If you ask me if it is going to be sunny tomorrow, and I say “yes”, and then you paint your house while it is sunny in the morning and it rains in the afternoon and washes all the paint off, would you complain to me that you got put wrong? There is a disjoint between the question asked and the outcome from that question… from this example, it is clear that what the question should have been is “will the weather be suitable for painting my house tomorrow”.
Everyone can argue all they like about what the questions actually ask, but surely what is most relevant here is “what is the outcome of the answer to that question”. One outcome is a genus level ID that does not count toward the CID, whereas the other outcome does. The first testifies to your belief that the genus is right, but offers no position on the species, and the other outcome clearly states that you view the genus to be correct, but the species is explicitly wrong. The questions need to be re-framed into context of the outcomes.
There was an indication in one of the replies by staff/developers that they are re-considering how the CID handles all of these cases, so it may be premature to be stating how things should be re-worded or interpreted, we might need to wait and see how they model it.
In that example it should be left as a casual grade observation of the bird. The best way to achieve that in my opinion is to mark it as ‘no Evidence of organism’ as the there is no evidence, in the photo, of the subject of the observation.
I agree in context of honouring the observers choice of subject, but I interpret in this case that the observer may have been mistaken with their choice of subject, evidenced by them having changed ID as well! Perhaps they “remembered” the bird from the trip, and thought that was the photo it was in… but when “challenged” they realised it wasn’t! (pure speculation of course…)
For the briefest of moments, it wasn’t honouring the observers choice of subject, but the observer rectified that situation themselves!
I think this makes sense in the case of both blurry photos and photos where the named organism doesn’t seem to be there, unless there is some obvious mistake with homonyms or near-homonyms or bushes that turn into Bushtits. It isn’t criticizing the photo–it’s just a vote that evidence of the subject organism isn’t there, and whoever thinks it is there can vote the opposite way.
I have no doubt this user meant well and they were clear that they downgraded the ID because of the photo quality. If there are users on this platform who don’t mean well, I’ve yet to encounter one!
I’ll add an explanation if I have time, but providing information is a two-way street. Many submitters don’t provide notes on their record which might be helpful in IDing the species. My general rule is that I don’t put more time into reviewing a record than the submitter spent providing it. Maybe that’s a little harsh but there’s only so many hours in a day.
Overall, great discussion but we’ve gotten a little off topic here.
Please reply as a linked topic if you want to go down a different conversation thread. This particular topic is about photo quality and whether their accompanying descriptions for poor quality photos would count as evidence, not whether or not identifications should include explanations, questions on moderation, etc.
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