Users opting out of community IDs can lead to inaccurate data points

Feature Requests
1

When a user opts out of the community ID feature, their identification (even if it is incorrect) seems to be included in the map for that species. If the user doesn’t respond to correct their misidentification, there is seemingly nothing that can be done to address that. This seems like an oversight.

I ran into an example of this earlier, which a curator had to “reindex” to fix the map.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9766837

2

If the ID becomes maverick it is removed off the maps.

This topic may be a duplicate but I approved it for now with the edited wording.

3

Does getting it to become Casual grade also remove it from the map?

1 Like
4

It depends on which map you are talking about.

5

There are a few cases that hide observations on the taxon page and Explore page maps by default:

  • if the community disagrees with the observation taxon (as Charlie said, if the observer’s ID is maverick to the community’s ID and they opted out of community ID)
  • observation lacks lat/long
  • has a large accuracy radius, which is defined as ~50 km, but varies depending on latitude
  • marked as captive/cultivated in the Data Quality Assessment section (DQA)
  • marked as having an inaccurate location in the DQA
  • marked as not having evidence of an organism in the DQA
  • the observation or any of its photos are flagged
4 Likes
6

In the observation I cited, there were 2 votes for A. bicinctus and 4 for the correct A. allardi… but since the incorrect bicinctus ID was not “maverick”, it had been showing up on the map for that species. Later, one of those bicinctus votes was changed to allardi and now that data point has disappeared from the map.

But if that user hadn’t changed their vote, the incorrect ID would not have been “maverick” and it would be showing incorrectly on the map, yes? What is the solution to that scenario? It sounds like I could tag it to make it a “casual observation”, but that’s not really appropriate here.

@charlie I wouldn’t say this issue has been “solved” if the only solution is to manually coax every rogue identifier into changing their ID until “maverick” status is reached.

1 Like
7

People have varying opinions about the way opting out of community id works but my understanding is the admins want it that way so people have control over their own observations. It’s come up multiple times before

1 Like
8

You’d just have to get one more person to ID as A. allardi.

2 Likes
9

See above. Casual grade datapoints, such as those where the community disagrees with the ID by an observer who opted out, are already removed from the map.

14

What’s the point of having them on the map at all?