I’ve noticed this with butterflies. Sometimes, even with the sun in my eyes, I can get a sense of what type of butterfly I"m observing. Nothing “plops” on a leaf quite like a hairstreak. I’m not always right, of course, but when you can’t make out details, sometimes the way the butterfly moves helps.
2 Likes
This is true. My area of expertise is not science but literature. We tend to be perceived as “empathetic” because we talk/write so much about the art of writing and human experience, but we have our share of brilliant asshats. Still, doesn’t mean we all are jerks, so stereotyping and/or generalizing about any profession isn’t helpful or productive. Mostly, I’ve found the experts on iNat very helpful and patient.
5 Likes
This discussion, like several others in the forum, is muddling expert with professional. Expert is the opposite of novice. Professional is the opposite of amateur. You would hope professionals would have expertise but not necessarily. If you have just joined the Water Company from school, you might have the job title Assistant Biologist but not have learned any skills yet. And amateurs can lie anywhere on the axis from novice to world expert. An amateur is someone who does it for the love of the subject, not for money.
17 Likes
I take your point that as a rule of thumb it is more engaging to use personalised responses, but sometimes that’s just a waste of time. If you post an observation with coordinates 0.000,0.000 – as people do inadvertently many times a day – there are users who monitor for that and will post a pre-composed standard comment pointing out that they should check their location as it’s almost certainly an error. There’s no point writing such comments from scratch every time, I am sure you agree. I accept it’s more of a grey area if you’re discussing biological details of an observation. But if you’re aware of a potential error that may apply to many dozens of obs, writing one comment like “According to Smith (2020) the ones like this with seven stripes are a different species from the six-striped ones…” then for many busy people doing that en mass rather than customised may mean the difference between having the time to do it and not having the time to do it.
6 Likes
I’m rather proud of being an iNat muddler!
I’ve muddled amateur and professional photographically…and I’m a dabbler too, though it may be called ‘generalist’.
I thought that was the point of iNat… all of us here together, sharing our bits of knowledge. (Expert,professional,amateur,whatever,whoever, no one knows everything!)
9 Likes
The best of all four worlds!
1 Like
@sedgequeen I’d like to reply to you personally since you and I have shared many IDs. Since you and every other professional are here to give facts, I try to give any opinion whatever that may be by trying to present the most facts. Example: one price we pay for certain behaviors is subjective science. The rise of genetics labs has led to an epidemic of arbitrary taxonomic changes that you and I have our own free will to decide whether to support or not. Now you may feel strongly one way or another that eclipses the question of someone being a self-made enforcer without their own reasons, to which I say like the juror in 12 Angry Men “What kind of a man are you?”. I’m not picking a bone about that particular thing, I’m saying the best I can do if we disagree is to give facts against facts.
Someone came after me when there was a horse race for the highest species count in our state and I couldn’t afford to lose even one, which for good reason is fine, but it was a fricking Christmas Fern. I’ve seen people call in the cavalry for a specific ID because there is pride in knowing that, but not calling them in to convince the observer to delete their post. It was the frivolousness I couldn’t allow, because like you and I this person believes strongly in what they do and will keep on doing it, but doesn’t choose their battles (if you call for backup and don’t get a consensus you have to eat your words). My having the correct ID made no difference nor my being a verbal eviscerator because there is nothing that makes us targets, only frivolousness. That is what makes this common behavior with specific community consequences. What you said about copy/paste responses means you believe there is no down side to giving them and therefore posting requires you to have no strategy? Meeting people with different opinions is good for the soul and reminds us of what’s important. I’m glad for iNat and gladder still to be an individual, so I posted without singling out this person leaning heavily on facts. They annoyed me and I annoyed you. Apologies.
I use copy/paste explanations of why, for example, I changed this “Phleum pratense” (Timothy Grass) identification to Alopecurus pratensis (Meadow Foxtail) because (1) I’m trying to do lots of identifications fast, (2) just changing the ID without providing an explanation seems rude and doesn’t educate anybody about the differences, and (3) there are only a few possible reasons why I would do that so a copy/paste paragraph can cover them. This is not intended as an insult, but a help.
9 Likes
Sedgequeen and I are not men 
6 Likes
Wait! There’s a strategy?!?!
