I’m currently working on correcting identifications of a taxon I’m familiar with in the Neotropics, one that has been widely misapplied on iNaturalist. While doing this, I’ve come across several observations where some users have opted out of Community ID. In some cases, the observer is no longer active; in others, they don’t respond or decline to reconsider their identification.
This is something I’ve encountered before with other taxa as well, and I’m trying to better understand the rationale behind the “opt out of Community ID” option. From the perspective of identifiers and curators, it often seems to complicate the process of improving data quality and may lead to confusion for other users.
Could someone explain the intended value or benefits of having this feature available?
For a single obs - for a taxon specialist who has done the appropriate work (lab test, dissection, whatever) it can make sense. They know the taxon because …
A global opt out for ‘all my obs, because only my ID counts’ Not so useful on social media. But at least some who use global opt out are responsive to incoming IDs.
I agree this can be very frustrating when IDing, but it can be helpful in some circumstances.
I opt out of community ID occasionally, on an individual observation basis. I do this in cases where I’m very confident that my ID is correct, and there are disagreeing IDs that bump the community ID to a higher taxon. This often occurs when my initial ID was incorrect, someone agrees with it, and then I realise that my initial ID was incorrect, but the agree-er never revises their ID.
I can understand the first case, yes, a specialist who has done considerable work to confirm an ID has valid reasons to maintain their identification, and it is indeed very frustrating when someone with less experience bumps your observation to a higher rank, or even a completely wrong taxon.
Still, I wonder whether opting out is the most effective approach in those situations. It can be more time-consuming, but wouldn’t it generally be more helpful to argue why their ID is preferable, so that others can learn from it and the discussion remains transparent? In most cases, shared reasoning seems more beneficial, and less “authoritarian”, for the community than locking the ID.
In most cases, that is definitely not the case, and people are locking out their completely inaccurate ID. In any case, I still believe there isn’t a justifiable situation to lock out your ID.
And from what I’ve read, the frustration with this function has been shared by a lot of users for a long time, and it is rare finding a justifiable context on where opting out of the community ID would be valid.
While it’s rarely necessary to use, there are times when it’s very important to have that option available, at least for individual observations. Opting out of the community taxon on a single observation is usually not a big issue. The real problems arise when users accidentally (or intentionally) opt out of the community ID for all observations in their “Community Moderation Settings.”
I have one like this, and never thought of using the opt out for this situation, thank you. I couldn’t think of a reason I’d ever use this feature, but my original ID was incorrect (or at the very least non-verifiable), but the agreeing ID now has that species listed on my life list, it shows up in the species map/observations (though thankfully isn’t RG), etc., which makes me feel like it’s muddying up the data. I will try one more time to contact the person who made the incorrectly agreeing ID and see if they’ll withdraw it before I opt out. My other option is just to delete the observation, anyway, to be honest… it should not go to species, regardless.
Sounds like you have at least two other options here (please don’t delete the observation). One is to add an explicit disagreement to the species-level ID, and another is to tag in additional identifiers who can overturn the single wrong ID, if that identifier is not responsive.
No, the DQA should not be used in this way. The best way to deal with opted out observations when a user is gone is to disagree, and then use the CID cannot be improved (when this is correct based on the CID).
Apparently, back in 2023 I put some time into researching why opting out of community ID was added and how it was supposed to function. (tl;dr: It was added in 2014 at the same time as the concept of community ID, probably because iNat staff had some doubts about whether community IDs could always be trusted.)
If I was in a dogmatic mood, I might say that the community ID experiment has been running for nearly 12 years and has proven successful. So, it’s time to discontinue the opt-out option.
I don’t think that’s going to happen, and I think it might push a lot of people to leave iNat, so my recommendation would be to ignore opt-out observations if they annoy you. If they’re contributing to incorrect data, you should add a correct ID, which will usually change the CID even though the observation ID remains the one selected by the observer. There are also DQA fields that may be applicable.
display OPTED OUT up top, next to RG or Casual or Needs ID - so identifiers are forewarned. Do I even want to engage with this obs ? Let us avoid adding another ID, but but but, why is the ID not moving, oh not again! I add ‘opted out’ in a comment - which irritates the observer (Why?!), instead of their identifiers.
give identifiers a way to filter out global opt outs. But not the single obs which are worth my time and effort.
Plan B ? Only allow Opt Out obs by obs - we need to keep that choice open. With an option to ask iNat staff to enable global opt out for an observer who can prove their good reason.
Most importantly, in my opinion, there should be an option for users who do a global opt-out to select “opt me back in when I’m gone”.
I admit I’m mildly annoyed by global opting-out, mainly because it seems to send the message “I know more than all of you!” I know this isn’t the intended message opters-out are sending, and I’ve read their explanations and respect their choice. But it’s hard emotionally to see someone preemptively choose to hold their own opinion above that of the community without feeling attacked at some level (really? they have the nerve to put that incorrect name on this organism yet I’m the one whose work they want to check??). But ultimately it’s their observation and they can do what they want with it, so we can just agree to disagree. Dealing with how disrespected it makes me feel as an identifier is a me problem, not a them problem.
Where it turns from mild annoyance to actual problem is when a user is gone, either because they choose to leave iNat or because they pass away or are otherwise unable to continue using the platform. All the defenses of global opt-out come down to “I want to have the final say because it’s my observation", and I’ll change the ID manually if I agree with the community.” But if you’re not here any more, you can’t do that, and your observations are stuck in limbo forever if you didn’t get the correct species ID. I know the “auto-opt-back-in-after-X-years-inactive” idea has been shot down, mainly because the user owns their own observations, regardless of whether they’re still here or not. But it would be nice to see an option for users who opt out to click saying “I give permission to opt back in if I don’t log in for 5 years” or something like that.
I also don’t think it makes sense for the global opt-out to apply to observations identified at a broad level, such as Order or Class. It’s clearly not the intent of an observer to insist their observation cannot be identified beyond “Birds”. Those are the cases I find most irritating, and it puts me off identifying any observations of observers who’ve globally opted out, only add broad IDs to their observations, and don’t update their IDs.
Does this “opt out” mechanism still register ID opinions and comments from others, while simply [temporarily] postponing of downrating their voting power on the consensus ID? This would be best…
Or does this “opt out” mechanism completely block the submission and accumulation of any and all potentially valuable opinions?
I have brought up implementing more statistical approaches to calculating consensus IDs as a probability or confidence score. This was in response to similar tizzies about low-quality ID spam, “spoiler IDs” and such–or even being able voluntarily assign confidence scores to our own ID submissions. This yet again would offer a solution that promotes increased data collection and treatment, versus decreased or blocked data collection or consideration due to fear over ID spoiling.
not again! I add ‘opted out’ in a comment - which irritates the observer (Why?!), instead of their identifiers.