The NHIC staff are apparently very busy right now (and have auto-replies turned on) so don’t expect to hear anything for a while.
well, if they aren’t able to respond, then we should be able to override their decisions until they are, right?
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No, we should respect the process until is broken. So far NHIC has been following the process as written, and so should we. Right now we are looking for some explanation for these decisions. If one of the two following things doesn’t happen:
- NHIC provides a plausible mechanism by which open locations on iNaturalist may threaten Ontario populations of Red Spruce, Pitch Pine and/or Pignut Hickory, or
- Red Spruce, Pitch Pine and/or Pignut Hickory are unobscured
That would be the point when it’s clear that the process is not working. I don’t think it will come to that and I certainly hope not. This is not incredibly urgent, another couple of weeks where Red Spruce is obscured is ultimately not a big deal.
By plausible mechanism, I don’t mean something like “The population is small enough that targeted seed collection might threaten the species”. That’s just the mechanism. For it to be plausible, there needs to be some reason to think future levels of seed collection may approach that threshold, and some reason to think that iNat observations would increase that pressure.
This exact case has been a bit weird in that it never went through email I don’t think, rather having been pulled directly from this thread. Charlie, I would suggest emailing Allison to put you in touch with NHIC so they can respond to your original request privately if unable to do so publicly.
Overall, the main issue has still been one of transparency and clarity:
- We were told that Ontario NHIC had decided to obscure all rare species, and only three months later found out that that wasn’t true and they had every intention of participating in the process outlined. I don’t understand why it took so long for us to learn that, and I don’t understand why nearly every other CDC did understand that they were meant to proactively review the rankings. The lesson that should have been learned is that controversial decisions should be explained in a timely manner.
- Red Spruce has been the go-to example here of something that should not be obscured! Surely that should signal that an explanation is needed? At the very least, a signal that this decision should be communicated somewhere other than an obscure flag that nobody will notice. I’ve created the spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rlSqVt-t1NBIjF_OsYk7q4LgdW-SYV33SggAZMk9t-U/edit#gid=0) as hopefully a place to keep track of what requests have been made and what decisions resulted. There may be reasons why explanations cannot be made public in some instances, but the actual decisions should be fully transparent. I don’t expect NHIC staff to fill out the spreadsheet, and am happy to do so myself, but at the very least, the decisions should be posted here or somewhere else easy to track where anybody interested can be notified. This can be as simple as:
A request was made to unobscured the following species. We have decided that American Chestnut, Blue Ash, Butternut, Eastern Redbud and Honey-locust can be un-obscured. Kentucky Coffee Tree, Pignut Hickory, Pitch Pine, Red Spruce and Sundial Lupine will remain obscured.
Thanks for your response. To be honest i haven’t emailed for a lot of reasons, firstly i just haven’t had time to deal with it, secondly, i think the process should be transparent anyway, at least for issues like this where there’s broader community and precedent issues. Frankly, if they are insistent that these common species should be obscured, i don’t think we should be asked to email with them in private, i think they should participate here and describe it. Otherwise the onus is on the community to deal with these problems. I appreciate these are all difficult issues, but this potentially is setting a really problematic precedent and i really do think we need to hash it out.
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For sure, I don’t disagree at all. As a government agency though there may be restrictions on what they are able to post publicly.
maybe, but there needs to be some other way… iNat admins or someone else going as a go-between or something. We shouldn’t have to fight tooth and nail again and again for access to our own data, when there’s no reason for it to be hidden from us, and that is where this could lead. I’m not sure if this is just not a priority from the other end or else if they are dragging on this on purpose, or maybe some other issue, but either way, this process isn’t really working how it should. If there is some bizarre issue where some NHI groups can’t advise on what to obscure because they run into legal or procedural problems, then in those cases they aren’t the best group to go to for help deciding what to obscure, because they aren’t able to be. It has nothing to do with expertise or ecology, sadly, it’s just politics.
Reuven - thanks for updating the subspecies. I had a quick look and, anecdotally, I can see locations for most observations, but some are still obscured. Here are two examples, is it because the observer has set the observation as obscured?
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/24626750
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/28003491
Yes, those have been obscured manually by the observer.
Where it says “Geoprivacy: Obscured” shows the geoprivacy the observer has set:
Here’s an observation with taxon geoprivacy of obscured but the observer has it set to open: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/28426806
got it, thanks - we have many project members who provide permission to see the obscured coordinates, but not everyone selects that option (or joins the project)
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I don’t disagree that this is maybe not the best process. HOWEVER it is the process we have for now. I have not received a formal request from you for those species you’ve mentioned to be obscured. I did read these posts and I can see that you had conversations with Mike about it, but as it was not funneled through the proper channels neither your request nor his handling of it was done effectively or according to the curator guide.
