i don’t see explicit disagreement on that one. Did she change it?
@vermfly, anyone on iNaturalist has the right to add an ID in good faith to another user’s observation, so that won’t be something we prevent. Our Community Guidelines remind us to all assume others mean well, and until there is proof otherwise, I think we should all remember that and assume the user is just wanted to add IDs. We’re all here to learn, and one way to do so is by making IDs. I don’t see this as a case of trolling.
As has been noted, these IDs (from what I’ve seen) are not disagreeing IDs, but rather the user is saying “I don’t know if this is X species, but I do know it’s a bird”, which is fine. If you don’t want them to ID your observations, you should ask them to refrain from doing so, and they should respect your request. You can also opt out of Community ID if you like.
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Hi! I took another look and either the user changed their ID or I was mistaken.
I agree that this user is probably just clueless, not malicious. Keep in mind that notifications are not working properly at the moment, so she might not have seen any of the comments about her behavior. I have seen quite a few novice identifiers on a rampage like this. I think it would be good if new users had to look at a bunch of training slides or view a video before they get identification privileges.
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I would push back against the term “rampage” here. I don’t see any deleterious effects, nothing has been “downgraded”, and the fact that this user is choosing to not explicitly disagree with IDs shows they likely know what they’re doing, to a degree.
Just as we should not make assumptions when IDing observations, let’s not make assumptions about other users’ motivations.
I’m going to close this topic for a few hours because I don’t think much more can be learned about this specific situation at the moment. If anyone has thoughts on who should be able to add IDs, that would require a separate topic.
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This topic was automatically opened after 2 hours.
On a different but somewhat related issue, I think that sometimes the somewhat competitive leaderboard system can encourage counterproductive behaviour which could be a factor in cases like the above. There is someone, for example, on iNat.nz, who I won’t name, but who has suddenly shot to no. 1 in our leaderboard for identifiers. Looking at his IDs, I am certainly finding misidentifications, but I don’t know what proportion. Maybe they think that the error rate is low enough to still be useful, and maybe they are right, but I am a little bit uncomfortable about what they are doing!
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PS: I would prefer a system whereby misidentifications (judged by community ID) were subtracted from an identifiers “score”
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I once asked a very good and frequent identifier if he disagreed with my species ID, as he had added an agreement to Genus level. He replied that he did not disagree, and was just corroborating my ID as far as he could.
I saw the sense in that, and subsequently did tge same thing occasionally, sometimes for a new used to show someone was interested in their obs, and sometimes with the idea that corroborating the genus ID might be useful should an ID be added of something in the wrong genus.
When you make such an ID, you are asked whether or not you disagree with the Species ID. Unfortunately the choice made is not, as far as I know, visible thereafter, so I have generally felt uncomfortable about making such IDs without adding an explanatory comment, and if I receive one of these IDs, I ask them what they meant.
Just my experiences to date…I have no view on what the correct practice is or shoul be.
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Unfortunately the choice made is not, as far as I know, visible thereafter
This is visible, actually; if you actively disagree then a message in bold will appear with your identification stating your disagreement (whereas if you are not disagreeing, this message is not displayed)
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With this new proposed Identification Etiquette Tutorial https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identification-etiquette-on-inaturalist-wiki/1503, the advice is to no longer make coarser IDs unless we actually disagree with the finer ID or don’t think there is enough evidence to support the finer ID. (See paragraph 3 of the tutorial)
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Has the wiki been updated about this since the discussion on this particular question? Was that discussion resolved?
In both the situations you described I would explicitly disagree with the identification, which to me leaves the not-explicit-disagreement option for situations like “he did not disagree, and was just corroborating my ID as far as he could.” I don’t do this very often but I think it is a good option to have in the rare cases it applies and is helpful. I’m probably repeating comments from that thread though.
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Thanks paloma, good to know. I hadn’t ever noticed that.
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This is how I always understood it before. I’m just referring people to the Identification Etiquette Wiki because I don’t always get it right–it’s best to read it yourself and ask questions about it there.
You’re welcome.
Edit: Post now irrelevant!
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You can mark an obs as “ID can’t be improved” while it is at genus level and it will be RG… The only advantage I see in that though is taking it out of “needs ID” pool
I strongly disagree with this. When I see a genus level non-dissenting ID from an identifier that I respect, I immediately know the id is going to be difficult, so I am doubly careful before applying my own. Further, someone that has taken the time to review an observation and mark it with an ID implicitly (as opposed to just banging out “agrees”) deserves any +1 to their ID “scores”… Not that I care about “scores” as such.
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Can you point to an example, please?