So I am having a particular situation in inaturalist Costa Rica. I am one of the few curators of fungi for Costa Rica and a particular user has been abusing the site. He has rejected community ID and has blocked me. All his observations are set with a incorrect location data with a 214km range which covers both Nicaragua and Panama territories, not just Costa Rica. This data is being fed to GBIF and any other database as this user has RG observations despite the incorrect location, which ignores the ecological areas where such organisms grow. As example, most micorrhizal fungi will not grow below 1000 meters over sea level in Costa Rica, except in one place that is dying out due to excesive gentrification and water exploitation (Guanacaste Quercus oleoides dry forest). Microclimats in this country makes location critical as part of the organism science data.
Recently, this same user has been changing taxon photos for his own, mostly observations that are not research grade. Some taxons who does not have any known observations have been updated with his own photos without research grade as well (I could not confirm those photos are correct as well). This makes my work really hard as I have to re update the taxons this guy has modified.
To avoid this, I would suggest the following:
Users that rejected the community identification should not be allowed to modify taxon photos
Users should not be allowed to block curators to avoid their own observations being cured.
A tool to ban specific users from modifying taxon photos if they abuse it
This user was already banned for a week for using a sockpuppet account and has engaged in discussions were he does not want to admit to be wrong, so he prefers to delete the observation instead. He has also a lot of incorrect ids for others, so allowing him to change taxon photos for his own is causing a mess that I am burned out of keeping it as correct as possible. Is a waste of time.
This is getting very frustrating, specially when someone else confirms his observations without checking the location information. Not sure what else to do. I have already complaint to the local admin with no response.
I have reviewed the guidelines and decided to ask about it here because it is kind of a grey area. I cannot use Data Quality Assessment on this user due to block, but I donāt see anything very specific for this situation I just described. Should I proceed anyways?
I also have a gripe with taxon photos being editable by anybody, it seems like every week or two the photo for plantae, tracheophyta, and dicot change with a revolving door of photographers trying to show off their new favorite photo. Dicots has changed every week since March which is frankly redicuous: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47124/history. It deeply frustrates me when identifying as I often see the photo before I read the text and then get thrown off whenever it changes.
Thereās also repeat offenders in that link who appear to be engaged in wikipedia style edit wars on the taxon photos.
Can we please also add a limitation that only curators can edit the photos of taxa with more than 10000 observations? Or perhaps apply this restriction to the family rank and above?
I donāt think it would be a good idea to tie anything else to whether or not someone has rejected the community identification. That feature exists for a reason, after all- sometimes the community is just wrong, mainly on obscure or poorly known species. Itād be a shame for someone to be unable to edit taxon photos because theyāre a fungus expert who got one too many incorrect IDs on their fungus observations and rejected said incorrect IDs.
Taxon image changes can be submitted by any user, but must be approved by a curator before the image is actually changed (I realize this means a lot more work on the part of curators, but this also forces a cool-down period and if a curator thinks the existing photo is good enough then the existing photo is not changed).
No user can submit a change to the same taxon image more often than once in X amount of time (say once per month at most).
Each user is limited to a maximum of X image submissions total per taxon, regardless of how long between submissions (say 3 total per taxon).
Special exceptions would be handled on a cas-by-case basis, but with low priority.
This would eliminate much of the various issues people have raised concerning taxon image changes, while still allowing users to suggest changes and improvements.
I have to say, I was surprised when I learned that the photos were openly editable, but this does explain some things. I have found oh-so-many taxa with unhelpful, inaccurate, or just bad photos on the taxon page; for plants, these pages are often untrustworthy.
The taxon page for Common Gartersnake (Thamnophis sirtalis) sticks out to me as an example of a revolving photo exhibit: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/28362-Thamnophis-sirtalis
This is already a trickier one, as there are multiple subspecies that look quite different, and some of those have variation too. However, of the ten photos currently in the rotation, not one is representative of a typical Eastern Gartersnake (T. s. sirtalis), the predominant eastern representative that covers almost half the distribution of the species. (The first photo is the Chicago Gartersnake, which is closer to a typical Eastern than anything else shown.) Several other prevalent subspecies (Valley, Red-spotted, Maritime) lack a typical representative, while several photos that are present are quite atypical. Iām not certain one of them even is T. sirtalis.
