Request Documentation when research grade is changed back to needs ID

Give it time–now that it’s back in the “Needs ID” pool more identifiers may see it. Your observation may eventually have a very interesting back-and-forth discussion on it as to which organism it is. I have learned more from those observations than from observations that just have two people agreeing and a Research Grade designation.

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I hope RG means something because it is being used for our state’s biodiversity survey as an aide to to identification and inclusion in state records…

Scientists always should check all the records they use (if possible).

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Research Grade means something, but not necessarily what people think. Many researchers seem to consider “research grade” to mean “data ready to dump into my analyses.” It doesn’t. It means the observations have been through a basic screening. RG observations should be treated as raw material. At least all anomalies and preferably all of the records should be checked.

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RE Research Grade. I wonder if there is another term or a qualifier than could be used on iNaturalist then. The term “Research Grade” implies that an observation can be used for some kind of documentation.

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You may be interested in reading this topic on the forum: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/rename-research-grade-discussion-and-polls/590 . It looks like the topic is still open, too, if you want to add your ideas for terms there.

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I think its one of those things like ‘military grade’ where the term is accurate but doesn’t necessarily mean what people think it means. To me ‘research grade’ means ‘good enough to be ingested into a research project for analysis’, which could then involve statistics, corrections, disputes, data quality assessments, etc not ‘good enough that it could be published as correct in a peer reviewed paper with no further checks’, which is absurd and (should) never happen.

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To me, it doesn’t really mean “good enough to be ingested into a research project for analysis.” It does mean here are lots of observations you can have for free and they have been minimally screened. Best to check them BEFORE the analysis, or you’ll just have to run it again later.

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Not if it is in the middle of a set of many pages. I actually was thinking of starting a thread on that: new observations, by default, are the most likely to be seen. I can set my filters to show me the oldest observations first. But if an observation is, say, on page 500 of 1000, it will take a very long time to get there, no matter whether I use default or reverse. I believe this is one of the main reasons some observations languish at “needs ID” for so long.

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Personally I like to sort by random, or oldest. Either way, neglected observations will be addressed.

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Date updated is a good sort for finding old obs with new IDs.

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I always explain when disagreeing with one person, since they may have chosen the iNat default and have no idea why I would disagree.
Now I will also make sure I explain when multiple people have given ids.

The top CV suggestion (“We’re pretty sure”) I see are never lower than genus level. Someone posted in another thread that they have 90+ percent accuracy.

Often, people pick a species from the “Visually Similar / Seen Nearby” list. For example, this Penstemon species currently has a misidentification rate of 19% (similar species tab).

Yes, sometimes the “we’re pretty sure” genus or family is wrong. I see enough observations where they choose a species that I end up correcting and don’t feel it’s always worth time to explain why it was wrong. To bring it back to the subject of the thread, it’s not uncommon that someone else has confirmed the ID, so it’s already at research grade before a disagreeing ID is added.

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Did you mean species?

Where?

cv can suggest down to species.

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Sorry to hear that. I, too, don’t always write anything when I disagree with research grade IDs. Similarly to what others have said, it is because I am correcting many at once and it will slow me down to write little notes, especially when they need to be slightly different in every situation. Very few people (maybe one in 50 or one in 100?) write back to ask about the reasoning. I attempt to answer every question.

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I do find that writing a comment significantly increases the likelihood they change their old ID to the new one, which has both pros and cons… For myself I usually prefer to change to a higher level non-disagreeing ID when corrected unless it was obviously a mistake

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That’s true that the comments make other people more likely to change. I’m thinking mostly about correcting mistakes in plant IDs, where the prior species ID is definitely incorrect, and I am able to suggest the correct species-level ID.

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I’m glad of that. Sometimes, I ask a question, with @, and get no reply.

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