As a still new Naturalist I lean heavily into the CV suggestions, but unless I really know the species outright, I will go off off and evaluate the suggestions using a guide to try and ensure my identification is on point. I still get it wrong sometimes, but usually someone will correct me if I’m wrong.
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If “blindly agreeing”, and its cousin “soliciting agreements from peers”, is a symptom of fetishising the goal of getting an observation to RG, then it seems we need to start with painting a better picture of what RG should mean and why it’s perfectly ok for some observations to never arrive at that status and not some sort of shameful failure to be embarrassed or sad about.
Or maybe we need some intermediate status between NeedsID and RG, like ItsProbablyThis. Though simply increasing the number of ID’s needed for RG again opens up the question of incentivising sock puppets and peer group back patting.
My own obs have a mix of responses to dissenting IDs. sometimes they help me see things that I clearly missed, sometimes they educate me the genus is a mess, sometimes they are a correction for a wild Best Guess that I figure is probably more correct than where I started, but that I still can’t confirm with much more confidence than I had in my first guess.
In the latter case, I’ve often just withdrawn rather than following suite - though I have been pondering that lately because if the user I trusted to lead consensus on that was to remove their account and all their ID’s for any reason, then those would go from what’s probably a good guess straight back to Life, and I’d have no history to check to restore that guess for those obs again.
In those cases, it’s usually hovering at a higher taxon than species anyway, so me confirming it wouldn’t make it RG - but I don’t have an option less than confirming to say “I think that person is probably more correct than I was, but I don’t have the expertise to say they are correct”.
I guess I could put something like that in a note or a comment - but it still seems like the sort of thing where it would be nice to also have a confidence score along with an ID, so I can say something like “My best guess is X, but I’m only 60% sure that’s correct …” - and maybe then RG could be some number of confidence points instead of just 2/3 identifiers?
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When I started observing, in my own garden, I often left things at low levels. Beetles. Bees. Winged Insect. Identifiers would come in and bring it down to species or genus.
Now, some years later, I regularly upload at species or genus. Should I be barred from going back to my older Observations, equipped with my new skillset, and providing a new identification, “Ah, now I can confidently identify these same insects to genus/species?”
This is an issue because I live in one of those areas with less activity and numerous insects (I observe everything but it is mostly insects) were previously strangers to me but now are well familiar.
I once stated my preference of uploading Observations just to let them live their best lives, and was sort of told I was a negligent Observer not to be monitoring them and refining them as I was able, checking them regularly to see if they were perhaps not able to be refined further (and perhaps should even be deleted as unworthy).
Please consider a different proposal, perhaps? The mixed messaging I often encounter here and the “I want to implement a system for some but not for all” moments I come across are disheartening.
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If we all had the habit of justifying our IDs (providing references / links whenever possible) - at least for not-so-common species - this wouldn’t be an issue.
Much more problematic is the fact that some users have 2nd accounts for validating their IDs - which is against the rules but not always detected. I’ve seen a few cases.
Then there are close friends / couples who blindly validate each other’s IDs…
We know we can’t trust IDs just because they reached RG. It’s bad, but that’s how it is.
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This would cause problems for observations that get IDed by DNA. Typically someone posts an observation, a sample is sent off for DNA sequencing, and later the person who handled the DNA sequencing posts the DNA sequence and ID to iNaturalist. The original observer can then use the DNA sequence to verify the ID and agree (or disagree) with the other person. This is actually a common workflow on iNaturalist, mostly for organizations that are doing biodiversity surveys.
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This is true. I am sending off specimens for DNA sequencing later today!
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You ignore the downside of your purist approach to IDs. When the top expert in the world on certain taxa comes onto iNat and makes ID’s that others can’t confirm, you propose that those ID’s should never be research grade? That would make a lot of the best and most valuable data on iNat second class. In any event, it is just common sense that an expert’s ID should count for more than Joe or Jane Doe just following computer vision.
As for your other points:
– I measure whether someone is an expert by looking at the credentials in their bio, and my standards are fairly high. Pretty straightforward.
– I never “blindly agree” to anything or suggested others do so. I check the credentials and make sure the ID makes sense based on what I know about the subject.
– I guess you’ve never heard of “groupthink” which is very common on iNat? I think multiple ID misidentifications are fairly common among mis-ID’s.
Do you have proof of that? If so you need to report it.
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This can be automated by running from time to time a software (…to be developed) on your computer. If “systematically” is important, then to be specified in more detail.
Could you elaborate when it happens? How often does this happen?
If you are certain that your own observation is this species, why didn’t you put the ID at rank species when you uploaded the observation? Why did you wait for someone else to put this ID, then agree with it?
It would make it RG if you check “Yes” “No” in the DQA “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?”.
The feature request proposed would not prevent you from refining IDs.
This could be done without an “Agree” button, with the observer typing in the name of the taxon determined according to his interpretation of the DNA sequence.
