I have a question regarding observations. I know that an observation is meant for a specific organism (or evidence thereof) as stated here: https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000169927-what-is-an-observation- but there is at least one classworth of students at the local unicersity using inat to post scene type pictures with “advice” to improve the area.
How exactly do I address it, I feel like just marking the DQA as a no single focus without a description Isn’t giving these students a chance to learn. Many of the observations are mutiple areas, or the areas around a “square” by the school buildings with no specific focus.
Does anyone have a preset text they use? Do I need to just mark the DQA and move on? Or message each student individually?
P.S. should this be moved over to the educators section?
It’s not just educators. A local environmental nonprofit did something similar a while ago.
When I come across such observations, I treat it as any other observation. If there are comments in the “Notes” section, I only pay attention if they would help with the ID, otherwise I assume those are notes that the observer wants there for their own purposes (something I do myself, e.g., adding collection reference numbers, etc.). If there is anything that can be taken as the target of the observation, I ID that. With no obvious target, I leave a comment to that effect and tag the observer. If the observer doesn’t reply in a month or two, then I vote “No” under Data Quality Assessment > Evidence related to a single subject. This gives the observer, as you put it, “a chance to learn.”
And yes, this is a slow process. It would not fit into the workflow of the power-identifiers on whom we all rely. But this might be a way that people like me who are not power-identifiers can help with data stewardship while also promoting learning on iNat. If that makes sense.
I was also wondering about that after I made the post. Typically I don’t use that DQA unless they are obviously seperate obs (12 pictures and 12 different plants or animals or a combination). I”ll have to go back through and see if I incorrectly used this DQA and fix them if I did.
I’ll write something up along this point. and see what I can do. Followup later isn’t always super successful from my end but it is worth a try.
Thank you, I hadn’t seen that page before. A different iNat help page says: “the observation doesn’t present evidence related to one subject (e.g. it has four photos of unrelated organisms. A photo showing habitat of the observation’s subject is OK.)” Which I read as: Multiple photos of multiple organisms is given as an example, but not as the definition. (If staff read this, they might want to clarify the text on the help page I just cited.) I’ll now change my practice – and fortunately I’ve very rarely used that DQA (maybe twice?) so not too much harm has been done.
I usually add a comment - “Is there a specific organism in this photo you are wanting to identify? iNaturalist is for observations of plants, animals, and other organisms. If you need some more help, be sure to check out the Getting Started page: http://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started and Frequently Asked Questions: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help ” It kind of hints that those aren’t really the types of observations that iNat is for.
We definitely need a DQA for landscape / scenery. Which would push the obs to Casual, out of the Needs ID queue (since we cannot ID). There are various projects for soil type, or vegetation type - deliberately useful to those observers - but not identifiable for iNat. Someone else can motivate for that feature request.
In these cases I’ll try to pick the most identifiable plant in the photo and if the best result is dicot for example I’ll write, unlikely to be idenifiable futher. If it’s a recent observation with commentary I’ll provide a more detailed responce but for old ones it may be best to select “No, it’s as good as it can be”
A related but different issue … I’ve always felt it would be useful to be able to separately annotate or tag individual photos associated with an observation. Quite often for fungi we need to see the associated plant, substrate, habitat and microscopy. These are valid additions to an observation but are not the target organism. They are often critical for identification but presumably mess with the CV. If they could be explicitly tagged, they could be excluded from training. In addition, they would add significantly to making sense of what each photo relates to, especially for microscopy.
I asked for this facility very early in the days of iNat but it was rejected. That was a bit of a diversion, sorry, but I was reminded about this on-going frustration.
Been in the queue to annotate individual photos for years! For my plants - when I ask for ‘pictures of fruit’ I get the whole catastrophe. Perhaps that leans on the plant-blind mindset that an animal is either an egg. Or a larva. Or an adult. Whereas a plant is often bud / flower / fruit and that is normal for plants. Show me what the fruit looks like, please.
Oh man, With my Fungi, lichen, mistletoe, or gall photos I always make a comment stating the order of the pictures because it may seem like there are unrelated photos. I’ve even fallen into missing that someone else did that and marked it as multiple obs, because there seemed to be a clear flower photo and then a broad landscape photo but I was corrected. I’m now much more conciencious about using the DQAs. I felt so rude, even if I wasn’t.