Wait, but… Who fills this out? How can you vote on an accurate location if you are not the observer?
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There can be many cases, when it is a stolen photo downloaded from the web, the location is mapped in water when it is a terrestrial sighting etc.
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picture of something in the ocean with a location of mid-America: Not accurate location.
Picture of a tree growing in a field with a location of being in the ocean: Not accurate.
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picture of a deer on a snowy field in Pennsylvania in July: date not accurate
picture of a giraffe in the Bronx: not wild
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@schoenitz, @clay_s, @cmcheatle OK, I understand about the location. But who is supposed to fill those checkmarks in? Whoever is looking at the observation or just site administrators? Or someone else?
Anyone interested in improving data quality.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/ways-to-help-out-on-inat-wiki/1983
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Sometimes I get the impression that observations of cultivated plants or captive animals are simply ignored by identifiers, so they stuck in “needs ID” or stay as “unknown”, etc. These observation then don’t get “research grade”. So what is better, mark them properly as cultivated/capitive
or being ignored by the community ?
To my mind, although I understand the issues involved (I personally have a few cultivated plants whose identity I would love to know, but recognize the chances of that happening are effectively zero once marked as cultivated), they should be marked as cultivated/captive. That way people who are willing to invest time in identifying this stuff can still locate them, while people who do not wish to have to interact with them will not encounter them.
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If we are honest when answering - is it wild - the obs goes from Needs ID to Casual.
Honesty gets its disappointing reward.
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Captive/cultivated obs never recieve the research grade designation, regardless how many users agree on their ID. This probably at least one reason why the identifier community ignores them.
It is a hard question. In my real-life experience, people who mention iNat to me in casual conversation believe it is an app for identifying garden plants. I’m a public garden horticulturist, there’s obviously a bias there, but it surprised me the first few times it happened. It also surprises me the iNat app/website is not worded in a manner to discourage that misbelief. I think it would be much better if iNat just came out and said “wild plants only” rather than new users who post garden plants experiencing either the silent treatment or a rebuke from more frequent users.
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It’s worth adding I personally would rather see the site go the other way: welcome cultivated plants on equal terms. But since the developers don’t agree, as expressed both in their current design of the site and in comments from their personal accounts, then I believe they should hardline “wild plants only.”
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But what about these 1500 captive plants observed by the iNat staff? :)
As has been discussed extensively, there are a lot of valid personal and research use cases for captive and cultivated plants and animals.
Since birdwhisperer’s original questions about what makes a sighting casual and which of their examples to mark as captive/cultivated have been answered, I’m going to close this topic. Please take a look at the topic summary and other topics on these subjects before starting a new one. Thanks!
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