Nothing “purist” about my approach. There is nothing that excludes an observation from becoming RG even if there is only one expert on a particular taxon, because there is nothing to prevent other users, including the observer, from learning the reason for the ID. This may include asking the expert about their reasons or looking up the literature on the topic. If one person has knowledge, even if they are the only person in the world who has studied that taxon, this knowledge will be documented somewhere and can therefore be communicated to others.
You suggested that a user’s ID should count for more merely because they are an expert. A user’s authority alone is not enough to confirm an ID – the evidence in the observation is what matters. You made absolutely no mention of assessing this in your previous posts. Just that an expert should be trusted because they are an expert and because you believe that the observation will never become RG otherwise.
Unless a user writes the reason for their ID, there is no way to know whether they were following the CV, blindly agreeing to some other user’s ID, consulting some random page on the internet, selecting the wrong option from the drop-down menu when typing an ID, or IDing based on their knowledge; we don’t know whether they looked at all photos and read the observer’s notes or just looked at the thumbnail in “identify”. A user’s credentials alone don’t tell us what knowledge went into any given ID that they make. How do you propose that an ID should “count more” if we don’t know how it was made?
iNat’s ID system is based on the principle of one user = one vote. It has been criticized plenty of times by people who believe that expert’s IDs should count for more. I see it as equalizing and important to iNat’s mission as a citizen science project. Because it allows laypeople to participate on an equal footing with credentialled scientists and encourages sharing of knowledge. Many IDers on iNat did not start out with expertise, but have acquired it through their activities on iNat. This would not happen if experts’ IDs were given more weight from the start.
I’ve seen plenty of cases where an expert has made a wrong ID that I’m sure looks quite plausible (“make sense”) to non-expert observers. For taxa that require special expertise, there may be multiple similar species that look very similar to the untrained eye. Unless you know something about how to ID the species in question (i.e., what the distinguishing characteristics are), you are not actually assessing the accuracy of the ID and you are merely agreeing with the expert because they are an expert.
“Groupthink” does not suggest multiple knowledgeable people independently IDing an observation – quite the contrary. It is precisely the same problem as observers agreeing to an ID that they do not know enough to confirm. The fact that “groupthink” happens is not a reason to blindly confirm an expert’s ID oneself.
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Actually, as I read it (I may be misunderstanding the intent), the feature request as proposed in the first post would prevent you from doing precisely this (i.e., it proposes preventing the observer from entering a refined ID that is the same as one suggested by someone else; it does not specify how the ID is entered):
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for @ItsMeLucy
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I do sometimes have the temptation to just agree with it after seven other people confirmed my bird is a silly spotted night thrush and I don’t want to receive any more notifications, so I wish there were a way to deal with those cases.
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Thank you, I had seen (and liked) that.
I am sorry if my post was extraneous but I wanted to mention how deflating moments of mixed messaging and “a rule for thee not for me” were.
edit to add: I found the original thread wherein people wrote about tending to their own Observations, and quite a few people go back to their own Observations with new knowledge (nice to be able to take the burden off the Identifiers that way, when possible).
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Sometimes you need to update your ID, and should always be able to, to whatever other ID. Being banned from adding a specific ID to your observation forever sounds terrible, never mind being banned from adding all of them except the one you just added.
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As an IDer I find it frustrating when people immediately agree with an ID I’ve made, because I know that I make mistakes, and if each ID is not approached critically those mistakes become entrenched. I also think there is a lot of confusion with casual users about how you are supposed to interact with the site particularly with supporting IDs (treating the agree button like a Facebook like button, or trying to get observations to RG despite the fact that they really don’t have the evidence to be there)
That being said I frequently go through and improve my own IDs as I get more resources, more time, and more knowledge. I recently reviewed all of my own butterfly observations based on some new resources, and I would strongly object to any restriction on the types of IDs I could add to my observations.
All that said I would support removing the “Agree” button from observations I made. An observer shouldn’t be hugely inconvenienced by having to type the occasional ID revisions that they want to make, but it would cut off the avenue for agree button overuse on observers own observations.
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Because I may not have been completely certain of the species when uploaded, or had the time to research it then. After further research, if someone has already agreed with my conclusion, then I click “Agree”
I didn’t “wait for someone else to put this ID, then agree with it?”.How did you come to that conclusion ? I do not profess to know what is in someone else’s mind
My apologies to the readers of this post.
So be it and it be so shut this book and let me go
Tomas O’Crohan
I agree with you here. “Experts’ IDs should count for more because they are experts (more knowledgeable, experienced, etc.)” is an argument from authority that I don’t think iNat should ever stand for. If experts want to avoid the hassle of online identifications through iNat, there remains thousands, if not millions, of specimens to identify in collections around the globe.
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Alright, sorry, I withdraw that misleading question.
Interesting! We have been waiting for a too long time for more options for managing the notifications we receive (this need is confirmed, no debate about it, as far as I know). It’s remarkable that this lack in notification management is able to impact our vision of a new feature.
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