later if you feel like the reasoning behind the finer ID hasn’t be thoroughly explained. And if you don’t follow up with your notifications, all the more reason to be sparing in your hard disagrees, because a misguided disagree may prevent an observation from ever reaching RG for an obscure taxa.
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