Made a github issue here: https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/3644
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I still get tagged for Australian carabids, even though I only have experience with maybe twenty species from the continent (including New Zealand), presumably because I am listed as the top identifier for the family. Same with Forficulidae, even though I only know how to ID F.auricularia. If it only listed top identifiers per continent relevant to the observation in question, that would be wonderful.
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I see two problems with that. One is that someone who knows a taxon really well may have since moved to a new location. Another is that an academic who does a lot of research on the taxa of the location may not reside in that location.
That is actually the opposite of what I thought you were trying to say. What I thought you were trying to say – and what I would support – is filtering for identifiers who have made identifications in that location, irrespective of where they are located.
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I think I am confused (shocker!). I already filter by location when seeking an identifier? I add in location on the little bar. So for Centris bees, for example, of the top five when I filter that way, only three actually live in MX but those are in fact the five I am most likely to actually see on my native bee observations.
Mexico is in North America, which already surprises some. But setting location to this would not be helpful, as some do not identify within Mexico, only the US and Canada. I would prefer to be able to set my own default location preference rather than have a new default that I would still have to search over.
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That works for Europe, where you have similar vegetation. But it certainly doesn’t work for that country called Africa. Where we have everything from glaciers on Kili, to Namib and Sahara deserts, with rainforests and grassland. And Southwestern Cape fynbos.
With Lucy I tweak the identifiers by area, climbing up taxon levels and geography, till I finally reach an identifier worth asking for Help please?
I did vote - but actually I work thru the identifier list as I do for the IDs, thoughtfully. It definitely helps if you flesh out your iNat profile for us.
Your initial interpretation, the thing you support, is what I intended to communicate. An observation in Luxembourg would filter for identifiers who had identified observations in Europe. So far as I’m aware there’s no record of where iNaturalist are from, only the locations of their observations and the locations of observations which they have identified. This feature request is solely about the latter.
This is about the list of top identifiers on individual observation pages. So far as I’m aware, there’s currently no way to filter it by location.
Ah, yes, I see my confusion. But let me show you my current process, which is not overly laborious.
Here is an observation I made a few days ago. I know it is an ant but while I recognize many of the ants in my garden to be Twig Ants or Acromyrmex Leaf Cutters, this one I do not recognize. Thus I left it at “Ants”.
Clicking on Ants (the Taxon at the very top) takes me to the taxon page for Formicidae. From there I click on Top identifers, easily.
Now I just add in my location (Mexico) in that box at the top that says Location to narrow the Top Identifers by location.
That gives me the correct Top Identifer for Mexico.
Any change to the default setting to continent on the observation page itself would do nothing for me unless I was allowed to set my own default. I would still have to follow this process, of navigating to the Taxon page and identifying the most appropriate identifier from there.
To be honest, having read some concerns from identifers that they are tagged too often by the same person/too quickly after the observation is made, perhaps this extra step is not a bad thing?
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When I see ‘my’ list - I recognise names who are (still) active and willing to help.
Doesn’t help to be top of the list if you abandoned iNat way back when. There is space on that display for Last Active …
That page shows the wrong thing, technically. The difference is most visible in taxa which don’t have many identifiers, so there isn’t much wrong with the list of Formicidae identifiers, but it’s misleading in some cases.
The proposal is to have a drop-down list on the observation page, which would reduce your process to one step. I think that would have no effect on the number of people who tag identifiers immediately after posting an observation. It would, however, make it more likely they’d each tag different local identifiers instead of the current situation where many of them tag the same identifier who is at the top of a global list for some taxon. Making it easier for people to tag different local identifiers is pretty much the whole point of this feature request.
People who rapidly tag the same person on multiple observations are a whole different issue I think. Often it seems to happen when they notice someone identified a couple of their observations, and proceed to tag that person on all their observations in the same general taxon. Pointing out that a single request to review their other observations would have done the trick is usually enough to make them realize there’s a way which requires less effort on their part.
That’s a good point. Filtering out identifiers who haven’t logged in for a long while would be useful for people tagging identifiers, even though not improving the iNaturalist experience for top identifiers the way filtering by location would.
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I appreciate the thought but it will make no practical difference for me if the default is set to “continent” and immutably so, for the reasons I detailed above.
If there is no consideration to change that parameter, other details will not really matter much though I understand that those in some geographic areas will in fact benefit.
The practical benefit is to reduce your process to a single step.
There is also the possibility that the default can be automatically set to country in some parts of the world, where it makes sense, and/or that the default level can be made “sticky” if it’s changed. Either one would get you a list of the top ten Mexican identifiers on every observation page.
Whether we get that or not depends on how much effort the developer(s) can spare for this one feature request, but it’s at least possible, and possibly probable. :-)
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