So is the purpose of a taxon page to serve as a species profile, and act as a field guide for those amateur users who are learning to connect with nature through iNaturalist? If so, Iād suggest that the photo selection should favour good images that clearly show typical examples of a species, and/or helpfully show key field marks. (Thatās not the case now.) I would also suggest that unusual examples probably do not belong on a page like this, as they cause confusion. If uncommon forms need representation there, it would be helpful to label them as unusual or explain them in some way.
Either way, adding some level of control or oversight, whether through curators or another mechanism, is probably a good idea.
Note that my responses are based on being in a (relatively) geographically less-active region and I am not a curator:
Taxon image changes can be submitted by any user, but must be approved by a curator before the image is actually changed
Having had the experience of waiting 4-8 months for curator responses to my taxon flags, Iām not sure that adding more work for the existing curators is a great solution. A cool-down period before changes are made could work to avoid āedit warsā but how could we avoid situations where it takes several months before a change is overseen by a curator?
Each user is limited to a maximum of X image submissions total per taxon, regardless of how long between submissions (say 3 total per taxon).
There have been several taxa that Iāve encountered with just a single taxon image. One recent example was several of the Hairstreak Butterflies present in South Korea. If the taxon photo is a side view (underwing) and I want to add research grade photos showing the topside of the wing for males, topside of the wings for females, pupa, and larval form that would put me over the ā3 total per taxonā at species level, nevermind if the taxon is higher than that. (Or if the solitary taxon image is blurry and I also want to replace it with a better-quality image.)
While not exactly the same, Iāve also come across butterflies where the first 4 taxon images were all a view of the topside of the wing, which is unhelpful for anyone using Compare or checking the taxon page when they only have a shot of the underwing. Iāve also been editing those so that the underwing photos are second or third in order. Would that count towards my limit of changes or would they be kept separate under that proposal since Iām only moving images around rather than adding new ones?
Similar to what others have said, I have come across taxon images that were changed to a photo taken by the person making the change ā often a more artistic shot that includes the photographers watermark but not always depicting diagnostic features as well as the previous/original image ā and wanted to share my experiences so that any changes being considered also take into consideration the workflow and curatorial experience that some of us non-curators have had on the site.
I edited taxon photos a couple of times, of course changing the head photo to a better, clearer image, but it made me a little nervous that literally anyone could go there and update the photo. I think that the photos should come from only Research Grade observations and the person who edit the photos should have observed that taxon.
Iāve not infrequently changed the taxon images for a taxa (generally when there was only one photo and I wanted to add more) and immediately realised that a photo that looked fine in the (tiny) āchoose imagesā pane was terrible quality - and therefore changed again. At times, that also happens more than once. So unless there was some way to increase the size of selected photos so you could tell the quality without opening each individual photo (which, yes, is an option, but also yes, is a pain), I would be against this.
But even ignoring the situation above, what if itās a very little-observed taxa and youāre trying to gradually increase the quality of the photos as more observations come in? Yes, Iāve done this before, so Iām not plucking contrary examples out of the air.
Taxon pictures for Homo sapiens were locked.
I would favour locking taxon pictures - to those that follow the guidelines - for above family. I want the first few taxon pictures to cover various fieldmarks - not 6 slightly different versions of The One Field Mark.
Maybe a popup warning - with do not show me this again - if we make too many changes. But easy to hit ātoo manyā if adding many field marks - so that is tricky to evaluate.
iNat is not a place to display your photo skills. Taxon pictures should show field marks.
Special exceptions would be handled on a cas-by-case basis.
As with any idea fine tuning is needed, as an example, the proposed rules could apply only to species that have more than X number of taxon photos already. Once there are something like (pulling a random number out) 20 or 50 taxon photos there is rarely a good reason to be adding more or changing the images around. Not no reason as there are always exceptions, but less and less of one at that point.
I think what was meant was photos of that taxon, total.
I had wondered about such a thing myself, but Iāve seen plenty with more than that but still only one taxon photo, so Iād prefer a higher cutoff for such a rule. As soon as you need special exceptions, it becomes too hard and is far less likely to happen - which at least in some cases would be a pity.
This might lead to high quality pictures be chosen rather than one picture that really shows what that taxon should have to be that taxon. Eg: A hyper quality zoomed picture of a damselfly eye rather than one picture showing the whole damselfly.
People can even create a bunch of sockpuppet acc to vote for their pictures as well.
Iād pretty much prefer to have the taxon picture be the first one published in iNat for that taxon, provided it shows all the details we need for that taxon.
Or we have a feature where you can choose which pictures you want to see for yourself and have the public taxon picture be something the curators decide.