Show Top Identifiers by Continent by Default

Feature Requests
1

In the past year or two I’ve been identifying spiders in my region (around the Great Lakes in Canada and the US). The region has a lot of iNaturalist users, so I’ve accumulated quite a large number of identifications of the common species there. Unfortunately, I’ve done so many that I’m now among the top 5 identifiers for several common families worldwide, and now I’m regularly being asked to help identify spiders around the world. This wouldn’t be so bad, except I can hardly identify anything outside North America.

Recent examples:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/55940353 (today, Sunday)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/55834792 (Saturday)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/55454432 (Wednesday)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/55376017 (Tuesday)

Most of these requests are from users who don’t know anything about spiders and just tag one of the top identifiers listed on their observation. I feel bad about not being able to do anything for the ones outside North America.

What we have now:
Screenshot from 2020-08-09 17-01-01

As another absurd example, I’m currently listed as the global top identifier for Ground Spiders (family Gnaphosidae) because I’ve identified 340 Eastern Parson Spiders (Herpyllus ecclesiasticus), which are only found in eastern North America. I’ve only done 8 identifications of other species in the family.

What I’d like to have (hand-made mockup, don’t take this too seriously):
Screenshot from 2020-08-09 17-01-01

I’d like the dropdown menu to have the standard places the observation is in. I really, really want the default to be the continent or country. For example, in Europe the top identifiers of Classic Orbweavers would likely be goliathus, lutautami, and talgar-t64. In Russia, probably talgar-t64 and lutautami. The menu should also have an option to view the global top identifiers, the list we see now.

My hope is that this will cut out a step or two when users reach out for help, make it easier to get in contact with low-volume regional identifiers, and (of course) reduce the number of tags sent to identifiers like me who have ended up on global lists by identifying a lot of individuals from a handful of very common, easily-identified species in one specific part of the world.

2

I skim those lists for names and faces I recognise from IDs on local species.

Your dropdown menu would be for the location of the obs, not ‘where the Top Identifier’ is based?

3 Likes
3

Correct.

2 Likes
4

I would strongly support this suggestion. It would both make it more likely that an ID request gets matched by a useful ID, and that certain identifiers aren’t harassed needlessly by ID requests they can’t help with.

5 Likes
6

I would very much appreciate this too, but I’d go even further to suggest state-level differentiation (at least country). I am the top identifier for Euphorbiaceae and Croton worldwide but, outside of the genus Euphorbia, I really only have expertise in Texas (I frequently ID in adjacent states, but the limit of my expertise becomes evident pretty quickly the further out you go). I frequently get tagged on stuff worldwide for which I have no clue on, which is frustrating. And then you have jonrebman who gets tagged on everything because he is the top identifier for plants even though he seems to almost exclusively ID plants from San Diego County, CA and the Baja California Peninsula.

9 Likes
7

Clarification: the proposal is to have a menu with all standard places containing the location of the observation, from country all the way to county or municipality if that’s available. The same list that’s shown in the left-hand column when you click “Details” just below the map on an observation.

In regions where there are many observations and identifications it may make sense for the default to be a place with a smaller area, but if we can’t have dynamic defaults based on the number of observations and identifications then continent is probably the best universal default.

6 Likes
8

I should mention that I’ve continued to receive similar requests approximately daily during the 14 months since I submitted this feature request. Here’s today’s:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/78996547

In this case the observer is also deleting his own comments requesting help from observers after they respond, so it looks as though we were never tagged.

[Edit: At least 3 identifiers who are mostly active in North America were tagged before the observation was identified, even though you can’t see that anymore.]

8 Likes
9

that is ungracious, and a bit dishonest.

3 Likes
10

I think it comes from an urge to clean up the observation and make it look more tidy, rather than an intent to deceive. The comments requesting help have very little content, after all.

6 Likes
12

It can be relevant to species too if you e.g. know that there’s no similar species nearby, but have no idea if there’re any in Brazil or anywhere else with high possibility of undescribed species.
I’d add there should be a division for level that you id too, I’m often tagged for things I can’t id past family without a key which I don’t have, but I’m top ider just because of those broad ids.

