That is extra effort and can be a futile game of constantly reuploading to maintain an id with a malicous or uninformed identifier.
As much as opted out observations often frustrate me, being able to do it has its benefits and I have used it a few times.
As others have mentioned the real problem is people who intentionally or unknowingly opt out for every single observation.
I think sometimes new users opt out globally because it sounds good (more control over their observations) without fully understanding what it means.
I’ve also seen cases where high-volume observers opt out, quite possibly for good reasons and with the best of intentions, but then seem to be unable to keep up with notifications.
One factor here may be that users have two choices for opting out – they can opt out on all observations, or they can opt out on individual observations which have gotten IDs that disagree with theirs. In some cases, a user may want to maintain control over some portion of their observations (say, tricky taxa where they need to be able to see their own ID or where it is likely they will get wrong IDs from well-intentioned users) but they may want community feedback on others. However, they cannot opt out in advance on specific observations. I have wondered sometimes whether fewer users would opt out globally if there were an option to opt out individually in advance on selected observations.
This doesn’t help identifiers, of course, but maybe it helps understand the user choices, which may not be intentionally obstructive to the ID process.
I do think that having the option to opt out on individual observations is important. I have used this in a handful of cases where I have gotten a random wildly wrong ID from a user who was not responsive. In such cases, opting out puts the observation in the taxon where I want it so that it can be seen by specialists, which wouldn’t happen if the wrong ID puts the community taxon at something really broad like “insects”, and I have generally opted back in once it got enough additional IDs for the community taxon to be back on track.
In my experience the option to opt out as such is not the issue as much as opting out globally, which really does require that observers diligently follow notifications, particularly if any portion of their observations are taxa where they do not have expertise. I do wish that iNat had a better way of handling this, but I suspect that users who like this option would not be happy to have the conditions of their participation changed.
Correct. Users can provide IDs/comments as usual, but this input has no effect on the observation taxon – that is, on the taxon displayed at the top of the page and the taxon under which the observation is listed in searches. The taxon displayed for the observation will always be the taxon that the observer has selected as long as the observation is opted out. It will only change if the observer changes their ID or if they opt back in to community ID.
This means that if the observer’s ID is wrong or they entered it only with a broad ID like kingdom, it will continue to be displayed under this ID. The annoyance felt by many identifiers about opted-out observations is connected with this – if, say, the wrong ID is something that is completely out of range, we cannot correct this so that it is not displayed on iNat’s range maps. We can, at most, make the observation casual, by adding multiple disagreeing IDs or using the DQA. If the observations have a broad ID, they may get stuck in “needs ID” while multiple IDers try in vain to refine the ID until someone figures out what is happening and uses the DQA. In Identify, there is no indication that an observation is opted out, so it is often not obvious why an observation is not behaving as expected.
It can also be useful when you’re trying to record something that’s not the “main subject” of the photo - e.g a parasite / leafminer / etc or something towards the edge / “hidden” in the middle of an image - and someone who’s not read your beautifully crafted notes puts the host / most obvious subject of the photograph.
I have never understood why you’d want to (or are allowed to, frankly) mark your entire account as having that by default!
Please don’t do this:
or
This effectively deletes any work that any other iNat user has put into an observation, and is pretty disrespectful to other users in my opinion. There are many ways to deal with what observers think are incorrect IDs on their observations. Opting out is one way, but it’s also very helpful to mention other users to get their IDs on an observation. Two other IDs (in addition to the observer) are all that is needed to overcome a single ID that the observer thinks is incorrect.
A malicious identifier should be flagged and suspended if they don’t stop.
yes of course, but preemptively opting out on a case by case basis is the process many follow
I opted out once. My long range photo got blurry, blending red and white stripes into a uniform pink. Of course it was misidentified.
Opting out is an option for people who can identify in the field but can’t take decent photos.
Some granularity could definitely prove helpful. The alternative being two separate accounts, one ‘professional’ that is opted-out and used for a select few places/taxa of expertise, and another ‘hobbyist’ account for other situations (trips to exotic places, off-expertise taxa…) whereby community input is desired and welcome.
Please don’t do this, ie making
iNaturalist users are only allowed to control >1 account in limited sets of circumstances (e.g, maintaining an organizational/professional account). Having >1 personal account can lead to account suspension.
See staff input here:
and on other related forum threads.
I’m not sure of this… but… if community ID applies to casual observations and you manage an arboretum where you are as sure as you can be of the ID of cultivated plants you are trying to hilight… you might opt out of community ID because your intent is to hilight the plant species in the arboretum (whose identity you’re already sure of).
