I may be an odd voice here as I was actually recruited by another curator myself (I’d previously helped several other curators on wasp classification and taxon flags beforehand, so it was always an intended avenue). I’ve also since been rather active afterward throughout curator duties (cleaning up aspects of hymenopteran taxonomy, aspects of copyright, dealing with mass-duplicated* and otherwise problematic common names, and am one of the taxon curators for Mollusca, for instance). I would also say that, through invertebrate taxa, we really don’t have as much of a curator saturation as may be felt elsewhere.
several included 40 or even 100+ species using the same common name, many added by rather active curators from non-English platforms
My own thought is a bit split on curator recruitment as a result. I don’t recognize, at all, about 100 of the curators with 0 obvious curation actions. I do recognize, though, that a few in the low-to-no activity group seem to have been brought in from some of the other platforms in the network. This long list of relatively inactive curators is something I’d thought about myself as well. The other side is that another handful of them are recognized taxonomists who may become active or who may be active in advising on taxonomy (or doing other things that just don’t generate much of a tally). My question here would be whether this inactive group actually came primarily from curators promoting other users or some other cause(s).
One potential compromise between methods would be for curators to recommend others to staff after going through a bit of a checklist (probably including diplomatic and approachable personality). Another would be similar to some other platforms where, regardless of recruiter, the candidate would be sent a system message with an overview of expectations by staff and an acceptance link (or request for acceptance message) upon agreement to guidelines. The latter may be a bit intensive to work out but would address the “surprise curator” concerns.
Better training of curators wouldn’t hurt. I don’t know what there is available now, but when I was made a curator (by another curator), it was very much a learn as you go. I honestly don’t know if there were links to how-to’s or anything, I was just let loose. I figured most of the taxonomy stuff out which was all I cared about.
After getting not so politely put in my place by someone for adding a taxon that apparently wasn’t a taxon according to whatever authoritative body, then again for banning someone who was barely using the website appropriately (in my view) and was just as much being an intentional obtuse troll, I pretty much stopped using the curator powers all together. I’m happy to give it up if there are too many.
Maybe my example is a good reason why curators shouldn’t be allowed to appoint other curators.
There might be a possibility for a best of both worlds approach here. Like, maybe a user would need three existing curators to agree before iNat staff approve their curator-ship. That would prevent most potential issues from the current system, but also avoid the other issues @tiwane mentioned (too much workload for staff or “authoritarian” overtones).
In order to become a curator I had to send a request to an admin and was required to answer some questions and pass a “mini test”. so I’ve always thought it weird that I now have the power to grant these features to another user. It seems to me that most of the proposed solutions would end up adding more work to the admin staff but I agree with the idea of having senior curators who can make curators. These people should npt only be knowledgeable about the site but at least some of them should speak more than one language, and say so in their profile. This would help with attracting curators from the non-English speaking communities.
Also, I’m not sure why any of this should be seen as authoritarian. You don’t need to be a curator to enjoy and take advantage of the site
Really great conversation, folks, thank you so much.
@bouteloua pretty much summed it up, but I think it’s also important to note that with the current system it can be hard to know exactly if some malicious behavior occurred because it could have been edited back quickly (I won’t go into some possibilities here).
To be clear, there isn’t a huge number of people asking to be curators, but iNat is growing and we also don’t have clear data on how many people were made curators by other curators. I do like @jdmore’s idea, though.
Like @bouteloua said, there have definitely been some anecdotal occurrences, but to me this is more about preventing possible future abuses, especially as iNaturalist grows.
I’ve written a functional spec about this for the team to review, and some have. I’d like to eventually move in this direction.
For sure, and perhaps it should be organized a bit better, like our Getting Started page. I should also note that anyone could make a tutorial here on the forum (hmm, perhaps we can have a Curator Tutorials subcategory in the Curators categoryl…). I personally find Discourse a lot better to use than the iNat wiki pages for including screenshots, etc.
I do not think that a site curator should be allowed to make another user a curator because I could see some curator creating many unexperienced, unqualified curators. I think that there should be just a few high-ranking officials, mainly @tiwane, @kueda, @loarie and others to make that call.
As someone who based on their level of activity of curating would possibly be considered for such a ‘senior curator’ role, I would still say no, promotion to curator should solely be in the hands of site employees.
This setup would force staff to explain why certain are and others will not be made senior. And it forces those who may get the role to explain why they are willing to promote some but not others.
What if some inexperienced curator invites all of their even more inexperienced friends to become curator? We would have 50,000 curators in a month. Please leave it to Tony and Scott and Ken-ichi.
this category is for iNat curators?
I did not ask to be a curator.
Nor was I invited.
But, here I am.
I am happy to engage in the discussion - but would much prefer that we would get a formal notification ‘you are now a curator’ By way of a heads up warning. (I feel as if someone left the door unlocked, and I am trespassing)
So as of yesterday, curators can no longer make another user a curator. We’ve seen too many examples of people making inexperienced users curators, people be made curators without even asking to be one, and users who have lost their curator status due to community guideline violations be immediately made curators again by their friends. Unfortunately it’s just not a tenable situation. Going forward, only iNaturalist staff and network site admins can make someone a curator.
We’re finalizing a curator application page to streamline the process and make clear to everyone what curators can and cannot do, as well as who should apply to be a curator. That should be out soon.
I’m a curator who has no academic credentials.I stopped doing taxonomy stuff when the frameworks were introduced, and have since confined myself to housekeeping duties like flagging spammers.
I will resign from curation the very INSTANT there is some sort of “iNat volunteer” category. But I can do it today if you want.
I think that so long as you are responsible and try to do some amount of curatorial / moderator tasks, you are a great Curator and I’d like you to stick around. (…it’s better than a lot of us…)
I’d like the volunteerism category to get more attention, because the qualified curators have far too much on their collective plate! And there are lots of enthusiastic iNat users who could step into the lesser roles
I think there should be a “lesser curator” role of sorts that curators can promote people to. Admittedly right now there’s not a whole lot curators can do besides making taxa edits, pages, marking user profiles and such. In some ways it isn’t enough, either, for a proper “moderator” role. But it’s more than most people should have access to as well.
There have been similar suggestions before. I agree with you more or less. What I’d prefer is a semiformal mentoring system and much, much better documentation of best practices. Onboarding, in other words.