Thanks for the suggestion. I tried an export last night for the largest project, but it looks too data-intensive; I still don’t have the email. The grouped data exist, but I can’t see past the first page of 550 species.
Just Excel. This is not my field, but Shannon’s index is a simple calculation.
Looking again at the umbrella project, I think the easiest way to stop rewarding “junk” uploads, with no need for an alternative index, is to stop showing the number of observations per project on the summary page. Show the number of species and the number of observers (*), and list the projects in alphabetical order with no online (#) ability to sort them. Show the total observations (along with species, observers and identifiers) only for the umbrella CNC. Give the observation number only on each individual project page. Optionally, on the project page, also show the previous year’s numbers for species and observers, allowing the year-on-year comparison suggested by @ItsMeLucy in a different thread. But don’t give the prolific uploaders of low-quality observations any summary number that rewards their efforts: don’t let them sort or scroll to see: We won!
(*) If the goal is to engage more people and record more biodiversity, these are the measures that matter.
(#) It would still be possible to copy the table and sort in Excel if someone really wants to compare summary outcomes between projects.
Taxa list for San Antonio, Texas CNC 2026
102,674 Observations; 4,793 Species
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wykhuh/cnc_analysis/refs/heads/main/processed_data/San_Antonio_cnc_2026.csv
Taxa list for Taranaki, New Zealand CNC 2026.
4,647 Observations; 1,272 Species
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wykhuh/cnc_analysis/refs/heads/main/processed_data/Taranaki_cnc_2026.csv
Thanks! I’ll play with those and some randomised numbers and come back in a day or two.
Taking the CSV files for Taranaki, NZ, and San Antonio, Texas, kindly provided by @wy_bio as a basis, I calculated Shannon’s diversity index (sum across all taxa of -p times ln p, where p is the fraction of observations in that taxon) for CNC observations identified to species. San Antonio has 85833 observations of 4375 species; Taranaki has 3613 observations of 1089 species. For simplicity, I didn’t attempt to include subspecies.
San Antonio has a Shannon’s index of 7.00; Taranaki has a Shannon’s index of 6.55. If you take individual values for each phylum with at least two species recorded (i.e. a non-zero index) and sum the values, the sum across phyla is 35.99 for San Antonio and 42.60 for Taranaki, not that it is correct to sum these values.
Going back to original intent of the thread, the question is whether extinguishing bad behaviour (mass upload of junk observations) is most effectively achieved by “ignoring” the behaviour (not showing summary statistics that reflect junk observations) or by positive reinforcement of better behaviour (showing summary statistics that reflect targeted outcomes, such as more users or a broader range of observation types). I am open to arguments in either direction, but this year’s outcomes seem to show that stating “it isn’t a competition” while displaying competition-type metrics hasn’t reduced the bad behaviour.
The files are available in the folder below. I used pivot tables in Excel but copied some values across to summary tables. Errors are entirely possible.
I’m trying to find positive ways to cut back on exactly the kind of behaviour you complain about in the CNC. It floors me that you redirect the thread to find new things to complain about.
In both formal and informal education, there is a concept of “No stupid questions.” Educators realize if you make people feel stupid for asking questions, then you can alienate people and stop them from learning.
Citizen science projects like iNaturalist are a form of informal education. Labeling observations that are made in good faith as “junk observations” is as harmful as labeling questions as “stupid questions”. People can learn and get better over time, but if you call their initial activities “stupid” or “junk” , you will drive people away.
Never mind. My usual link to Newbies in Africa has exploded by over 1K overnight.
The operative phrase here is “made in good faith.” Unfortunately, that is not always the case and it is the bad faith behavior that needs to be discouraged. I don’t have any problem with someone who posts an observation of a cactus in a flowerpot because, to their way of thinking, a cactus is a ‘wild’ plant as compared to a rose bush. No problem either with someone who posts two dozen observations of Oliva undatella because they are unaware that this species has many different color variants. Those people should be given some tips and encouraged to continue.
This is in very specific reference to the mass uploads in the CNC. I make no apologies for saying that observations recorded by walking around a lake taking a single fuzzy photo of a plant every foot or so and uploading each as an Unknown are junk. It seems reasonable to conclude that the aim was to “win” the observation count in the CNC. Reducing the load on identifiers from this kind of observation appears worth doing. At a minimum, any display of projects by observation count should be made much more difficult. I would predict that in the second year of such a practice, the problematic behaviour would be greatly reduced.