From some comments and discussions I’ve read, I have noticed that:
Some identifiers dislike being tagged, as it makes them feel like they are performing a robotic task.
Many observations, even of very common species, remain unidentified for years.
Some identifiers do not use or are unaware of the site’s “Identify” section.
The “Research Grade” rate is very low in many projects.
Certain groups, such as lichens, receive very few identifications.
What could be done to make identifying more appealing and to ensure that those contributing to identifications don’t feel like mere clerks or as if they are performing a robotic task?
Honestly I don’t think rewards for identifying would be the greatest idea, as it might lead to people adding ID’s to observations they aren’t actually knowledgeable on, just to farm rewards
I would say streamline the process of identifying would help. While identifying I guess half of the time is needed to click or tap to get to next action or observation.
In other words: I usually have a time frame for identifying. I would produce more results if I would waste less time in the process.
I don’t think added rewards for identifications would help for things like lichens. They get few identifications partly because there are few experts, but also because a lot of iNat observation photos are insufficient to ID them. A lot of species can’t be identified from a cell phone snapshot of a lichen on a tree. Many of them are very small, and most people don’t even know what details they should try to capture. The same is true for a lot of taxa.
Fixing the atrociously inefficient notifications system is all it would take for me to start identifying stuff again.
(Or if too complicated: implementing any identifier-friendly – rather than CV-friendly or observer-gamer-friendly – feature request, for that matter. I have a large list of those.)
I’m a fairly prolific identifier (closing in on 300,000 IDs for others) and I can think of a few things that slow me down in terms of making more IDs:
My slow internet. That’s not a problem iNat can fix.
My lack of knowledge of the identifying characters for many taxa, even with the groups I commonly identify. Again, not a problem iNat can fix.
The need or desire to do other things with my time (sleep, laundry, making observations myself, etc., etc.). Still not anything iNat can fix.
I don’t need badges or any sort of reward system to motivate me to make IDs; I do it because I like doing it and I learn something from it.
Here are some things I’ve seen help with the “problem” of identifications:
When identifiers band together, as @neylon and other bee experts have done, much can be accomplished relatively efficiently. In the northeastern US, we’ve made progress with annual plant ID-a-thons, which have also encouraged more people to become identifiers and taught them some of the many tools iNat makes available.
As @tony noted above, some taxa - lichens, mosses, bacteria, etc. - are not easy to photograph, much less identify, for many, many naturalists, especially those who are new to the natural world. Only education (and probably the right camera equipment) can help with this issue, and iNat identifiers can’t do much more than paste comments like, “To identify mosses to genera or species, you will often need close-up photos. Here are some good examples: XXX.” Journal posts can also help, but not enough people see those, nor can they be searched efficiently.
As any experienced naturalist knows, there are many organisms that are too young/small/fleeting to identify to genus or species. Many people who are new to iNat don’t know that a somewhat distant, somewhat blurry photograph of a dicot shrub in winter may not be able to be identified beyond Dicots.
Many identifiers are quite cautious, understandably, about using the As Good As It Can Be designation in the Data Quality Assessment section of each observation. It’s probably a better use of an identifier’s time to push “good” observations to Research Grade than to mark distant blurry shrubs as As Good As It Can Be at the Dicots level.
The only thing that comes to mind that might help identifiers would be something like a monthly blog post from iNat itself, where features such as the Identify tab, keyboard shortcuts, details about filters, and the like could be discussed.
Identifying is a choice, not a requirement, so if they feel like clerks, maybe they should take a break.
The reward is in seeing what’s out there, especially if you keep the IDs local, making friends (I’ve met people on here), teaching one another what to look for, and reinforcing what one’s learned. It’s a great free educational resource that can really improve one’s ability to correctly ID observations. So no, I don’t agree with needing badges or other reward mechanisms. The “game” is in the identifying itself. If you’re not having fun with it, sit back.
Some will not be at research grade, there isn’t enough info in the photos provided to get that. As observers learn to take better photos of identifiable features, this will improve chances of an accurate ID.
While rewarding identifiers sounds nice, offering incentives like badges may not be a good idea. It could encourage quantity over quality, attracting people with little knowledge or interest in identification just to earn rewards. This can potentially lead to inaccurate IDs. Some users already prioritize high numbers over accuracy, mass-agreeing with IDs on already research grade observations. The leader board already kind of gamifies the ID system and that could potentially worsen with the wrong sorts of rewards. If tons of people wanted a badge for identifying a certain rarer species for instance, they could mass agree with IDs on tons of already research grade observations. In the future someone could come along and want to correct an incorrect ID, but might not be able to because of the mass amount of agreed identifications caused by the badge system.
Recognition is appreciated, but rewarding badges to people for their IDs risks attracting people for the wrong reasons. Ideally, identifiers should contribute because they are knowledgeable and want to help, not for external incentives.