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I’m not able to do that now because I have a new baby. I will get to eventually but I finds it frustrating that we can’t do this transparently here. It’s hard to imagine the justification for this especially given the odd insistence that we should have data hidden for such a common species without an explanation.
Or in the mean time does anyone else have time to do it and cc me? I’ve had like two hours of sleep.
@carrieseltzer ? Is this working how you are intending it to? Seems to me if a group wants control over our data they should at least engage in discussion here rather than having us go through their non-transparent procedure. If there’s some reason they can’t… it would be helpful to at least understand why. I’m sorry I’m stuck in this but really… the spruce thing truly is difficult to imagine a reason for.
I don’t see how this can be read as anything besides an acceptance that this is being treated as an official request to unobscure?
And the flag has been resolved with:
Staff from the Ontario Conservation Data Centre (NHIC) have reviewed an official request and left the geoprivacy as obscured.
If it needs to go through the proper channels that’s fine, but there is zero reason that anyone had to think this was being treated as anything other than a proper request, and it’s baffling why that somehow means that the request will be considered, but no explanation will be provided? In any case, I have sent the official request for Red spruce, Pitch Pine and Pignut Hickory.
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I agree that the currently articulated policy in the curator guide of going through email for all requests is not transparent, and not consistent with what I proposed quoted above. However, this forum thread has also gotten unwieldy. I will work with @allisonsw_nsc to propose an alternative process that strikes a balance of record keeping, transparency, and clarity.
With an eye towards more scalable, longer-term solutions, I’m pulling initial thoughts together for new feature development to lessen the various frustrations with taxon geoprivacy. A very small first step is greater visibility for everyone to more easily see what is obscured where on taxon pages (see issue filed here).
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Thank you!
Thanks Carrie. This post and all your others in this thread are a great example of how to communicate timely and with concrete answers instead of platitudes. I wish we could see that from the other participants here.
These are the questions I have. Every one is related to the absolutely abysmal level of communication coming from NatureServe and NHIC:
- Why did it take two months to get the answer to “what provinces are obscuring all rarities”?
- Why did it take three months before learning that obscuring all rare species in Ontario was not a long-term plan?
- Why hasn’t NHIC indicated that they will now be reviewing the status of species of their own initiative now that the stated reason for not doing so is no longer relevant?
- Why was zero attempt made to communicate the results of the decisions about Red Spruce et al.?
- Why has nobody at NatureServe or NHIC agreed that “we will post all decisions on this forum thread” or something else similar is obviously better than not doing so , and agreed to do so going forward before any alternative process is established.
I don’t need answers to these questions. I don’t care whose fault it was. But NatureServe and NHIC need to start communicating properly with each other and with the community here. The fact that nobody apparently even looked at this thread for the past two weeks speaks volumes for how concerned they are that lots of useful, voluntarily shared data is being suppressed for no reason. Or maybe they do think there’s a reason, I have no idea because nobody will say what it is.
All of these issues could have been resolved with a few sentences at the right time. Instead they have been repeatedly allowed to fester to the the point that most participants have dropped out of this thread and some of those remaining are advocating that we openly defy the decisions made.
Red Spruce was first discussed here in detail on March 15. Allison committed that Red Spruce would be looked at on May 13 and Mike said the same thing twice on June 7. It is beyond absurd that, on July 17, nobody has seen any explanation as to what the concern is regarding this species and yet it is still obscured. I know that the people at NHIC are good people and have the expertise needed. All the related emails I’ve had from people at NHIC and from Allison have been very gracious. If it wasn’t for that, I would have a hard time explaining this ordeal as anything other than incompetence or deliberate sabotage. I still don’t know what the heck is going on.
As one of the more numerous contributors in the thread earlier, I simply stopped participating when it became clear that nothing I wrote or contributed was considered relevant to the process, and that as a member of the iNat community, ON THIS ISSUE (caps intentional) my feedback wasn’t welcome. The decisions about what will be done will be made without my input, regardless of if i am willing to attempt to contribute it.
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- Why did it take two months to get the answer to “what provinces are obscuring all rarities”?
I am sorry it took so long to get an answer and that the answer was perhaps not clear and complete. It is quite complicated and each jurisdiction has different definition of sensitive and a different list of species they wanted obscured. I do seem to recall though that Carrie posted an excel spreadsheet with all species listed for every jurisdiction at the beginning of this process, it may have been on another forum or page though, perhaps before this discussion was set up? I can’t recall, which is another problem of this discussion forum, it is so long now it is getting hard to look back and follow everything that is said, and comments can get lost/forgotten and not responded to (not an excuse I know). I have provided each jurisdictions decisions below.
