I don’t believe that matters in my opinion.
I will give my example. I am not a scientist, and I won’t use the data for academic work. So I simply use my comfortable internet username. I don’t know if it makes sense.
I actually went in the opposite direction. I initially used my first initial and last name (still my Forum username) to seem more legitimate and because I was hoping it would help people who I met IRL to find my iNat account. However people often spell my last name wrong so people would mess up trying to tag me. And people often would meet my mom and then see me on iNaturalist and end up getting us confused. Probably doesn’t help that she has a name tag that she wears when leading groups. I have my real name as my display name so people can still search my name find my account.
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There’s also the ah, philosophical question of what your ‘real’ name is. I was born in China. The name my parents gave me is in Chinese. The name on my legal documents is not written the same way, because I live in America and American ID cards do not use Hanzi. I am transgender, so the name that I actually tell everyone to call me by is not the name on my driver’s license. Then, I have a number of internet screennames that friends who have known me for almost a decade call me by. One of them is my old RuneScape display name, even though I have not even played RuneScape for 4 years. Are any of these names more ‘real’ than any other?
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I don’t care if a person uses a real name or pseudonym. Where I would question is if the fanciful name is less than moderately serious. For example, I_Like_Big_Bugs carries more weight than I_Like_Big_Butts.
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This sums up my feelings on the topic tbh. What makes my username less “real” just because I primarily use it online? There are plenty of people who only know me by this name.
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I don’t think using a nickname should be a huge obstacle for the usefulness of your data. I do not use my real name up front, but several of my observations have been used in the past anyways.. usually the person interested in using it just contacts me and asks for how to credit me.. I do give my name then, but in most cases it would even still be fine if I would persist on my nickname.
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I agree, a name adds no value other than contact information.
I remember that iNat explicitly asked me to use my real name, when I singed up, tho. At first, I considered not to ended up doing it anyways.
I was quite confused when I saw made up usernames shortly after but never thought about it again.
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I wonder if anyone has taken the username Ilikebigbugsandicannotlie
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I tell people to pick whatever user name they want but to use some variation of their real name as display name since that is the one that gets cited in GBIF.
And maybe some folks are ok being cited as I_like_Big_Bugs but I’m stuffy enough to want my real name attached to any citations.
That said, I’ve heard the horror stories about stalkers so I totally understand the desire to remain anonymous with a nym.
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I remember at least one iNatter who left, after cycling thru a few names - due to stalking - also of their family. Left a friendly gap here.
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A lot if times I have to download the original photos from the observations to see them at a better resolution (I delete them weekly).
So far all of them show the real name as the copyright owner.
When photos are loaded to ALA, they display the copyright name.
(I just checked: there are pseudonyms as authors there as well)
It is a compromise between privacy and ownership of intellectual property.
I aggregate observation data from several sources. The person who did this work before me only used iNat observations from users who provided their real names (either in their profiles or in response to private email/message). He was originally from the UK. As the number of iNat observations increased parabolically, we eventually abandoned this requirement.
“Real” names are useful for correlating observations across platforms and eliminating duplicates. Where an iNat user has not put their real name in their profile, I “settle” for using their userlogin in our database. Whenever one of these observers changes their userlogin, I have to go back and change the attribution on all their old observations. It’s certainly doable, but it’s a bit of a pain. Every year, I have to do this for a number of observers. If an observer does this more than a few of times, I blacklist them. Typically, the sort of person who changes their userlogin repeatedly isn’t a serious observer so there’s no real loss.
Where I run into problems is when the same observer uses a different pseudonym on multiple platforms. It doesn’t take me long to figure it out, but I’m left wondering which pseudonym I should adopt as canonical.
I know that folks have concerns about real names being used, but there are lots of iNat users who put real names in their iNat profiles. That seems to be a reasonable compromise, and it certainly makes life easier for someone like me. It should also be noted that there are lots of people who’s userlogin is essentially the concatenation of their first and last names, it seems silly to not put their real name in their profile.
And yeah, I hate having to look at “joke” user logins. I suppose I could replace the more egregious ones with the corresponding numeric userIDs.
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UK user here… and very interested in the interface between iNat and our long-standing national recording schemes. I fully endorse what @josscarr said above. And I would point out that even in the UK it is the display name not the username that is relevant, because that is what gets passed on to the national recorders. Do what you like.
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Even when asked how I would like to be credited for one of my iNat observations, I tell them to use my username. It makes it easier to google than my real name when I am curious if/when any have been used in research.
