I’m always keen for learning opportunities, especially with plants/areas I am not familiar with but encounter often. Of course it comes down to time, work for me is flat out at the moment, but for the Euphorbias I would find time :)
1 Like
I think any action that is followed up by an assessment of it’s effectiveness (with any appropriate adjustment to the process) is as perfect an approach as one can hope for!
A few of the really great identifiers on BugGuide have already made their way over here and I love to see them working on both sites, though I can only imagine how much work they are putting in. My one worry is that I left BG because it got particularly gatekeeper-y several years ago and I’d really hate to see iNat go down that same road. But unlike BG iNat welcomes all photos not just the best of the litter after a certain point.
5 Likes
You just hit the nail on the head why I stopped using BugGuide - the day I got a message telling me ‘this species is already documented in Ontario therefore your record is of no value, so I deleted it’. Not even the ‘photo frass’ (users who dont know what frass is can look it up) issue, just, ‘you add no value’
4 Likes
Hi all,
It just occurred to me that perhaps folks are right in awarding badges in some manner for helping with identifications. At first I was not in favor of what I see as “ramifying” the process, but I think my mind is changing because I’ve noticed how nice it is to get the recognition on this forum in terms of “Earned Member”, “Earned Reader”, “Earned Enthusiast”. Just a thought that maybe this can be applied to identifiers in some way.
6 Likes
Yes, I sort of like the idea of having “levels” of identifier or something with a little badge, rather than just a count that encourages competition. That way it emphasizes the service aspect.
3 Likes
I am not a qualified identifier (yet) but I went to the Identify page just to see what the experience is like if I WERE an actual identifier. I have to say it would be very frustrating due to the poor image quality of most photos.
If the goal is to get the most species identified in the most places for research purposes, and :
- you have limited qualified Identifiers
- you have lots of interested users
- you want to recruit new identifiers
then I would recommend you make the most of those identifiers that you do have AND find a way to leverage all those interested users who are not yet comfortable doing IDs.
If average users could rate photo quality as Good,Better, Best as a part of the Identify page (without actually ID’ng the subject) then the few identifiers we have could filter on Best or Better images and make better use of their time. Potential new identifiers would find a much more satisfying experience rather than wading through pages of unidentifiable images.
I can certainly distinguish between a clearly usable photo and a likely very poor photo. I’d be happy to help in that manner until I am actually better qualified to do IDs myself. Food for thought.
1 Like
That may not be as straightforward a proposition as you think. It’s not difficult for a trained observer to distinguish an American robin from an European starling with the help of an underexposed, blurry picture where 3/4 of the bird is covered by vegetation. What constitutes a “good” photograph has little to do with whether it is useful for high-confidence species ID.
The current system is pretty good. You can jump in with both feet and make IDs at the level you’re comfortable. Birds, plants, etc. You’ll be wrong sometimes, and you’ll get corrected by other folks, but you’ll get better with time, and more confident with identifying at a more detailed level.
A lot of what makes iNaturalist good is that novice observers with a cellphone can engage with more experienced users. That engagement would be compromised if you kept the experienced users away from the novices by actively demoting technically poor photographs.
15 Likes
I think the points you make are entirely valid. I am often surprised by what others see in my own photos that I cannot see.
In my suggestion note that Identifiers who ARE willing to view all photos could certainly still do so. Identifiers we so badly need who may NOT be willing to do that could filter the photos and feel like they maximizing the use of their time. Even less skilled identifiers (who may need a near perfect image to make an ID) would benefit.
Sometimes it requires ID knowledge to even be able to tell the “quality” of a photo. An extremely “low-quality” Sciurus photo in Boston is still identifiable – Sciurus carolinensis is the only option. The exact same photo in Texas would be left at genus because it could also be Sciurus niger. You need that identification knowledge to be able to mark the photo identifiable or not.
5 Likes
Any global mechanism that cordons off some users’ observations based on perceived quality runs counter to the philosophy of iNaturalist (as I perceive it).
This doesn’t describe anybody who I’ve had occasion to interact with – online or in person. That’s just my own experience, of course.
1 Like
Lot’s of good ideas here. And I’m glad @janetwright brought it up.
While I share everyone’s goal of getting more people to engage with iNaturalist as identifiers, I want to push back a little on the suggestion that the number of observations is “overwhelming” the system. I think we should all temper our expectations on how much of a difference adding more identifiers is going to make.
Only a few comments have actually included objective data on identification rates–especially @pisum’s great summary of ID status across groups. It shows that the identification rates for most taxa are actually pretty good. 95% of birds identified!!! That’s incredible. I don’t think it’s realistic to imagine that number going up much. In fact, I would wager that that number will go down as more bird observations are added from the tropics where guidebooks are less complete and there are more cryptic species that are not identifiable from photos.
While much lower identification rates for plants, fungi and invertebrates reflect a lack of expert identifiers to some extent, do you really think they’ll ever get up to 95% or even 80% research grade? Two much bigger factors are 1) many of the observations are not identifiable to species, genus (or even family or higher) from the photos submitted and 2) they could be identifiable but keys or descriptions are not widely available.
My response is technology and education. On the technology side, iNaturalist could build algorithms that take into account image quality (focus, lighting, color) and size of the subject in the image and then use these features to determine the probability that the identifications can be further refined. I think an “identifiability” or “image quality” score based on these features could be useful for directing identifiers to the observations that are most likely to be “under-identified” (to coin a term). This system could also give observers some feedback on their observations and help them choose better images to submit. This would just be an assistance system and it could be continually refined and tweaked, I’m not suggesting it count against research grade or anything (so don’t get upset!).
