iNat still has no real way of stopping sock puppeting (an issue across the internet in general) so a motivated stalker could easily make more than three sock puppet accounts to still harass someone. And yes this is a big violation of the terms of service and in theory the inat admin would ban them, but in reality it’s hard to ban all sock puppets with IP spoofing and as mentioned before the staff time is limited.
Yeah but like you said, it’s an issue everywhere. Being able to use pseudonyms helps here, unlike other platforms.
Sammmmmeeeeee
I very much appreciate the iNat policy and so far it has worked well for me to feel safe. And I have had to ask questions about a few things, dipping my toes into the system as it were. Thus far, able to resolve without using blocking. But I am so grateful it is there as a queer nb person.
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On the whole, I think iNaturalist does a better job than many other sites. For one thing, you won’t be banned from the Forums on the pretext of “just not a good fit,” with the stipulation that there will be no communication or discussion about it. Some platforms seem very proud of allowing group leaders to do that.
Also, if someone here blocked you for “the way you talk,” they would be using up one of their only three allowed blocks. If they are aware of the three-block limit, that would encourage them to consider carefully whether blocking is really necessary.
Not for long. There are thousands of other potential identifiers who can come along and tip the balance. The observer can’t block them all.
Now that gaslighting has become a household word, I have seen it used in this way – if you continue to express disagreement with someone, and especially if you offer evidence for your side, you’re “gaslighting” them. Because after all, offering evidence for your side might cause them to question their perceptions. This misuse of the word does a terrible disservice to people who really are in gaslighting dynamics because it trivializes their struggle.
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I agree with pretty much everything he said. Including why he didn’t post it on the Forum. It was a good summary of the problem being discussed here.
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The problem with this is as the joe_fish example demonstrates. There really aren’t that many specialists curating a lot of invertebrates, for example. Just knocking out one person in the case of corals or sponges (joe_fish in the case of the former, myself in the case of the latter) would cause a cascade effect of bad data. Sure, there are at least hundreds of thousands of people ID’ing mallard ducks, but we really don’t need more of that.
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No one on iNaturalist has a “right” to not be blocked, no matter how good or rare of an expert they may be, or how much they have chosen to contribute to the community. Blocking is for many other reasons.
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I feel like joe_fish is severly overreacting, by this time they could invite other experts, there’re more than one coral expert in the world, if he can’t check some observations, it’s not many.
They don’t get to ask of me to freely share my expertise (thousands and thousands of hours of uncompensated labor, from someone with irreplicable taxonomic expertise) and then in the same breath deny me the ability to properly curate, all because some random user decides it’s their right to block me, in clear violation of site policy and with zero administrative oversight.
Like really, he was blocked by a user, not denied anything, “random user” is a person and they can do whatever they want with their data.
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The problem isn’t so much if there are other experts in the world for the taxon in question, but specifically other experts who regularly use iNat. I was talking with one of the most influential researchers in the world the other day, and he told me he never uses iNat (he has all of 30 ID’s).
Because at this point, iNat is a scientific resource, I think that when we have real taxonomists trying to review 100% of the taxon in their expertise, that should be encouraged.
Right now the discussion is only looking at two perspectives:
- The experts, who can’t review all the data.
- The people who initiated the block, and their safety.
But that misses two other groups:
- Regular users trying to learn new taxons/regions who do want to here the opinion of the taxonomic reviewers.
- Authors using iNat for their research papers. Since the observations are on GBIF, and we have wikis boasting of the scientific contributions of the site, I think some way to ensure the quality of the data stays high is desirable.
I get that blocking may be very important for the safety of some individuals, but I don’t think we can just write off experts being blocked as: “it’s ok, somebody else will get to it”. We have pages and pages on the forum of people complaining that it takes too long to get an ID and lamenting the limited amount of identifiers. It’s very possible for some of these rarely reported cryptic taxa, there may only be one person on the site who will get to it.
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It’s still ok and people should move on, not be harrassed and tagged for blocking you. Like, if you see that expert as an a-hole, you should be able to not see him/her anywhere near your observations. There may be the only one person on iNat who can id something, but what’s the problem if they can’t do it for some observations? How’s that different from other observations having wrong RG? There’re thousands of wrongly ided observations, as an ider you need to be able to accept it. People using GBIF material should check what they use anyway.
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The implication being that the expert was an a-hole. But what standard is being used to judge a-holeness? We’ve all seen people get upset simply by someone adding a disagreeing ID, or how many threads are on the forum with people asking why someone was harassing them by adding pointless ID’s like Animals, or Plants on their observations (think Unknowns)? It seems to those people, their a-holeness scale is a bit extensive.
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We can’t judge what other people may find triggering, sometimes it’s a “mild” thing for an outsider, but not for a person. We shouldn’t have an universal standart, because the problem stems from iNat side, not any of the users, there shouldn’t be a lonely ider of something. Though I don’t see why if you’re holding a unique knowledge, you don’t have an assistant who learns from you?
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I think blocking due to a taxonomic disagreement is a bit too mild a thing. I do understand completely that many who blocked someone did so for legitimate reasons and did not do so lightly.
To your point about people learning from us, that ties into what I said earlier
I have people who I learn from and having them blocked could inhibit that.
Very likely people do learn from me (though I laughed a bit at thinking of them as “assistants”, I don’t know if I have assistants). I agree there shouldn’t be lonely identifiers, but currently, there often are.
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Yeah, but I mean more organized, there’re always young people ready to learn your taxon of choice, if you know you can’t id observations from X region, teach those people about those species and they can do it insted of you (and can practice first on already ided observations).
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Well then maybe we should address the other issue which is some ‘experts’ believe their expertise gives them free pass to be awful to other community members. This isn’t about joe-fish who i am not sure i’ve interacted with at all, but I’ve absolutely encountered that behavior from other ‘experts’, and more than once too. Often the rules aren’t fully enforced against them, because they are ‘so important’. This is true across science and even worse in other places, but it makes me sad to see this on iNat. Sometimes someone gets blocked when they shouldn’t be, but other times, there is a reason someone is blocked so much. Ultimately, some of them probably aren’t even that great with their taxa, just super overconfident as is common with those who act that way, and then attacking anyone who disagrees with them.
Basically it has to work both ways. Some people use their community status to harm others. That’s how the whole (at least economically) dominant society on the planet is set up, if not a trait of our species in general. But it’s a bummer and would be nice if iNat would recognize that a bit more.
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I don’t doubt that there are top level experts who have been awful (personally I’ve seen blunt, don’t think I’ve seen awful though). But I see many more insults and accusations come from the other end. When I see some guy insulting someone who put an “Animals” ID, that’s a bit grinding. It really gets old having people come on to the forum and cavalierly accuse someone of harassment because the other person dared to not explain their disagreeing ID.
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there are more insults from the ‘other end’ because there are far more people on the ‘other end’. But i mean, it isn’t a competition. People shouldn’t be awful either way. But… well i cant post details because then it’s talking about one or two people specifically which we aren’t supposed to do on here. But let’s just say it appears a couple people read the community agreement and try to violate as much of it as possible…
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I have a question. If I block someone will this remove all the previous IDs they’ve made to my observations?
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No, it won’t.
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