CDC Decisions on Obscuring in iNat as of 17/10/18
MBCDC – Western Prairie Fringed Orchid, Small White Lady’s-slipper, Purple-fringed Orchid, White Flower Moth, Verna’s Flower Moth, Dakota Skipper, Powesheik Skipperling, Dusky Dune Moth, Pale Yellow Dune Moth
NTCDC – only sensitive species – Peregrine Falcon, Gyrfalcon, Polar Bear, Grizzly Bear, Boreal Caribou
YTCDC – only sensitive species – Peregrine Falcon, Gyrfalcon, Bull Trout, Dolly Varden, Grizzly Bear, White-tailed Deer
ACIMS – internal sensitive species list
BCCDC – list of species susceptible to persecution or harm posted online
SKCDC – decided to continue with using their Tracked Species list (S1-S3, plus some others)
ONNHIC – provincially and federally listed, all S1-S3, plus some others
ACCDC – species listed by our provincial legislation and/or SARA, or assessed as at-risk by COSEWIC, plus any other species that are economically exploitable but not included in the categories above.
NUCDC – Since we don’t have any species listed under territorial legislation, it could read as species listed under SARA, or assessed as at-risk by COSEWIC. This should capture all our sensitive species.
- Why did it take three months before learning that obscuring all rare species in Ontario was not a long-term plan?
Who/where did you hear that this wasn’t a long-term plan? We (NSC network) are currently working to define data sensitive species but as with any organization and especially where multiple organizations work together it can take a frustratingly long time to come to any consensus. It may end up that Ontario does change their decision but currently they are still maintaining that their “tracked species” list (all S1-S3, and some exceptions) are obscured as a starting point. Exceptions will be made on a case by case basis as per the curator guide and as the process has already been moving forward.
3. Why hasn’t NHIC indicated that they will now be reviewing the status of species of their own initiative now that the stated reason for not doing so is no longer relevant?
To my knowledge they will not be. All tracked species remain obscured unless specifically requested and approved by NHIC staff. I will update the community if I hear otherwise. - Why was zero attempt made to communicate the results of the decisions about Red Spruce et al.?
I have no answer for this. - Why has nobody at NatureServe or NHIC agreed that “we will post all decisions on this forum thread” or something else similar is obviously better than not doing so , and agreed to do so going forward before any alternative process is established.
As Carrie mentioned, we have been in conversation about this this morning. Expect an update to the curator guidelines soon.
As for looking at this thread. You are correct I did not look at it for 2 or more weeks. It is not my job to monitor this thread. I promptly reply and forward all email requests I get, which is my job. I work part time and dealing with iNaturalist issues is a very very small portion of my work. From the first I have thought of this thread as an informal discussions page, largely for and by the iNat curator community of which I am not currently one of. Perhaps I was wrong in that assumption and I do apologize to the iNaturalist community at large if there was a lack of clear and timely communication, by NatureServe Canada.
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Thanks Allison,
I mean that, from March 3 to May 31, the working assumption, as expressed by numerous people posting, was that NHIC had decided that all rare species will be obscured on an ongoing basis, without exception, and that neither iNat nor NatureServe would intervene in any way:
Nobody in any official capacity was willing to just come out and say “Obviously some species like Long-tailed Duck, Monarch and Honey-locust do not need to be obscured and we will be un-obscuring these species eventually”, or better yet “obviously some rare species do not need to be obscured and if NHIC is not willing to be reasonable they will lose their control over the process”. That’s seriously all it would have taken to avoid about half the posts in this thread! My impression now is that NHIC was not properly communicating with you that this was never meant to be permanent, but I could be wrong. That doesn’t matter now, it was a misunderstanding, whatever. The point was that this should have been an indication that basic information was not being communicated properly.
Similarly with every other communication failure. I think these are honest failures. I’m not angry that they happened, I’m frustrated that they have not been learned from.
As for looking at this thread. You are correct I did not look at it for 2 or more weeks. It is not my job to monitor this thread. I promptly reply and forward all email requests I get, which is my job. I work part time and dealing with iNaturalist issues is a very very small portion of my work. From the first I have thought of this thread as an informal discussions page, largely for and by the iNat curator community of which I am not currently one of. Perhaps I was wrong in that assumption and I do apologize to the iNaturalist community at large if there was a lack of clear and timely communication, by NatureServe Canada.
