Here’s an example of a totally cool other organism in an observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13381471
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The observer is still active, but the duplicate wasn’t made. Maybe more explanation is needed there on how to do it and why?
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I found this in State of Matter Life https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/24571960#activity_comment_2869974
maybe if the Kingdom symbols were in color people would notice their mistakes more? the shape is key, of course, but color just to catch the attention more?
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Yes, if I was the observer and just saw the existing comment, not sure I would know what to focus on for the duplicate observation. I see the flying insect on the leaf, but where is the death fungus? If you can give them some further guidance on what would be helpful to focus on in a duplicate, maybe that will elicit a response?
You also have to consider the possibility the user may simply not want to do it, or is only interested in plants etc.
For example, I got this on one of mine yesterday : https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/24696326
I may choose to enter it, but am under no obligation to do so because I was asked to or it is suggested.
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Yes, quite so, one would not want to seem to be “harassing” if the observer is being reticent.
In being helpful, you might also want to take into account the user’s knowledge and skill set of the iNaturalist platform. This user joined: Apr 23, 2018 and has only 15 observations.
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This could also happen when someone adds an ID to one of those observations that has multiple photos, all with different organisms, thinking only about the first photo, and then when the user separates them into different observations the one photo the identifier was referring to isn’t the one left in the original multi-photo observation.
I do think this is happening in conjunction with auto-spell. Yesterday and today I’ve been noticing that these bizarre choices in the State of Matter Life category sometimes start with the same first 4 or 5 letters as the correct ID.
This was brought up in the iNaturalist google group somewhere (but I couldn’t find the thread) and one suggestion I remember was that identifiers get notice if the photos changed. I’m not sure I’d want that personally, but just saying in case you want to try to find that discussion.
it should definitely be tracked somehow. Maybe a little row in the same place where IDs are recorded, saying ‘Charlie added a photo’ ‘Charlie deleted a photo’ or whatever.
I ran into a situation today where it would be useful to have eukaryotes as a way to make a disagreeing ID: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/24718785
I have been seeing a lot of this in the State of Matter Life observations, and I don’t understand why this happens since I don’t remember ever seeing State of Matter Life come up as a choice anywhere.
They choose Life
I don’t remember seeing “Life” as a choice either–I will watch for it when I post observations.
In the below example the observer has identified the subject in the bee family. This observation has had one ID suggestion in bee family and a second in the plant Kingdom resulting in a rank of Life. The observer is relatively new (<1yr) with only 196 observations. The second person (rhols…) to suggest an ID joined in Oct 2018 and has 3 observations and this is their first ID. Both the Observer and the second identifier used the Computer Vision to help with their identification (you can tell that Computer Vision was used by the symbol to the left of how long it has been since the ID was made). The first person (john…) to suggest an identification has a vast knowledge in the subject of bees. This observation now has the rank of Life and I think will be less likely be identified by users interested in bees.
Both the observer and the second identifier may not know how to navigate around this.
Perhaps this novice mixup could be considered ref:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/upcoming-limits-on-making-projects-places-and-messages/2095
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We had a heckuva time with this one in our CNC: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/23948933
It’s clear the observer meant to choose Fungi but accidentally chose a group of beetles. I wanted to get it in front of Slime Mold people, but of course it went to State of Matter Life. He’s a new user and wasn’t responding to @'s. I got an expert to ID it, but it was still stuck in limbo. Then I called in our CNC team, but they didn’t know anything about slime molds, so they couldn’t really help. It was quite the fiasco. 
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I’m still seeing things like this in State of Matter Life. New users start typing one thing in and the AI proposes something in another kingdom that starts with the same letters and they just take it. It would be better if they didn’t add an ID at all–just post the observation.
Edit: I said that, then thought I better test it, so on the iPhone app I started to type in “penguin” on an observation I made with a photo of a picture of penguin. By the time I had typed “pen” a list came up with “Perching Birds” as the first choice, “Penguins” as the second choice, and stink bugs (Pentatomomopha, Pentatomoidea, and Pentatomidae) as the 3rd, 4th, and 5th choices. If the user isn’t careful, the user can unthinkingly choose “Perching Birds,” which is wrong but has some logic, or might accidentally choose one of the stink bugs. So the AI maybe still is considering that the photo is of a bird, but, if so, why add stink bugs? It’s the user’s responsibility, but a lot of them are not really focusing on the choices, it seems.
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Is the ai still in play after you start typing a name, or is it the text similarity that takes over?! Try it with just letting AI populate the list first, before starting typing
I still maintain that any initial ID is at least as good as nothing, and in many instances the specialists at the mis-ID will know where it should head to. The problem is that other new users often lock in mis-IDs with an Agree, taking them to RG and out of the main Identify pool. Then it is just the mad crew that review RG included that have a chance to pick it up. So it is literally the combination of new user AI selection and new user Agrees that makes the problem so bad…
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The list that comes up if I just hit the question mark is all birds, 2-3 penguins, a couple of puffins, a couple of oystercatchers, a booby, a razorbill. No stinkbugs. So this does seem to be the more photo-oriented choice. (The first time I hit “suggestions” instead of the question mark.)