4 Likes
I really agree here, and I think it’s important that we don’t group people and paint them with a broad brush. Everyone is their own person and shouldn’t be thought of as being a certain way just because they happen to be an expert or not, or based on any other way you might group them. If someone’s behavior is an issue, it’s best to address the behavior in relation to that person, and not whatever group they may belong to. What’s cool about iNat is that the community draws from an endless range of people who are interested in nature but both come to that interest and express it in many different ways.
15 Likes
When ID-ing, I usually try to look at other pictures of whatever the species is and compare those. (If an observation says cedar waxwing I’ll give myself a few sources on cedar waxwing identifying features.) If I disagree with the ID (Maybe I think it’s actually a female cardinal) I submit that as my ID with an explanation why. OP either agrees or disagrees with me, but as more people add their IDs to the observation the community almost always ends up makung an agreement.
Even if I made a wrong ID (Like the times I ID-ed the wrong organism in the pictures) the community is generally friendly and just asks me to remove/edit my ID.
I don’t see why to be annoyed by that, sometimes all we want is just some measurements or additional media to narrow things down further. If I submit a really clear picture of an okapi, for instance, and someone somehow wants more evidence… well… I think I’d mostly just be amused.
I agree with @sedgequeen. If the response is useful and relevant to multiple observations, you might as well save time and use that one over and over!
YES! And many professionals also love the subject too! It doesn’t matter about your experience when you love the subject and are open to other ideas and always learning.
4 Likes
I also hate to see that. Most experts really love their area of study! In my experience, many people who are scientists are also fun people with a great sense of humor. (For example, read Improbable Destinies by J. Losos, an anolis expert and really neat person overall)
5 Likes
I’m still stuck on the whole strategy thing. On the one hand I can agree with thinking of how to make your point clear and understandable. Yet, it doesn’t require a big game plan just to talk with someone. Maybe I’m looking at this wrong. Maybe it could help with you explaining what you mean by strategy? How do you strategize responses?
2 Likes
Oh, wow. I didn’t know they hybridized. Given that locally we have both species in overlapping territory, this has the potential to make IDs a whole lot more interesting.
3 Likes
And let us not discuss oaks. Or ducks. Or plenty of other species that I just don’t know or can’t think of at the moment. Sedgequeen was right that we need humility, because for some reason, nature just does not fit into our anthropogenic boxes nearly as often as we might like.
8 Likes
Kudos to those for whom communication flows easily but I watch my son with Asperger use strategies to communicate daily
- He uses strategies to communicate with new people.
- He uses strategies to talk to people he knows in unusual settings.
even as he excels in other areas, far beyond my capabilities.
We all use strategies (even if we may not use that word) to accomplish things in areas where we struggle, so the mystery behind how one person might need strategies to accomplish something another can do without strategies is easily enough explained: because we each have unique strengths and weaknesses.
As @lenrely beautifully put it:
10 Likes
Gestalt identification caught my eye. Birders have another term for that: jizz.
It’s when you can identify a bird just by a handful of characteristics or traits like general size, color, behavior, song, and so on. I’ve never been particularly good at it and prefer to have a good long look, but a lot of birding experts are so good at it they barely need to look at a bird to know what it is. I envy them, for sure.
But I do know that in my own backyard, if a bird just surges into a bush or tree, causing all the branches to wildly wave, it’s probably a Cardinalis cardinalis.
Even though I have been a bird watcher my entire life, I am not very good at it and appreciate the expertise on iNat. I am not an expert on anythng, that’s for sure.
But the real point is that there are all kinds of knowledge, both academic and field (and combined, for sure) and I think that much of the disagreements stem not because someone is a professional and expert vs someone just interested, but because of experiences one has had with that “type” of person. If you’ve had a run-in with an expert, you can get a bad taste in your mouth and start thinking about ivory towers and such. Unfortunately we then tend to lump all pros together and think of them that way. The reverse is also true thinking about amateurs.
So I just try to learn from anyone willing to share knowledge in any way (cut and paste or whatever) and not worry about tone or even education or lack thereof because I know there are arrogant folks in any realm/background and tone not withstanding, they may still have good information to offer.
(And please forgive my erratic spelling and typing as I have a big bandage on my index finger and it’s hard to type…)
4 Likes
Well, duck hybrids are pretty easy to spot and most often easy to id.
The male hybrids are easy to spot, anyway. Female ducks are a challenge for me even when they’re not hybrids.
3 Likes