Females are pretty visible too.)
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Beautiful comment, I am glad your son has strategies for talking with people!
Also, communication is tricky with just text, because you can’t pick up on tone, which I think has been a problem a few times.
@lenrely is right, it is amazing to be able to talk to so many unique people on iNat! You learn so much
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@BlueDragonSlug no problem. For the most part the stronger someone’s opinion the more compromised they are by it. Many people will tell you picking mushrooms of any sort is universally accepted, because they have not yet met a mycologist who thinks they should be left for others to enjoy or some other valid opinion that is new to them. Several posters on this thread simply doubled down on their opinion taking the gamble that it’s unflappable. Let’s say you go to court convinced that the judge will agree with you, and he says to you “Do you have a Plan B?”. The right answer is Yes, always prudent. It doesn’t amount to a hill of beans how certain you are of yourself.
PS- I found your post as curious as you found mine. Sorry I had to give a botany hike while I was typing. L
They are OUR boxes. Nature doesn’t do boxes. But @ItsMeLucy asked for boxes in nature and the replies came rolling in.
Over time, I have developed a rule of thumb:
If I have identified something broadly (say family), and someone disagrees by IDing it to a species in a different family, that is a reason to withdraw my ID.
If I have identified something broadly, and someone disagrees to the same broad level or even broader, I stand by my ID, unless and until they add an acceptable rationale, not just for why they are right, but for why I am wrong.
For example, if I IDed something as “Gobies,” and someone does a hard disagree to “Ray-finned Fishes” without any explanation – nope, I’m staying with Gobies. Now, if they explain what makes it not a goby, that’s different.
But on the other hand, if I IDed something as “Gobies,” and someone else IDs it as “Bigmouth Sleeper,” then yes, I will withdraw my Gobies, no explanation needed – because their knowing it to species level is enough explanation that they know it isn’t a goby.
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That seems like a weird general approach to me.
If I ID something as a Gobie, I will do so, because I believe that to be true for whatever reason. Why should I retract my ID, just because someone suggest a species ID in some other group that will probably not make sense to me (I will usually try to understand, why that new ID was chosen, and if it makes sense to me - of course I will adjust my suggestion). Actually that kind of stuff happens regularly in the spiderworld and most often results in tagging two other spider IDers to overrule the wrong one. A later finer ID does not automatically mean it is more right.
If I IDed something that is actually out of my comfort zone and someone disagrees I will probably retract to leave it to the experts… No matter what level the disagreeing ID ist on
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If I may post an update from behind-the-scenes: @ItsMeLucy appears to have found the observation that prompted this post. It was identified as “Plants” and marked “as good as it can be,” even though that was not true. Although the picture was rather blurred, I could still tell that it was a fern, not merely a “plant”; and since the observer stated that it was the exact same individual fern that they had observed before, that also constitutes information usable for identification. So no, not “as good as it can be.”
The comments on that observation suggest to me that it was a case of vigilantism – someone trying to enforce what they wish the rules were.
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Something to flag for help at iNat?
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I’ve seen a lot more use of “as good as it can be” by plant identifiers lately. Some of my own after bumping back to genus (without checking as to whether there’d be a good reason to only consider one species for said observation). I think I understand the rationale for the approach (seeking to make things research grade at the best level the IDer can personally manage) but I really can’t get behind it. That particular DQA field itself honestly seems a bit redundant to community ID and in these cases comes across as mostly being used by IDers to enforce their personal judgement.
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Gently pushing back, some genera literally cant be ided to species without DNA or microscopy, so it is needed in those cases. Happens a lot with fungus. Its not like a person can go back and collect a specimen to do all that,l, since most mushrooms are very ephemeral
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Perhaps, but without asking people who voted that way why they did so, it’s not really possible to know. I’ve often assumed someone’s motivations and after asking them have found out my assumptions were completely false.
I’m sure it gets misused, like any tool, but I think if someone is knowledgable about a taxon and knows that the diagnostic attributes required to differentiate species are not included in the evidence provided, it’s fine to vote Yes there.
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I also do use this DQA moren often now, as I have grown more confident on certain genera and locations after reading through the body of literature for that genus.
…also because I somewhat changed my perception of what this DQA really entails. For quite some time I was also kind of intimidated by that button, as I felt “Well yeah, I know that we cannot devide between species x and species y with our knowledge of this group NOW, but what if that changes in 3 years?”