A better reward could be granting access to research papers or books that are otherwise difficult to obtain. This would provide an educational benefit, helping identifiers improve their ID skills. As a citizen scientist without institutional ties, I often struggle to access research papers. A system similar to Wikipedia’s Library, which grants access to resources for experienced contributors, could be a more meaningful way to support and reward identifiers.
A dislike of being tagged excessively by other users has nothing to do with whether we enjoy IDing or see it as a chore, or whether we need some additional reward/motivation to ID.
Tagging can feel like someone demanding a service from us. Social expectations may mean that we are uncomfortable simply ignoring or refusing the request, much the way we may not hang up on telemarketers even though we have no desire to have a conversation to them.
In addition, tags are not always relevant – rather than telling someone I cannot ID something that is outside my area of expertise, I would prefer to spend my time looking at those observations I can help with. I already have more than enough to keep me busy; I don’t need tags in order to find observations to ID. I particularly don’t need people tagging me for an observation that is less than a week old, because it is reasonably likely that the relevant IDers just haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. (In other words, it can feel like impatiently nagging someone about a task they would have done soon anyway.)
The vast majority of IDs are made by only a small percentage of users. Many of us are already doing as much as we can – we do not need rewards. What we need are more users helping to make IDs. But I don’t think a reward system is the way to encourage them to do so. Or to put it another way: I don’t think the reason that most users don’t make IDs is because they feel they do not derive any benefit from doing so. I think they don’t do so because they don’t feel that they know enough to be useful, or because they don’t know that they can/are allowed to or that this is needed.
The user interface and presentation of iNat – and of the app version in particular – heavily emphasizes the activity of observing over IDing. I agree with some past forum comments that sometimes it feels like the site development has focused too much on increasing participation in the form of observing, while there seems to be less energy and commitment going into making changes that would help IDing (top of the list here being improvements to the notifications system).
Another challenge is how to empower users to feel that they can help with IDs while at the same time educating them about how to make IDs responsibly. Again, I think for a lot of users, this requires a shift in the way they understand the ID process on iNat. A key part of this, as I see it, is making it easier for users to find resources for IDing or ways to guide them through taxonomy and using keys and how to decide what ID to apply to an observation. There aren’t straightforward, easy answers for creating a pedagogical concept here. But I would like to see more effort being put into figuring out how to do so.
I personally wouldn’t want badges or other such rewards beyond what we already get. Maybe someone would.
Something that would help with identifying would be to improve the notifications page, so I could more efficiently deal with it. Especially, I would like a way to “dismiss” notifications I’ve seen. (As it is, I have to complete a whole set of notifications at one time or page through dozens or hundreds of notifications to get where I left off.) By this I mean a way to dismiss notifications right there beside the notification, not something I’d have to scroll though that drop-down about notification numbers to deal with. Not something I’d have to open the observation to deal with.
Agree…and not anything that would require multiple clicks or actions to dismiss it. I would also like a way to see just notifications in which I am tagged OR where a comment is left on something I’ve ID’d (even if not tagged). Right now, i have to scroll through a long list of notifications checking for comments or tags. One other nice thing would be an option to see just notifications where I’ve ID’d something and someone after me disagreed (again, without scrolling through all of the ones where people have agreed)…because if I’ve made a mistake, it is a learning opportunity for me (so I can become a better IDer). Maybe I’m using the app wrong and there is a way to quickly find these things without having to scroll and carefully look (if so, then that is on me and not iNat).
The Joy of seeing a pic of a species not previously recorded on Inat is all the reward that I need. So thanks to all those that post pics on this platform. I hope that my small contribution inspires others to keep on posting observations.
Unfortunately, there’s already a huge problem with mis-identified RG observations, so I wince a bit every time I see something that would encourage more IDs without an emphasis on their accuracy.
I’d rather see observations stay at “needs ID” forever than get incorrectly confirmed.
The trouble with most kinds of gamification, whether to encourage IDing or observing or whatever, is that they tend to incentivise quantity over quality. I agree with iNat’s stance on not introducing such features in general.
That said, I do sometimes feel it might be nice if there were occasional emails/notifications to put your own iNat uages in the context of wider iNat usage. These might say something like “congratulations on posting your 100th observation this month; this puts you in the top 2% most active users in your country” or “thanks for adding 1,000 IDs of Lepidoptera so far this year, making you the 7th most active identifier of this taxon during that period” or “great job for adding the first ever observation of xxx to the site!”. Unlike publicly displayed badges that reflect your community ‘status’ on the site, I suspect such private messages would not have the same downsides, yet would still give some encouragement by making users feel appreciated and giving them a rough idea of how their depth of iNat usage compares to others’.
In my opinion, we don’t want to just reward identification; we want to reward identification by taxon experts. The best way to do this is for the system to implicitly appreciate them by weighing their IDs higher than others. In these days of AI, identifying expertise is easily possible. But there seems to be a strong push to keep things democratic, which in turn tends to discourage some taxon experts. Many have left the platform because of this.