When I read the forum topics I can’t help but notice there are often complaints about ‘dumb’ users who misidentify, lack of quality, ways to restrict research grade to experts,… As one of those non-professionals who is passionate about nature and a great fan of iNaturalist I find this unsettling. i…

That may be your point Mark, but I was replying to someone else who was making a different point. As for your point, I personally try to pick taxa that I know and look quickly thru all obs identified as that taxon to check if everything seems to be in order, regardless of RG or not. I see your poin…

[image] stephen_thorpe: we have to live with a low level of misidentifications (which is not a problem restricted by any means to iNat and the like, but every collection in the world and every publication!) Point well worth remembering here! Collection curators spend entire careers not findi…

I have even found people sharing their ids for observations a couple of years old - and its a real pleasure to be reminded of these puzzles and sometimes resolve them. I only confirm an id where I can also judge that it’s correct based on my own limited knowledge / time spent peering at description…

I’d like to hear from researchers about how they take a data set from iNat and what they do about the overly redundant cardinals and the indistinct photos in order to make it useful but not introduce bias when filtering.

Personally I found this place really hard to follow - In most sites a forum page is somewhere where one posts questions to get answers so that is where I posted a picture. I was rapidly shot down for that which was annoying as was finding my way around. I’m just an average outdoor person one that do…

Hi Simon, I take it you are referring to this? https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/plant-identification-please/2439 you did ask a question, and it was answered, and I feel it was in no way “shooting you down”. The first response pointed you in the right direction, and even followed up by asking you …

[image] stephen_thorpe: but it is clearly defined as an observation for which at least two user (accounts) agree on the ID, and for which there is no significant disagreement to counter that. Correction: the definition must include: that it has to be “wild” and that planted or captive observa…

[image] michaelpirrello: I’d like to hear from researchers about how they take a data set from iNat and what they do about the overly redundant cardinals and the indistinct photos in order to make it useful but not introduce bias when filtering As one on both ends. Although I submit thousands…

Distribution maps, combined with other records, via www.gbif.org . Duplicate records don’t matter as not trying to extrapolate abundance. Indistinct photos don’t matter as unlikely to reach Research Grade. Pot plants that haven’t been tagged as “not wild” are a pain.

Actually, you can use “Identify” to review “research grade” observations. I do that something. I pick a particular species and review both RG and non-RG photos. That’s worth doing from time to time with any taxon of interest, especially ones that get misidentified often.

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Strengths and Weaknesses of iNaturalist Data General	57	10409	December 23, 2020
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