I thought I knew perfectly well what a maverick ID was until I discovered these two observations where my ID stands against only two others. Strangely, mine shows as a “Maverick”:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/59453122
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/177248882
Usually, in a 2:1 disagreement, the dissenting ID does not count as a maverick. Can anybody explain what’s going on here? Is it a bug? Thanks!
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Oh, that’s odd. The explanation given for the Maverick designation when one mouses over it is “taxon is not an descendant or ancestor of the community taxon”, but in both cases the community taxon is Pepsini, and your ID is within Pepsini, so that’s not even an accurate statement. I wonder if there’s something odd going on with the taxonomy of this group in particular… is some taxon change in progress that’s making things show up weird? I’m curious what the explanation is too.
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No, both Entypus and Caloipompilus have always been in the Pepsini, and they are included in that tribe in iNat’s taxonomic framework. One idea that came to me is that perhaps a user deleted an ID and the system “forgot” to recalculate.
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I think it’s an indexing error. They can usually be cleared up by adding a new ID, it can be deleted immediately after. It happened with a taxon merge and the only two active IDs were mavericks:
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I don’t believe any of these taxa have been involved in a taxon merge.
There was probably some other cause, maybe a deleted ID was mishandled. I just added and deleted an ID on the second link.
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Ok, that cleared it up. Interesting!
I did it with the first observation as well. That corrected it there as well. Thanks!
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I’ve seen something like that. One genus-level ID and two species-level IDs, but the display name remains at genus level. If I look closely, I see that the first ID says “so-and-so disagrees that this is whatever” – when there is no previous ID to disagree with. Presumably, the initial ID was deleted, but the hard-disagree still counts as a hard-disagree.
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Yes, a disagree counts as the same disagree regardless of what happens to the others. It is also based on the differing taxonomy and isn’t necessarily confined the taxon quoted. If the current taxon is Blue Jay and someone puts in a Mallard ID or a disagreeing Birds ID, it will say “…disagrees that this is Blue Jay,” but it actually counts as disagreeing with Perching Birds as a whole.
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But - weird - that we are forced to disagree with an ID - which has since been deleted.
For me, I don’t feel forced. I prefer it that way. Many people do things like disagreeing to Flowering Plants when it’s a Dicot and they’re almost certain it is, but “play it safe,” don’t follow up and they end up permanently with a disagreeing ID when they don’t actually disagree. As I know that it will disagree with the whole branch, I am already trying to be precise about the level the disagreement is at. When I disagree to a higher level, I would prefer not to disagree too high and need to babysit the observation to keep from holding up an accurate RG observation. If someone deletes an ID I’ve disagreed with, I don’t want to need to disagree again if the same ID is placed in the future.
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But ancestor disagreement is weird.
You disagreed with the previous ID.
2 new IDs come in - who agree with each other - should be RG since that fits in below your hard disagreement. But iNat’s CID algorithm counts you as - disagreeing with the 2 subsequent IDs. Either we need a third to convince that algorithm - or you follow your notifications and withdraw your hard disagreement with a ‘previous ID which has since been deleted’
I’m not sure I follow. I believe the way it normally works is if someone has an observation of an apple IDed as a grass and you disagreed with it to Flowering Plants, it would only count against Monocots. If the grass ID was deleted, it could still get to RG with two apple IDs. If you had instead disagreed to Vascular Plants, it would count against Flowering Plants, and therefore apples, and it would need another ID to counter yours. Taxonomic changes can complicate things, though. What was once a disagreement to genus with a single species can then become a disagreement with a whole newly added subgenus.
If you click on What’s This at CID on each obs - the algorithm spells out how it counts the IDs.
I have a copypasta to iNat’s blog post. Written in June 2019. Where loarie commented in October 2023 - We don’t have any plans to make changes to how disagreements work.
https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/25514-clarifying-ancestor-disagreements
Maybe I’m misunderstanding. This disagreement to Dicots with the order for Honeysuckles, still allowed RG with two agreeing in the Mints family:
In that example the first IDer withdrew their initial ID and replaced it with a different one. I was originally referring to a situation where the second ID disagreed with the first, and then the first IDer deleted (not withdrew) their ID and did not offer a new one. Not knowing what the deleted ID was, we don’t know if it was even a dicot.
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The original ID that was deleted is retained in the “disagrees this is ____.” Once the ID is placed, that stays the same regardless of what happens to the others. In my example, if I had directly disagreed with the species, it would say that, but instead it says I disagree with the order. That is because when the ID was placed, there was an ID between that disagreed and brought the community taxon to the order, but it has since been deleted. If the disagreement was directly with the species, it would say it disagrees with the species, but it would still count against the order just the same.
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In both cases, your ID’s taxon was temporarily deactivated in on 26 September 2023 by lwnrngr to solve the issue in which ants appeared in Vespoidea.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/154866/history
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/84672/history
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