After I have made an identification to species and someone else later can only add an ID to genus level without selecting an explicit disagreement, they are effectively agreeing with my identification to genus level. For some reason I am getting notifications for this even though I have opted out of Identifications that agree with mine. It would be helpful to not receive these notifications in this circumstance because it makes it appear there is an explicit disagreement on my dashboard, when In reality there is no issue to resolve.
you might have to provide some examples for folks to be able to troubleshoot this effectively.
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âConfirmingâ in this context means âexactly matchesâ, so there isnât a bug here.
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âBy âbugâ we mean that something is not working the way it is intended to.â
â Confirming IDâs
If you turn this off, you will no longer be notified about IDs that agree with yours.â
Iâm still getting notifications of IDs that agree with mine, so itâs a bug or maybe the wording needs changed.
Do you have specific examples of observations that you received notifications for?
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/33035079
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/97045871
Those are a couple I have received notifications for, but it happens quite often. With the amount of notifications I get, it would be useful to eliminate these ones that agree with my identifications and donât warrant me having to take a second look. So if not technically a bug maybe this would be better off a feature request.
I think @bouteloua is correct: As I understand it, when someone adds a generic ID that differs with your species ID, whether they explicitly disagree or offer it as an âI donât know butâŚâ, that generic ID is viewed as a disagreement with your species, so you get notified.
One thing Iâm curious about that may be related: When a genus-level ID is offered, is the subsequent green/orange âPotential Disagreementâ window based on the current community ID or the OPâs or someone elses species ID? Iâve got to assume it is based on the current community ID, otherwise it would be chaotic.
I guess thatâs the point I am trying to make. Why is it being treated as a disagreement when in reality it is an agreement? The notifications should be programmed to not send these notifications
Iâd say itâs working as designed. The settings says âconfirming identificationsâ and in both of the examples you gave, someone else didnât add an ID that confirmed yours. Youâll also get notified if someone adds a subspecies ID that is a child of your IDâs taxon. It errs on the side of âan ID that doesnât exactly match mine may be informative and is worth taking a look at.â
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Getting a notification if the person offers a subspecies ID makes sense, because then I could review the observation and decide if there is enough information to take the ID further. The others do not make sense. The examples I gave do show users adding IDs that âconfirmedâ mine, for example I added a Viburnum setigerum ID and later someone came along and added a dicot ID. That is confirming to dicot that they agree with my identification.
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I realize that the two examples I gave before involved mavericks, so maybe that added some layer of complexity to the issue. I just wanted to try one last example as I may not be explaining myself adequately.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/232391775
I give an initial ID of Silphium integrifolium var. integrifolium, then someone comes along and adds an ID of just Silphium integrifolium. The user then would have been faced with a prompt asking them if they disagree with my finer identification, and they must have chosen no. As a result, my observation had become research grade - yet I still got a notification for the identification they made, even though there was no disagreement.
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I think this is where you disagree with what seems to be consensus here :D
It might sound like hair splitting, but that doesnât mean they âagree with your identificationâ.
It might mean they are only able to ID this species to dicot.
Or it could mean they donât think anyone can ID what youâve so far shown more specifically than dicot, but thereâs also no smoking gun feature they can see which says itâs not the species you chose to warrant an explicit disagreement.
The latter case all hinges on expertise, if someone more expert than me adds an ID that says they canât be more specific than some higher taxon thatâs probably something to check and/or discuss.
The case of only going as far as dicot probably doesnât make this point well, but I regularly learn of things we canât be as sure about as Iâd originally thought or hoped.
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Yes, I find this to be the case the majority of the time which is fine but I donât think I should have to receive a notification as the person usually is not in disagreement. Based on the description of the opt out of confirming ids, I wouldnât have expected to get a notification.
In my opinion, if enough evidence / lack of evidence to trigger an explicit disagreement cannot be found, then there is no disagreement. I say that as a rule I have kinda made for myself as an identifier. I do think commentary in this situation can be helpful though, which would send its own notification.
In this case a disagreement should be chosen, and a notification would make sense. If there is not an option for a disagreement, then I personally add commentary explaining the situation, which sends a notification.
That shows as - display ID up top - at your var.
But the CID sits at sp.
Not âdisagreementâ as such, but still holding the CID back at sp not var.
Iâm totally in agreement with this aspect. If/when I add a higher ID, I take a moment to explain why. Itâs usually something as simple as, âThere are similar cryptic species in this group,â or âI canât see important confirming field marks in this photo,â or âI havenât studied this particular genus in detail (yet).â
But if they havenât confirmed an ID as specific as yours, then that isnât agreement either, hence the two options given to distinguish why a higher level ID was provided.
c.f. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/inaturalist-wording-for-potential-disagreement-promotes-fist-fights
I agree that discussing it is a healthy next step if the reason theyâve done what they did isnât obvious to you, but in my experience a lot of the most knowledgeable identifiers will simply do this without a comment, but be very happy to explain in further detail to anyone with a genuine interest in understanding more.
Thereâs pros and cons to both those ways of doing this - but if you tell all those people to paste a boilerplate explanation every time they do this to an observation, then youâre just going to have âexcessive repetitive comments from people who âagreeâ with youâ flooding your notifications instead :D