On the side of education, a worthy use of the photos and data from iNaturalist would be to build better field guides and keys and make them accessible for free online to everyone. Many of the taxa on iNaturalist have rarely been photographed in the field and so we are just beginning to understand how we can identify them from photos. This should be an exciting opportunity for mycologists, botanists and entomologists (and others). That said, I’m a little bit puzzled that iNaturalist stopped developing its “guides” feature. If super-identifiers are feeling overwhelmed by the number of observations on here, my suggestion is that they try making some online guides (either on iNaturalist or offsite) to teach the rest of us how they make identifications. That would help a lot.
To paraphrase: give a man a fish identification, he has one fish identified, teach a man to identify fish, he identifies fish for a lifetime!
9 Likes
I totally agree with your philosophy here. I love the democracy of the iNaturalist system and I don’t want to discourage new users by downgrading their observations. But I believe that machine learning algorithms could be trained to judge the “identifiability of images” and that this could be part of the system.
You are certainly correct that blurry aesthetically unappealing images of birds can be identified (just take a look at my observations!). However this is something that a machine learning algorithm could take into account on a taxa by taxa basis. Many photos of plants and insects are just far too zoomed out or out of focus to be identified. Sorting through these can be exhausting and I think it discourages some identifiers which is a bad thing for everyone, including the observers. I’m not suggesting we remove these observations or downgrade them in any way–but it would be nice to have (an optional) filter that could highlight the observations that are most likely to be further refined.
I have been thinking about making a short video explaining how to use both the website and the app in French. I think there are many French-speaking naturalists, naturalist groups/associations, retired taxonomists, who are inhibited by not having a simple, readily available French tutorial.
-
Do you think this would help recruit identifiers?
-
Do I need any permission from iNaturalist?
5 Likes
I’ve been an avid iNat user for several years now and it absolutely transformed how I look at my yard, my neighborhood, and every outdoor experience I have. I notice so much more life in all forms that is present and what is going on in small and large places. Moreover, I’ve become even much more stalwart in my desire to protect nature in all forms. This is a long-winded beginning to what iNat means to me and how I came to get started and why we need to relax on the quality issues.
I learned about iNat through a Natural History Museum event and it was described as way to help research scientists learn more about the life around us, especially in urban landscapes. The idea was that through this citizen science platform, researchers would get a look at more life forms in public and private lands (spaces they don’t have access to) and, more importantly, don’t have funding and manpower to monitor. Hey, I can have fun and contribute to science!! Count me in!
So, what I’m trying to point out is that everyone should keep in mind that iNat should be seen as simply another potential tool to help researchers and one that has the power to truly engender more people feeling protective of our natural environment. Let’s not make it into a platform where all that matters is high quality research grade data points that nitpicks an observation if it doesn’t meet certain criteria. I know I’ve learned a lot about the life around me and made a lot of friends and acquaintances with researchers all over because of my activity here and in the field using iNat.
Just look around and see the observations, both good and poor quality, that can be used to show how life forms are expanding, retreating, recovering, becoming invasive, new introduced species, etc. Ones which may not have been discovered for years, if ever, had it not been for the eager backyard and weekend hiker observers.
These same observers who start off like me, could be enticed into learning better ID skills and find it rewarding as well, because we may feel like we are helping researchers learn more about the world around us and, by default, help protect it.
Again, from my perspective, iNat is just one extra boon to researchers providing some basic, (hopefully) verifiable data for their work, but it shouldn’t be expected that observers and identifiers are all competent in research protocol, because if that becomes the expectations, I fear people would be turned off.
Thanks for letting me share my opinion.
20 Likes
Absolutely spot on!
I feel genuinely privileged to share in the experiences of my fellow iNatters, and it upsets me greatly to see harsh criticism of observations. I chuckle to myself everytime someone thanks me for an ID, or for a tip, or a solution to a problem, because I can’t help thinking it should be me thanking them.
I find it helps to think of myself on a walk in the bush, and I am joined by everyone in iNat. We can stop and really “see” what is around us, and share knowledge and stories about those things. When I imagine myself on that walk with other iNatters (seeing their observations), I think about what I say and do, because I want to be invited on the next trip.
11 Likes
I totally agree! iNaturalist is a great tool to bridge the gap between expert knowledge (which has been historically shared very narrowly) and public understanding. In universities I hear a lot of taxonomic experts bemoan the lack of public funding and attention their fields receive. Well, here’s their chance to connect with an enthusiastic interested audience that wants to learn!
Thanks for sharing your experience @scubabruin!
8 Likes
Markhagg, although you got some pushback on this idea of triaging the photos before identifiers work on them, thanks for a creative suggestion that made us think.
One thing an identifier can do with a poor photo is check “mark as reviewed” for an observation without trying to ID it. That removes it from that identifier’s ID parade. The issue I have with doing that is that then I have no way of going back and looking at those I “marked as reviewed” if I want to give them further scrutiny. Admin people, is there a way to retrieve those if I want to?
4 Likes
I believe it’s a filter you can check on the search filter menu. Here’s a screenshot below, see the “Reviewed” button toward the lower center part:
2 Likes
Hey thanks!