I’m on my phone so finding one right now is clumsy, I’ll find one tomorrow after work.
In a related sense, my view on Uliodon IDs illustrates very well where some are right to id at genus without explicit disagreement, while others might have access to information/literature that allows them to confidently go further
OK, I just now made a genus level Uliodon obs into RG by doing that. I seem to recall though some side effects of this when it came to mapping and filters, but I don’t recall the details.
Oh, sorry… Thought you were replying to my last post! I don’t think it has any side effects that I know of…
I don’t disagree with you. I was just pointing people to the Etiquette Tutorial because their comments seemed relevant to the discussion over there.
That’s interesting, I have recently done that to take obs out of “Needs ID” to save wasting ID’ers’ time on obs that have an unidentifiable image but I know what they were, eg repeat obs, or different angles on distant trees.
I didn’t intend to make them RG, but I am comfortable that they are reliable.
Is it correct to use that feature this way?
Can you point to an example, please?
Here’s one I just did.
https://inaturalist.nz/observations/24173751
I used to hand weed those geminata, which were IDd at the time during site tours by a Forest and Bird botanist and by Geoff Davidsen, native plant nursery pioneer.
The obs is important to me because that bank is now forested and has only one or two carex observable - presumably shading out.
I’m a trifle confused! The images are worthless, so it might be better to simply leave them out, so that the obs will never reach RG for that reason alone. Note that the obs is not RG anyway, and cannot be as it is marked as not wild in the DQA. Was it really planted? Did you mark it as not wild in a separate act to marking it as “as good as it can be”? This may be the side effect I alluded to above? I seem to remember that putting some things in as “as good as it can be” makes the obs casual in some cases (so drops off maps of wild ones). I need to look into that further.
To be quite frank, I see what you are doing on iNat as being just a tad “idiosyncratic”! My advice would be to try to aim more for photos which are useful (not perfect, but useful) for ID purposes and keep it simple. I do have trouble sometimes trying to figure out what you are trying to do.
let’s try not calling other people’s observations worthless. There is no criteria for photo ‘quality’ on iNat, it is not BugGuide. If you can’t tell what the observation in the photo is, mark it as reviewed and leave it for someone else.
Technically, I called the photos associated with this obs worthless, not the obs (which is more than just the photos). I was just calling a spade a spade, as they say! The uploader (above) described the observations they are talking about as being unidentifiable from the images, so I was just agreeing with them on that. Sorry if we differ in our standards of politeness in such a forum, but an unidentifiable image (their words) is pretty much straightforwardly worthless in the present context. Also, you quoted me out of context, as I explained more clearly what I meant by “worthless” in my final remarks, which you ignored.
This forum is for discussing iNaturalist, and per the user guidelines you need to be respectful to other users. It has nothing to do with my standards, it has to do with the rules that everyone else is following, and you need to also if you want to keep using this forum.
I am sure that you are correct, but simply calling an image “worthless” after the uploader has already referred to the species in question as being unidentifiable from the image, is perhaps being a bit picky to make a fuss over, isn’t it? It is clear enough from context that I intended that to mean “worthless from the point of view of identification”, which, to my mind at least, pretty much defines “unidentifiable”. Perhaps “useless” was technically more correct, but I didn’t expect to have my words picked over, so it seemed near enough the same. Perhaps this illustrates the importance of assuming good faith when you interpret what other people write? Many things can be misinterpreted under an assumption of bad faith. Perhaps it is best to save criticisms for cases which more clearly illustrate disrespect?
I’m looking at your observations
And they are all RGs so someone’s opinion
Is just that there are enough IDers coming in and verifying what you are posting
I know of a few people on here to include my own daughter who hasn’t posted anything who
Make quite a few IDs all that I know is
Most are experts in there field
And are truly trying to help ID observations
Because of there knowledge
I wouldn’t let it get under your skin
Unless something more “stupid”
Is going on
Amazingly I’ve had morons on here
Calling me names because I posted
To many of one type of plants
I thought it was just me
But a few other people on here have had the same
Run down with said persons
I just ignore them
And go forward
The images are worth a good deal re the occurrence, spread over time, and die out, but not for purposes of species identification.
Yes, its wild of course, sorry, I forgot to unmarked it as Captive. To date that has been the only way I could remove such observations from the Idenify pool during upload. Often I find time to change that after upload to “No evidence of…” but that is not correct either.
Don’t worry about trying to figure out what I’m trying to do, you have a lot of company in that but its working. You can read the associated Posts if you want to understand.
The observations available from 1997-99 are of course irreplaceable, so I was very fortunate to be given one of the first digital cameras which enabled documenting the flora and fauna even to this level of quality. I hope to be able to delete some of my poorer images from the current period as I get better ones, but all too often by the time I get back to reobserve, the plant or even the whole habitat has been destroyed or altered in some way, so the record of its existence and qualities, even if it requires verbal interpretation, is invaluable in assessing the development and loss of wild plant communities in an urban situation.
stephen, I just saw your post above to charlie. I tried to reply directly to yoours, but I can’t because I’ve apparently made 3 consecutive replies. so adding it here - actually I did think you meant my obs was worthless! but I’m glad to hear you didn’t. Thanks also for the feedback on the obs, and please, as I’ve said before to others, feel free to change those flags for best curation. I will always be able to see the obs and point people to it.
I appreciate your comments charlie, but fwiw I also appreciate stephen helping me understand the discomfort such observations can cause to some members. I’ve been a member of the community for long enough now to understand that its members are diverse and have diverse ways of communicating…and I certainly struggle with my own subjective responses to what I observe:) , though I seldom have a problem with people’s observations. It has happened though. When it does, I’ve learned to move on as fast as possible, and I am trying to make it as easy as possible for stephen and others to not see, or move on from, those of mine which have a purpose that is - -well, i can’t find another word, so let say idiosyncratic! -and so might seem careless or disrespectful of iNat.
Thanks ck2az, I have had similar comments, eg “You already have an obs of this species from this area” :) That made me chuckle. It makes me think of the Jodi Mitchell song -
“they wanna take all the trees, and put 'em in a tree-museum
so the people can come and pay a dollar and a half just to see 'em”
I like my plants in quantity! And if one falls through human intervention I miss it…
I think what happens is that if it is genus or higher it will be RG, but if it is lower than genus (family, subfamily etc) then it becomes casual. That might explain the “sometimes” aspect of what you were seeing.
Certainly needs investigating at some stage.
This is important for the CNC. The user is also changing the intended Kingdom on observations, kicking them into “State of Matter Life” and hasn’t responded to my previous comments regarding changes to the observer’s preference.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/24108246
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/24082910
wow, very frustrating that this person isn’t responding to @s or messages at all. That DOES seem like a problem, though i don’t know whether it technically violates any rules. I kind of feel like IDs should be nullifiable if someone does that though maybe that’s another huge can of worms