I’ve been doing a lot of identifications lately. It strikes me that this is the normal for iNaturalist: someone makes an observation and they guess a species, probably with computer vision, the guess is wrong a significant percentage of the time. After someone corrects the ID, the observer either …

On the whole the CV system is surprisingly accurate, but it is also heavily biased toward areas and taxa where there are lots of observations. Once you’re out of those areas or taxa the accuracy can fall quickly. That said, yeah, there is a weird aspect of hostility toward the CV system and iNat i…

I encountered a similar bizarre situation on a facebook group for fungi ID. Someone posted a pic saying the iNat CV suggested it was X, but they wanted to double check. Three people all confirmed that yes, the CV was exactly right, but then went on to also say they didn’t like iNat because of its “H…

I tend to agree with an identification on a post of mine if the person identifying is a top identifier of that taxa. Is that bad practice?

Some top identifiers may misclick and accidentally choose the wrong option from the dropdown menu, I saw it happen three or four times. People occasionally make mistakes, it’s just what we do :) Many experts would like to get a second expert opinion. You can do what you want, but I would agree wit…

I dont think the initial guessing is a problem, but the baseless agreeing is because it leads to a lot of “research grade” observations which in fact only have one serious identification. In my opinion, the “agree” button is just too convenient. Do we even need it?

A really cool example of how the CV has improved over time. When I first joined iNat ~3 years ago, there were extremely few (if any at all, there may have been zero) native Australian marine shelled molluscs suggested/suggested correctly by the CV. All the options were always morphologically-similar…

The CV can identify shapes, so that a red leaf often are identified as a certain unrelated red fruited plant. It cannot distinguish between a plant leaf and a insect wing with the same shape. It cannot count legs to distinguish between 6 legged insects and 8 legged spiders. It also cannot distinguis…

[image] robertarcher397: It cannot count legs to distinguish between 6 legged insects and 8 legged spiders. It also cannot distinguish between opposite leaves and alternative leaves. As far as I understand, the CV can definitely differentiate between these things; just as a single leaf is a t…

This is not correct. The 100 photos with branchlets simply will not allow an experienced person to see if it is opposite or not, 100 times. Not all branches are nicely spread out (as in a herbarium specimen). If familiar with that species I may be able to recognise that. The CV is basing the ID on t…

Rampant guessing of IDs

General

thebeachcomber July 9, 2021, 7:28am 13

see the mega-discussion at https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/changes-to-the-agree-button-functionality-and-addition-of-markdown-in-comments-and-id-remarks/14566

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Rampant guessing of IDs

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