There are also some quite strange situations in which I don’t even know what to do. The observation is identified to the level of the species, but I only see “something” in the photo. Doesn’t even allow me to understand approximately whether a plant or an animal was meant. For example (sorry, Karim!): https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/141555290. Should I downgrade this to “Life”? Or am I just not seeing or understanding something?
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My guess? I think he meant Sweet Potato but the software suggested a similarly named but utterly different species and in a hurry he did not notice.
I went through his Observations and found it on like page 5, so he is uploading a massive amount of older observations.
(I also am not sure about this: would it be Casual? It looks like it was taken at a market, along with some at the same time, some of which are, some of which are not, which also bolsters the “just sweet potato” theory.)
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… but actually, first one IDed ist the one still pending 
. Found and revised the other one only after
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Oh, sorry! @dianastuder said the “first ever obs” so when I saw that the oldest one by some years was indeed RG, I assumed that would be the first ever observation.
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Thank you! I think you’re right.
There is a button saying “agree” but not, as far as I can see, one saying “disagree” … or am I I missing something?
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There’s a button saying “agree” but to disagree you have to enter something (make an ID). Of course, you can enter an ID to agree, too.
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Example - a few months ago I recorded a flower. I knew the genus but was not sure about species. Earlier today someone added a species - same genus as I had (good) but wildly wrong as their contribution was purple while my original was yellow, a colour which their suggestion never appears with their species … bit of a difference. I wanted to have a button expressing disagreement and to revert back to genus level but all I could do was enter a text comment. Reversion/disagree was not available.
The equivalent to that on a specific observation would be (on the web page) to click “Reject?” to the right of the “Community Taxon” header. This turns off community ID for that specific observation, which means your identification will stay active no matter what other IDs may get added, but the observation can’t reach “Research Grade.”
You can restore community ID if and when sufficient overriding IDs have accumulated that you like. Or, you can just leave community ID on and let the process take it’s course.
This is probably a bit counter-intuitive, but you can disagree with the species ID by re-entering your genus ID; there will be a pop-up that asks you whether you are disagreeing with the more specific ID or not.
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We are missing a button to say I disagree with …
You have to put up a different ID, to disagree.
Then we all trip over Ancestor Disagreement and struggle to get the ID to consensus.
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Am I the only one who just heard an evil MUWAHAHAHA?
Which is as it should be. If it was up to me, the only way to bump Taraxacum officinale back to Section Taraxacum, would be to suggest which microspecies you think it is instead.
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Actually, I know of people who had an entire lab with microscopes, PCR machine etc. set up in their garage or basement when we were under stay-at-home orders and told we couldn’t come to campus to do research to meet thesis and grant deadlines. The pandemic changed a lot of things.
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Just add genus id again, with disagreement.
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I will stop doing that. Thanks.
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I think this has already been reiterated several times and the iNat policy is not going to change, but I also wanted to bring up another reason against prohibiting revised lower-level IDs. Many times when I make a batch upload (as in a current project where I am going through thousands of specimens), I will upload with a high-level ID even if I feel reasonably certain that it belongs to a particular genus/species. I will then review the photo in greater detail and key it out if necessary before adding a more specific ID. Otherwise, it would take several days to upload a couple hundred observations, leading to a massive backlog. Sometimes an observation I initially IDed at a higher level will be reviewed by an IDer and assigned to genus/species. After verifying myself, I will make an agreeing ID (usually with an explanatory note justifying my agreement).
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I understand what your concern is. I do add my ID after a poster gives an ID, but only under specific circumstances. Often iNat does not give a specific suggestion, but an experienced person will give a specific ID. I do NOT automatically ID it too, but rather look at the references dealing with that person’s ID. If I find that my image meets the info supplied by the identifier and to my satisfaction is a correct ID, I will add my own ID, because now I have been educated by the more experienced person.
To me it is analogous to being an a birding trip (which I have lead for decades) and the leader says "There’s a … " Does this mean that none of the members of the group should add the bird to their lists, even though I describe why is is that species, and not something else? I think not.
None-the-less, if the second ID is added with no further consideration by the original poster, we do have a problem. How does one know if it is a legitimate "yes - I now see why it is … " rather than a rubber stamp with no further research or input. So yes, I do agree there is a problem, because probably we cannot know which are and are not good later IDs.
I agree with your thought process and explanation. I just think that the solution is to engage the person adding the revised ID, as a change to iNat policy would have numerous sequelae. I think it’s best to encourage people to add explanations to their refined IDs, and I have sometimes added a comment asking if they can provide their justification (and added a disagreeing broader ID if there is no/insufficient response). I have also done so when an observer automatically agrees with a seemingly unjustified specific ID. I think that through the comment system, the community ID function, and (judicious) tagging, the platform as it currently exists has the tools necessary to reverse most incorrect research grade IDs. This is, of course, contingent on the right people seeing incorrectly IDed RG observations, but I think that is an inherent trade-off of citizen science platforms with the goals and design of iNat.
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@tony-futcher welcome to the iNat Forum!
You might be interested in some past discussion about trying to re-name the “Agree” button. If we could find a label that better reflects the intent of that button (that being: a convenient short-cut for adding one’s own ID to an observation), that might go a long way toward discouraging the “rubber-stamp” usages that currently happen too much.
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When worrying about observers misusing the “Agree” button, remember that those of us who do a lot of identifications use that button, too! It makes our work go faster than if we had to type in the name. I like the efficiency.
Do we identifiers misuse the “Agree” button? I can’t speak for others, but I do agree to wrong identifications sometimes. However, I think I’d type in an incorrect agreeing identification if that’s how the system operated. So it’s not the button’s fault.
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