3 Likes
13

Sorry, this got put on the backburner for too long. I could see that working, with maybe a default of country but with the ability to choose continent, state, and county levels. For a country like the US that covers a lot of area and potentially includes a lot of identifiers unfamiliar with the area it would be cool to show state or county level by default but would add to the complexity of the feature and might impact page loading speed. Might have to rethink how we calculate top identifiers as well, which is probably something we should do anyway…

7 Likes
14

I just skimmed this so I might have missed it.
When I get requests for ID from far away places I have never been to, because we have lots of records from the Cape, I just post an apology (such that if they delete their request it is obvious that there was a request) and provide them with a relevant link to the identifiers for their country. It is simply an explore for taxon by country with the identifiers tab. It takes me 5 seconds, and it shows them how to find relevant identifiers themselves for future use.
I would support the option of the Top Identifiers panel having a filter box for location, but would prefer it to default to world, rather than some continent, country or county. That said, many other panels on the iNat page default to the last used option, so why not this panel as well?
One thing to bear in mind, is that the top identifiers panel includes all identifications, whereas the “identifiers tab” in the explore filters excludes identifications of one’s own observations. The discrepancy can be huge if you are the major contributor to the observations of a species.
(e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/99778909 gives 1,177 IDs by me, versus the 667 IDs given by https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?locale=en&place_id=113055&preferred_place_id=113055&taxon_id=560277&view=identifiers :: this is partly explained at https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/560277-Leucadendron-laureolum which shows that the difference is my 581 observations, but credits me as top identifier with 703 identifications {beware the last link remembers your last place, so may well display different totals to those I gave - quite apart from daily updates - untick your place if you want to reproduce the figures})

1 Like
15

I have the same issue as Jeremy and would also appreciate this feature (I have voted on it) with no particular urgency. While some kind of intelligent place selection based on population/size/observation count might be more ideal, defaulting to show the top taxon identifiers in the continent of the location seems like an easy and reasonable solution.

While I am generally familiar with the top identifiers in different parts of the world and can tag them in for help, it can be a bit frustrating in volume. I spent some time earlier this year sorting through some large buckets/backlog of North American spiders (mostly in my home state) which elevated me to the top identifiers for broad taxa like “spiders” “typical spiders” etc. I now get daily mentions/tags from people in other continents where I have no familiarity with the local fauna.

It is not a big problem but I think the proposed solution would cut out the middle-man (so to speak), hopefully without breaking anything else. I think that this would be generally helpful for most taxa, but am also interested to hear about any use cases I may not have considered. Tony has a good point about high-volume observers being listed as top identifiers due to identifying their own observations.

2 Likes
16

I like the idea

1 Like
17

I expect that wouldn’t work well outside the US and Canada for most taxa until there are a lot more identifiers. If there’s to be a single global default, I think continent would work the best. That said, I’m all in favour of using different default levels in different parts of the world if it’s easy to do.

If I understand the rest of what you wrote correctly, you may have missed that the default would be to the continent where the observation was made. One would only be able to select standard places which contain the location of the observation, so one wouldn’t, for example, be able to filter for identifiers from North America on an observation in Africa. The default for an observation in Luxembourg would be European identifiers, and the default for an observation in South Africa would be African identifiers. (If you did understand that already, sorry. I’m trying to make everything clear to all readers.)

3 Likes
18

as am I

1 Like
19

I recently submitted a similar feature request for such functionality: to change the Top IDers on the Observation Page to people located Nearby the observation location.

I did not realize this was already requested a few years ago (8/2020).
Something, @cthawley suggested to me was to filter ID people on the Explore page instead:

"If you enter your taxon of interest and a location (country or otherwise) in the Explore page, you can then click on the “Identifiers” tab and get a customized leaderboard for that taxon and location. "

As I rarely use Explore, especially when reviewing my Observations, I did not know that was an option. Still, it seems like it would work better for many users (both observers and IDers) to have that functionality on the Observations page; to help people connect with an appropriate pool of Identifiers for the taxon and location of species they observed.

Also, @tiwane messaged me to point me to this existing feature request.

I appreciate the quick and helpful responses from them.

2 Likes
20

Recently, I got several identical (almost annoying) e-mails from a user that asked for help with a certain bug. I really couldn’t help as I am totally unfamiliar with species in this genus mentioned. I only did identify this genus without any species and I only identified it in Mexico, far away from the location this user found that bug. I would like to identify that genus in Mexico in the future, but I would appreciate some kind of option that I can actively refuse (say “no”) to appear on the top of identifiers list.

3 Likes
21

I do a little bit of research before tagging someone to identify and geography is one of the things I consider. I always sort for Top Identifiers in Mexico before tagging. That said, I have had people then tell me they do not do identifications in Mexico, despite their having hundreds or even thousands of identifications within the family or genus I am asking within Mexico. I am not quite sure how that happens, does anyone have any idea?

(I have also had someone whose profile said they welcomed tags for North American observations tell me that Mexico is not “really” part of North America, they only meant the US and Canada. I unfortunately have a better idea how that happens,)

6 Likes
22

What a goober! :rofl:

1 Like