Now… some people might think, why even bother. iNat is about “wild” species. This denies the opportunity to collect insect interaction data occurring on plant species where we’re most sure of the identity of the plant. It denies the arboretum the opportunity to build a network of observers collecting insect interaction data on “known” plant species. etc.
Oh I know that. :) For fear of “sockpuppetry*” etc. Was just lamenting the lack of granular (taxon-/place-related) settings to deal properly with different licensing and opt-out requirements. At least it is (still) possible to adjust licenses and opt-in after-the-fact, manually or through the API.
edit: *even though sockpuppetry is still largely possible - by having any kind family member or student or colleague to act on your behalf ;)
3 posts were split to a new topic: Are multiple accounts permitted?
I would be happy if observations that were opted out were counted as casual and didn’t show up in the needs identification lists similar to how marking it captive does. The whole reason for having it is that they *don’t * need further identification and so the main point of friction is when the needs identification page misrepresents that.
This would solve so many annoyances which happen when IDers that do not want to interact with opted out observations (like me) run into opted out observers.. I just recently had such an interaction that was pretty unpleasant for everyone involved.
I think allowing IDers to either filter these kinds of observations out or at least mark them prominently would be a win-win for both sides and would allow a more peaceful live-and-let-live setting instead of seeing this topic pop up again and again and again. It doesn’t even matter what your own stand on this topic is. I do not understand why staff seems so opposed or uninterested in finding a solution.
I can only imagine some sort of hidden context - like stalking ? as a reason for protecting the opted out, and irritating identifiers.
@jeanphilippeb had made a project - collecting together all the global opt outs to use as a filter for one of his projects. He was forbidden to do that. Which broke his intended project. There were … 30 or 40 iNatters somewhere in that region. A mosquito buzzing sort of impact.
PS 937 observers is the impact of a shark circling.
You are right that deliberately opted-out observations should not be considered ‘Needs ID’. Keeping such observations from the eyes and fingers of overenthusiastic identifiers may be the whole point. However, these opted-out observations have no place in the mixed “trash bag” of blurry pics, childish selfies and pet photos that ‘Casual’ is. Opted-out observations can definitely be high-quality, publication-worthy data meant to be made available on the platform ‘for careful review by dedicated experts’. It still fits within the stated goals of iNaturalist (“engage with nature”, “contribute data”) even if doing without the social network and ‘Ask The Audience’ aspects of the site.
To appease the legitimate filtering needs of identifiers, a fourth category beyond Casual/NeedsID/RG could be in order…
If the observer has opted out and is unresponsive to “careful review by dedicated experts” there is little point in experts providing this feedback. Nor can such observations “contribute data” as long as the observer’s ID is broad or incorrect, because it will be forever listed under the observer’s ID. Because we cannot fix wrong IDs in such cases (i.e., stop the observation from being labelled as something it is not in iNat’s database), making the observations casual (not merely not “needs ID”) does not strike me as unreasonable.
If the observer’s ID is correct, it will of course become RG as usual once it gets confirmation.
If opting-out is undesirable on the platform or in violation of rules and guidelines, why design and implement this possibility in the first place? Let’s just get rid of that option, since it apparently is against the [majority of the] community’s desire.
Opting out, at least on the single observation, is a better option than deleting it.
Observations of users who are not opted-out can be fixed/improved by the community (or by “expert review” if you will). Observations of opted-out observers cannot – they can only be fixed by the observer, which requires that the observer be responsive to feedback. So arguably opted-out users have a certain responsibility follow notifications, even more than if they were not opted-out. Not everyone seems to do so.
This is irrelevant if the ID of the unresponsive opted-out user is wrong or so broad as to be unhelpful. My comments referred solely to situations in which the opted-out user is incorrect and does not respond to “review” from experts, whatever form that “review” takes. If the observation is listed by iNat under an incorrect taxon, the observation is unlikely to be useful for scientists working on the taxon that observation actually is, nor for scientists working on the taxon it has incorrectly been identified as.
I never claimed that opted-out users are more prone to unresponsiveness than non-opting out ones. However, there is a subset of users who globally opt out, including on observations of taxa where they do not have any expertise, and who do not seem to be able to keep up with notifications and thus do not respond to feedback. These observations cause more hindrances to the ID process than observations by non-opted out users, regardless of their amount of responsiveness.
I apologize, I did not check to see the text of the post you were referring to. It is not the case that opted-out observations are automatically casual and I don’t think the majority want them to be – we merely want to be able to choose whether to interact with them or not, which requires being able to see whether an observation is opted-out or not. We also need a way to take observations out of “needs ID” if the ID is incorrect; at present, the only way to do so is by making them casual.