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I’ve long been skeptical of pseudonyms but I get why some would want to use them. But when someone adds an ID to one of my observations and I don’t recognize them, I look at their profile. If the username is a pseudonym - especially if it’s a silly one – and there is no info in their profile, I do wonder if this person is a reliable IDer.
Also, for me, I like being identifiable as a real person and that also keeps me from the temptation of being rude or obnoxious such as on this forum. There are those who like to hide behind a pseudonym and be less than polite on a forum.
Among iNatters I’ve met in person, I have trouble remembering their real names if they use a pseudonym for their observations.
But, basically, I selected my iNat username from the way my name appears on the many museum specimens I collected in years past. Initials followed by surname. Seemed simple and straightforward.
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A couple of times I’ve been asked by UK recorders / people who are doing things with UK databases what my name is because they can’t do anything without it / they want to know who exactly it is they’re dealing with. I’m happy to provide it then, in private, where it won’t be seen by anyone - I just don’t want it on the open internet (and I don’t do Facebook either, which is bloody annoying sometimes given how much a lot of the “UK naturalist” scene is on there).
Does actually make me wonder though, how do the UK databases handle name changes? It’s not exactly a rare event - surely people have come out as transgender, or gotten married and taken their partner’s name, or just changed it because they like it better after submitting records!
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I look at their obs - what and where are they interested. I look at their IDs - again what and where. Your name is ‘real’ - who cares, anyone can choose to use a ‘real’ name, and say I’m the professor of … at … Social media 101 - just because your virtual friend sounds real, does not mean any detail is factual.
If you choose a name, please make it one we can remember. Botswana bugs is great - I have both the what and the where I want, in an easy to remember name. Tick tick tick.
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This is a great compromise as well. Someone trying to correlate your museum specimens with observations you are currently posting on iNat can probably put two and two together.
I know that some will dismiss this as a purely hypothetical scenario. Well, about 1 hr ago I sent an email to a lep expert I know asking if he has started to post photos of his old specimens on iNat. I can see his name on some of the labels in the photos. But he may have traded specimens with someone else back in the day (this used to happen a lot - I’ve seen very similar labels on specimens in the National Collection). I thought he was on iNat, but I don’t recognize the username of the person posting these specimen photos. There is no “real” name in the user’s profile, but the first name included in the “made up” username is a match.
Why does it matter? Well, these observations are likely already in the database I manage (reported long ago by other means). I matched up one to confirm my suspicion (same species, date, location, collector). If I know for certain that all these specimens are from the same collector (including those where the labels are NOT legible in the iNat photos), I can safely match them up with what’s in our database and cross reference them all. This will corroborate the old records in our database (and allows me to correct any mistakes - data entry errors are not unusual in historical records).
It works the other way as well. A few months ago a different “old timer” started posting photos of his old specimens on iNat. In this case, he put his real name openly in his profile. Each time he posted a specimen of a rare/uncommon species, I checked the location/date against the records we already had in the database (again, reported by other means). In several cases, I was able to point out data entry errors he made when entering the observations on iNat (date and/or location).
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Thank you Diana ! Ill stick to Botswanabugs. Its a unique name I’m sure. There may be hundreds of Tony Benns ( past, present and future), including one who was a great leftie UK politician, who I am not.
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So it gets better…
He responded that they are his observations, in the course of our back and forth, I asked him about the fact that the locations he gave for the observations are not where I would have placed them, based on the location written on the specimen labels. Back in those days, people typically wrote/typed the name of a nearby town on the specimen label (in this case, the town of “Perth Road”). He explained that when he was working in this area back in the 1970’s, any observations made along the stretch of a particular road between the University’s biology station and the town were given the town name (he also thinks that at that time, the road may also have been called “Perth Road”, but it isn’t called that now). There are a large number of specimens in the National Collection that were collected by one of his associates that all have a location of “Perth Road”. These have all been assigned coordinates in the middle of the town. Although they have a coordinate uncertainty of 1-2km (depending on who assigned the coordinates), that isn’t enough to encompass the ‘true’ observation locations. I’m hoping this observer can put me in touch with his associate (who is still alive apparently, but living down in the US), but even if I don’t get any further information, I will update the coordinates of these observations with the midpoint of the stretch of road that was specified, with a coordinate uncertainty figure that will encompass the entire stretch of road. It’s not a great improvement (because the new location is imprecise), but it’s better than nothing. For any observations of uncommon/localized species, the previous location would have been obviously wrong to a knowledgeable person, and misleading to someone who didn’t know better. The new location should make more sense (when the coordinate uncertainty is taken into account).
A minor victory, but I’ll take what I can get.
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