I think I’d describe the problem case (which I think you are most concerned about) as “unexpected deletion”. I think it’s ok for the deletion to be automatic, the default action, and ‘silent’ - mainly because if it wasn’t then “the problem with inexperienced users and placeholders” would instead be the creation of a permanent shadow taxonomy full of things like “stinky blue flowers”, “horrible stinging weed”, “scary lizard”, and “big tree” - and the whole point of placeholders is to be a temporary reference pending insertion into the Official Taxonomy.
The discussion about new species isn’t going to have gaps, because as soon as you use that placeholder in a comment or observation note it’s going to persist until you edit or delete that yourself.
So if we’ve got consensus now that “Coarse IDs Are Good”, and want to move on to “How can we improve the use of placeholders?”, then the questions I’d be asking are along the lines of:
who do we need to educate?
what do we need to explain to them?
where and how is it most productive to explain it?
Because practical feature requests along those lines seem like something you could make happen, and might be a lot more enjoyable to pursue than dying on the hill where placeholders here mean something different to what they do in every other related use.
You’ve missed my meaning again, so perhaps I could have more clearly said:
as soon as you use that placeholder name in a comment or observation note it’s going to persist until you edit or delete that yourself.
See the Actual Use examples of what I meant in the observations I linked to.
You can edit comments and notes. There shouldn’t be any need to edit the content of a temporary placeholder field, since that operation is performed by making an ID using an official taxa name (which you may also comment with an unofficial name if that is appropriate) which supersedes it.
Not a consensus (*).
2 visions. 2 ways of action (or inaction) (**).
We will see what comes out.
(*) : Worth noting, as the topic might be closed at any time without prior notice (in particular if a consensus is claimed).
(**) : I don’t know whether asking others to act is action or inaction.
Consensus does not mean unanimity. Consensus means we’ve listened to and considered the issues you’ve raised and the group has engaged with and Addressed Them (for whatever that might mean), even if you still don’t like the outcome of that.
I’m not going to engage further where discussion has devolved to the like of nitpicking about the “precision”, or lack there of, of entirely made up numbers.
If people want to have a sensible and productive discussion about how we might improve best practice with Placeholders, given what we know won’t change, I think it’s possible some good might still come of that - but if you want to die on the hill of blaming coarse IDs or inat staff for the problems with that, it’s clearly becoming an increasingly lonely place.
This is a complete mischaracterization of the comments in this thread. Please don’t transfer your (justified) annoyance with the way that iNat deals with placeholders (a design problem) to your fellow IDers who are doing the best they can.
I don’t think anyone has suggested that people who are entering broad IDs should just blithely ignore placeholders. The fact that placeholders exist is not an argument for the usefulness or lack thereof of broad IDs.
The point that many of us have been trying to make is that the responsibility for lost placeholders does not exclusively fall on the IDer. It is not the fault of the observer that the placeholder is no longer visible when a subsequent ID is entered. But it is also not the fault of the IDer.
If IDers are being asked to learn to pay attention to placeholders, it is reasonable to expect observers to be able to learn to do so also. Most placeholders are entered by novice observers and in virtually every case that I have seen, the information is not irreplaceable – that is, it is unfortunate that the ID is lost, but if the observer knew enough to enter a specific ID (rather than something like “tree” or “egg”) that was not recognized by the system, they are capable of remembering that ID and entering it as a proper ID once the problem has been explained to them or the missing taxon has been entered.
Again, IDing is a joint process. Observers are not just passive recipients of IDs. They can respond to feedback provided by IDers or ask questions. The entire burden of sorting out an observation does not fall on the IDers. We can do things to make the process go more smoothly, but the observer has some responsibility also.
Look carefully for any notes, comments, placeholder from the observer. This is for the bee, the flower is at …
(Luckily I caught the copypasta the first time it was flagged)
An interesting discussion! I’d like to understand the scale of this issue and I need some data from iNat or possibly @pisum, please:
What percent of Verifiable observations are uploaded without an ID from the observer within, say, a week? The time period is because some observers upload and then identify.
Of the Verifiable observations still without an observer ID after a week, what percent had a placeholder?
I’m hoping to get an idea of whether, say, at least 5% of all Verifiable observations are still without an initial ID from the observer after a week, in which case this iNat might, in my opinion, consider implementing structural methods to “force” an observer to add an initial ID. And if, say, 20% of all Verifiable observations uploaded as true Unknowns have placeholder text, then, in my opinion, iNat might consider making structural changes as well.
If the percentages are small, then - again, in my opinion - we all have bigger problems to solve. Which is not to say I don’t appreciate @jeanphilippeb’s creative and very helpful efforts in categorizing Unknowns; I’ve used his projects before and probably will again. In addition, I quite appreciate everyone’s contributions to this thread and to other threads about identifying; I make a lot of IDs and I find it helpful to read so much about how other people approach the issues involved in identifying.
To contribute to the placeholder topic though, I just made a fake obs to test (stopped the upload, will delete in a minute). Using the android app, there isn’t any indication that my id is a placeholder and temporary. I think the problem scenario here is someone using the inat app directly to take pictures and make an obs in the field, with the intent of reviewing it later, but sometimes their obs is identified and their temporary id is lost before they are ready. In this case, I think an option to save their obs, but not upload it to the public, would solve this. My test obs started uploading as soon as I finalized it. I could stop it, but I think it might be better to just have a pop up asking to either save and upload, or save and not upload.
The other scenario I’ve seen mentioned is someone not realizing that their id is a placeholder. Before reading this, I didn’t even know placeholder was a thing. Even knowing now, I still don’t know what triggers an id to become placeholder. I only use the android app, and I don’t see any indicators or options to mark it myself. Does the icon being gray indicates it will be placeholder?
In this case, I think I saw someone else mention this simple solution, couldn’t the app just automatically add a line to the notes “original placeholder id xxx”. It seems pretty simple, and would stay visible unless the creator decides to delete it.
Edit: I just went back to delete my fake obs, and apparently it uploaded itself. So even hitting “stop” while it’s uploading won’t keep the obs to yourself.
See post 143 for screen shots of the iPhone app, and 144 for screen shots of the Android app (similar to the one you made.) I would link them here but sorry I can’t figure out how.
As you discovered, the Andoid app doesn’t use the word placeholder, which is some of the reason why I don’t think the staff argument “the term placeholder obviously means temporary” is a valid argument.
Cannot be for private notes - the soap bubble is real, we all could see it.
If you did make cryptic notes - (((those rare orchids are under the ancient apple tree just inside Jon’s blue gate))) - the bubble implodes before you can use your notes.
Why would we want to makes notes on a soap bubble??
@lynnharper I hope iNat does not ever force observers to add an ID, any ID. We do our best when we upload. I have been on obs where respected taxon specialists argue back and forth about which kingdom is this??
This thread has gotten way off track and is no longer constructive so I’m going to close it. See the Forum guidelines.
I also removed the “Solution” from my post because my post had not solved anything (if there’s anything to be solved for a discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of something).
Just a reminder that you can start new topics and this might have been a good time to do so.
I also want to clarify what I said about the upcoming app and placeholders, now that I’ve done a little more double-checking: it’s not possible to make a placeholder with the upcoming app, you either add an ID that’s linked to iNat’s taxonomy (and you will always be able to at least add an iconic taxon ID, if not something more specific, when offline), or you upload it without an ID.
IMO preventing placeholders from being created is better than iNat spending developer time to discuss, redesign, and code the way placeholders currently work. The observer can always enter text into the Notes for the observation if they want to note that it’s a species not currently in the iNat database.