Ok, maybe we have different impression of what this thread was meant to be and I apologise for saying you were wrong to not be checking it. But iNat falls very clearly into the same philosophy of open data, open communication and sharing expertise as somewhere like Wikipedia. And that means that most of these conversations happen in public. I’d estimate about 80% of the posts in this thread are related to issues requiring a response from iNat or NatureServe or the Ontario CDC. It’s not a coincidence that there have been zero posts relating to other provinces where the CDC’s began from a reasonable starting point. I doubt there would be more than about 20 posts in this thread if the position of the Ontario NHIC had been explained in March rather than June.
Hopefully you can understand the perspective of those using the site. Right now it feels like a third-party organisation has forced itself into a community-driven site, made a bunch of weird and harmful decisions, and is still not obviously aware that:
- This data, publicly and voluntarily shared, should not be treated as if it is internal data to the organisation that they have full control over. I still feel like the communications I’ve received from NHIC are not willing to accept this.
- A whole bunch of work by curators was inexplicably wiped out by in the process. I think we are now about where we are in February in terms of number of species being obscured although I have no way to check. It shouldn’t have taken 170+ posts in this thread and over 4 months for us to get there. I think nearly every discussion in this thread relates to species that were open in February
- Controversial decisions should be explained proactively
I’m glad that things do seem to be hopefully getting better.
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May 10
May 16
The first formal request to unobscure was sent by Reuven on May 18th, and almost all of the species he asked to unobscure were.
How is this not exactly how it was laid out in the initial post by Carrie and the curator guide? It took until May 10th for all the updates to be made so any conversations before that are kind of moot. So from May 10th to May 16th, it took 5 days for an official response from Carrie, that in my mind clearly stated that, yes ON is still obscuring an annoying amount, HOWEVER following the guidelines set out they agree to review those decisions.
I don’t see this discussion as failed communications. I see it all as part of a very new process and a huge learning curve. We had no idea at the beginning of this process how extensively curators were editing obscure status, we believed it was all based on Sranks that were very out of date. We came into this process as iNat users who wanted to help the community udpate obscure statuses. I now realize that many of you had a completely different view point and had no idea that Sranks were even used to begin with for obscuring. We have all learned a lot and this process is far from perfect and also far from being set in stone or “completed”. I believe that all these communications, while frustrating for users to pound the same point continually, are a great way to pressure organizations (CDCs etc.) to really take a look at the decisions they are making and how they will affect the larger community.
I want to acknowledge that I think some of the communication breakdown here falls on my shoulders, particularly emphasizing to NSC the importance of the Forum as a method of communication during the (painful) process of working through these big changes.
Allison and I talked this morning about revising the process laid out in the curator guide, which is clearly overdue, and I’ll take the blame for that since I’m the one that added the language in the first place. Building on @reuvenm 's spreadsheet, I made an expanded version for public reference and tracking. Here’s what Allison and I came up with:
In Canada, where iNaturalist is a member of the iNaturalist Network that oversees iNaturalist.ca, NatureServe Canada’s Conservations Data Centers (CDCs), establish and maintain the conservation statuses for each province and territory (except Quebec) along with the automatically applied “taxon geoprivacy”.
If any curator would like to make changes to the taxon geoprivacy for any national, provincial, or territorial unit of Canada (excluding Quebec), please first review the spreadsheet of changes proposed since May 2019 to see if someone else has also requested the change. If not, you can enter the request in the spreadsheet. Then, please email Allison Siemens-Worsley (aworsley@natureserve.ca) NatureServe Canada’s National Data Support Biologist to let her know about the proposed change(s) and rationale. Allison will forward your request to the appropriate provincial/territorial CDC for review/response. Discussions between CDCs and curators should lead to an agreement that is favourable to both parties and biodiversity conservation. Curators must ultimately follow the recommendation from the CDC and are invited to discuss any concerns with the iNaturalist community in order to promote a broader discussion and identify alternative solutions that are agreeable to all parties.
In summary, the process should be:
- Check the spreadsheet.
- Flag the taxon for curation.
- Enter the requested changes in the spreadsheet.
- Email Allison, who then emails CDC(s) and requester.
- CDCs correspond with requester on the taxon flag whenever possible so there is a public record of deliberation. Exceptions to the public discussion should be made when the discussion itself requires mentioning sensitive locations.
- CDC (or curator with support from CDC) makes changes to taxon geoprivacy and resolves flag, or resolves flag without changing taxon geoprivacy if no change is supported.
- Allison enters the resolution in the spreadsheet.
If no response is provided to the curator by the CDC within 10 business days of contacting Allison, the curator may proceed with the change to taxon geoprivacy and then confirm the details of their update(s) by email to Allison Siemens-Worsley.
I haven’t been able to update the curator guides (.org and .ca) just yet, but aim to do that later this evening or tomorrow morning.
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