But actually this kind of thinking is paralyzing, thinking about the many taxon changes and splits that are taking place all the time…
Well, if we get new knowledge in 2 years I am sure someone (if I am still active probably even myself) will go fix those cases.
Until then, the huuuuuuge pile of these taxa in “needs ID” with observations that are untouched since years, does look a bit less daunting and managable…and observers get some attention and closure for their observations, while observations that have been looked at by many IDers already can move along and make way for new ones.
If any other IDer or the observer is not happy with it for a certain observation, it can be easily reversed.
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There’s some cases with plants (and presumably other organisms too, but plants are my wheelhouse) where a specific feature that’s not always present is vital for distinguishing species, and that’s when I tend to use “good as it can be.” For example, most (maybe all? I’m not sure) of my “good as it can be” markings are on Hydrocotyle observations where the inflorescence is not present in the observation - at least among the common species in Florida, you really can’t ID it to species level if you don’t have that.
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I don’t get the hostility towards “use the scientific name” crowd. It is neither elitist or snobby. The scientific name only comes across as this because it “looks exotic” but it is no more exotic than a Mexican local calling his plants by Spanish names, or any more exotic than an English common name sounds to that same Spanish speaker. The scientific names are the same exact thing as a common name, a LABEL that can be used to describe an organism to the lowest common level (species) to the exclusion of all other species. Many local common names do not have this power (saying “live oak” can mean dozens of types, or the spanish word for a certain bush might apply to many different planes that are similar). Using these labels in laymen discussion need not have the specificity, so the local names work. But on iNat this is not the case as this is basically a taxonomic database now where the exact ID is quite important to get right.
The most important part of the Latinized name is that they were introduced to SOLVE the problem you are describing about precise communication among different peoples and languages. The Latin name is universal and any naturalist seeing Quercus rubra will know exactly what oak species you are observing. Going by a local name, expert or not an expert, will not always have this power. Experts AND non-experts can use them. Beginners starting a square one can learn them (they are no harder than common names most times). There are no gate-keepers or ivory towers to use these names. They are in all the field guides. The fact they can look intimidating is not a good argument. People can certainly use their local common names, but you will never get everyone in the world on the same page for that animal unless you use the Latin name. Taxonomic revisions are the nature of the beast and sometimes you have to learn a new name…
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Maye start with the crowd that goes against common names first? Those are who try to make divisions and separate “good names” from “bad names”, explain how much latin names are better, while common names adapted and now are mostly binominal or unique for a species, so it’s actually not hard at all to find out what people talk about if they use those, and people into nature will know, words of others you divide by two anyway and they wouldn’t know any latin too, so there’s no downside at all, internationally we talk via iNat where everything is in your language already and with latin names.
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I grew up in England as a botanist’s daughter. My first word was “tree”, but my second (and third) was Dactylis glomerata. No big deal.I didn’t even know that plants had “common” names! And this was a lifesaver when I moved to Italy in my thirties, not to mention now when I travel. Scientific names are a wonderful bridge between different peoples and different cultures, but all with the same interest. If only such a thing existed in everyday life, maybe there would be more understanding and less conflict.
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Binomials etc are Esperanto for biologists. But even botanists and zoologists speak two different languages. Mine is Botanese - why did they use Erica for a spider? - we have about 700 flowering heaths in Cape Fynbos alone.
All those homonyms tangling up in Kingdom Disagreement 11K (I clear Africa each day, anyone want to tackle a different location?)
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Goodness, hadn’t realised that was such a problem. May give it a go when I get bored of unknowns 
!
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There are a few accounts in West Africa that frequently mass upload with a few consistent misID or just placeholder text in French. A fair amount of them lead to kingdom disagreement, I should be more diligent about checking, they’ve got some very neat observations.
On the other hand, I’ve checked your filtered list and landed on quite a few I dreaded, insects on plants where IDers disagree on what the subject is (with or without clarification in the notes).
Still, it’ll keep me busy on the train!
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I also see a glitch sometimes, when everything that observer IDs gets a wrong default ID. Bunch of doves all IDed as planty.
Allowing for using iNat probably in a second, if not third, language. And glitchy internet and power supply (ask me how I know, sigh) I am happy to help with clearing problem children.
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