Research Collaboration: Method for supporting non-experts to label in 'unpopular' taxa

[tiwane]

@gerrit_oehm

I do not remember what kind of welcome message(s) you get when you start (maybe someone could help me out here), but the moment after people sign up could be a key moment to give a little introduction on how things work in Inaturalist, not only how to upload observations, but also that people will often “only” briefly verify or falsify an observation, with no or only a few words added as explanation, but usually these people are approachable and very happy to answer questions.

This might help a bit, but I suspect the vast majority of people don’t read introductory emails - I have to admit that I usually don’t read them myself.

[tisli]

@tiwane

I suspect the vast majority of people don’t read introductory emails

And how about introductory ‘splashes’ in apps?

[tiwane]

yeah, that’s another option. i personally tend to dismiss those quickly but I think they can more effective than an email, espeically if you have to dismiss them to move forward. they should only appear once, though, IMO.

[cthawley]

I like this idea as well, especially since I think that one at the end could be a link to open iNat in their mobile browser that says something like “many additional features are available via the web portal”. Many app users seem initially unaware of the website and that it can do a lot more than the apps can.

[ralfmuschall]

@gerrit_oehm

The very legitimate concern of @dianastuder that people should make “two and a half times as many IDs as they make observations” in order to reduce the pile of unidentified specimens

Is a factor of 2.5 really sufficient? I feel that I am the prototype of a non-expert (about 200 obs, 9k coarse IDs). Most of my IDs look like “Fungi”, “Coleoptera”, “Brassicaceae” etc. (I’m getting better over time, but very slowly). I’m happy when I’m able to say Anthophila or even Chelidonium majus. But that means every observation needs about 3-4 people looking at it before we arrive at the species.

[jasonhernandez74]

@ralfmuschall

Most of my IDs look like “Fungi”, “Coleoptera”, “Brassicaceae” etc. (I’m getting better over time, but very slowly).

And yet when I look at your identifications, the fourth one down is a correct, species-level ID of Garlic Mustard.

[ralfmuschall]

That’s one of the few species I know (I grow that in my garden, the other one (Chelidonium majus) is a weed there with no similar species in Europe (Stylophorum exists in America)).

[gerrit_oehm]

I think with a lot of these things you can only say “it depends” maybe 2.5 is a good rule of thumb for the average Inaturalist user, taking into consideration the diversity of people using inaturalist - on my own observations I think a relatively high percentage is on species/ genus level to start with, when I upload them, so they do not need too many identifications to become research-grade - 1 for the one that were identified to species and for the ones that were identified to genus level 2 correct species identifications or only one on genus level, if that is as good as it can get… ; When I make identifications it is quite relative, too - when I identify my group of interest, Syrphids, I try to make species-level ID’s (at least for imagines of “my” region). I know that there is a small group of experts that makes mainly Syrphid-ID’s that I can link and it will get a research grade ID quickly and this group also serves as a great control mechanism to reduce false-identifications. This is a quite efficient way to identify… When I identify old unknowns (always something fun to do), it is a different story - some unknown Insects only go down on another very general taxon, such as order or higher, which requires many additional identifications… But for some groups there are the right experts out there (or my identifictaions are on a more precise level) and it only needs a few more people to identify… But generally looking at old unknowns is not too efficient (in getting an species-level ID in a few clicks), still something worthwile to do in my opinion. New unknowns (or observations on a very general taxon level) are a good practice-field for new identifyers - but the old ones rather contain difficult traces, cocoons, eggs, insect parts, wrong identifications and other riddles that are not too great for starters (with the exeption of marking completely blurry observations as “as good as it can be”, this more people could do).

[DianaStuder]

@gerrit_oehm

sociolect

sociolect (had to look that up) we converse in iNatese where ‘English’ words mean what iNat says they do. Cultivated, is simply Not Wild, and not actually ‘cultivated’ as such.

Brief helpful comments about the (right, or wrong I guess) IDs are helpful to whoever lands on that obs in future. Regardless of earlier engagers, from the observer thru interim identifiers who have gone, dormant.

@ralfmuschall that Coleoptera ID is useful. It gets seen, the ID moves. The 4 identifiers nicely balances the ones where the observer starts with their own ID, and only needs one more.