Hi. If there is a species with a well known stray / feral population within a country and somebody marks every single observation within that country as captive, what can be done about this?
I’ve messaged the user in question to explain why what they did was wrong, but I did not get a response back. They also didn’t remove their captive markers from specific observations that I’d mentioned.
Is there anything that could be done for this? I had an observation of both a stray and a feral and now they’re both incorrectly marked as captive. There are countless others within that species that have been marked too. The marking has been completely indiscriminate and targeted ALL individuals in my country.
Unless there is a way for iNat staff or a curator to reverse a specific users captive marking for an entire species I worry it’ll take hours for me to overturn what they’ve done. It’s far easier to mark an observation as captive (press x while viewing it on the identify page) than it is to mark it as wild (I’m not aware of any shortcut to do this). I also worry that because they didn’t respond to my message they could continue doing this or move onto purging the data of other feral species populations. It’s a lot of work for 1 person to to be keeping an eye on as once a population gets marked as captive it’s effectively hidden from view. I only noticed because my own feral / stray observations got purged along with everyone else’s in my country.
I don’t have any advice about this issue, but your use of stray slash feral caught my eye. It reminded me of this “spectrum of domestication” that I wrote earlier.
I’m eager to see others chime in on this topic of terminology, as clarifying these concepts may help with your issue as well.
My 1st step is to check the box that says the organism is wild at the bottom of the page. If this one individual is the only one saying it is not wild, it should balance it back out so it is no longer “casual”.
You can likely elicit help here on the forum. (But I understand you have specifically left the details vague to avoid calling out specific users on the forum, per the forum guidelines).
Certainly, if you notice this continues to happen even after you’ve sent an polite message, contact iNat staff to intervene.
I experienced this and then some, wherein when I marked things wild and noted in Notes and via comments that this individual was, I was told I was wrong, the species could not be and additional parties were brought to “weigh me out”. Having found no response to dialogue and receiving no assistance elsewhere, I have decided to never again observe that species.
I wish to note for the record that the post you quote was not written by me and does not reflect my opinions on any particular classification of different levels of wild vs. non-wild.
Hi guys. In this regard the species being marked are domestic cats in the UK. The reason marking these observations all as captive is problematic is that there is an estimated 813,000 feral cats in the UK. If you check out the current observations of domestic cats in the UK however the research grade observation count is currently at 7 observations. This does not reflect reality at all.
Stray and feral domestic cat population should be monitored in the UK as domestic cats have a big impact on our wildlife, especially birds. Domestic cats have been (and still are) a threat to the genetic integrity of the Scottish Wildcat (Felis silvestris) population, as the two species can hybridize and their populations overlap.
iNaturalist users should photograph stray and feral domestic animals and if there are no indications that they are pets they should not be marked as captive.
If someone is intentionally mass-miscategorizing wild organisms as captive/cultivated, that is a suspendable offense. Contact the iNat staff at help@inaturalist.org with more info.
This has happened to me with some feral cat observations as well. Contacting iNat staff is definitely the best option if they continue to be unresponsive. In the meantime, I’ll try and help out in reversing some of the posts and hopefully more people can join in.
I think part of the problem here with flora as well as fauna is there needs to be an unknown option. Wild/Captive is insufficient.
Whilst I also presume something wild unless clearly visible to me its not, taking cats or flora to RG when its unknown if its domestic/cultivated also seems problematic to me.
If they’re continuing to do this and not engaging at all when you via comments or messages, please submit a ticket and we can take a look. Please provide examples in the ticket.
It is largely a matter of personal opinion - anything goes. Some power users go by the rule “anything owned is captive”, and that’s fine, just agree to disagree, mark ‘wild’, and move on. Eventually after a while the community DQA votes will reach some consensus, no matter what.
A person used to do same for the stray cats and dogs for all my observations. I’ve just downvoted all his votes and problem solved. I’ve also tagged him and told that these animals are not captive. Maybe, the mentioned user is not knowing the rules about captive animals.
It is quite possible that there is no human marking those observations as captive. Certain species such as cats, dogs, lettuce, potatoes etc get an automatic vote for “captive” FROM INAT to contain the issue of the vast amount of people that upload pictures of their pets and garden plants.
The INat guides mention this feature and indicate to mark a counter vote for it in the case of specific individuals that are not captive/cultivated.
To mark the counter vote you need to go to the Data Quality Assesment section at the bottom and “upvote” the section for “The organism is wild”, which will counteract the automatic “downvote”.
Curious about the reasoning. How is eating from a plate in a kitchen evidence for captivity? (unless all doors and windows of the room are demonstrably closed, making any hungry creature in there – cat sparrow or bear – effectively captive)
I like this idea – it would mean some pretty substantial changes to iNat’s basic classification of observations and I doubt that it would ultimately reduce the amount of arguments people have about whether something should be marked as wild or captive – but it would accurately reflect the fact that sometimes there simply isn’t any way to tell whether a particular individual is a wild or free-ranging captive animal, or a tree planted as part of a reforestation project or its wild offspring. It wouldn’t necessarily solve genuine edge cases but it would acknowledge that sometimes there is epistemic uncertainty that can’t be resolved. (All those hundreds of thousands of observations of honeybees who are probably cared for by a beekeeper but can’t be distinguished from potential wild or feral populations except when they are entering or leaving the hive.)
you mean because it has to go to RG or casual?
maybe unknowns could just be left in Needs ID
akin to if you tick this observation can still be improved
This is my issue here - it feels like people are often making a vague judgement call one way or another which is difficult to substantiate. Given the scientific rigour most people treat actual species level IDs with, this just seems out of sync …
[quote refers to unknown captive/wild status] I have the strong opinion that observations in “Needs ID” should be observations that need ID. This is not the place for observations that are identified but have uncertain captive/wild status.
[for a cat] I think this is a question of where the burden of proof lies. If the cat is in the kitchen eating from a plate, the obvious inference is that it is non-wild – a pet. That’s the default reasoning. It might be wild, a feral cat that snuck in, even a feral cat being fed on purpose (but then is it wild?) but in this case I think that if the observer wants it classified as wild, he has the obligation to explain that it’s wild and why he thinks so. Then we would have the obligation to remove our vote for “captive.”
I don’t think we need an “unknown” option for captive vs. wild. We need to classify the observation as best we can and let it go. It can default to “wild” and then someone (e.g. some researcher) can ponder the issue more deeply if they care.
I do have a bias here. In my area, nearly all of the millions of Douglas-fir that blanket our landscape were planted for timber production. Any one individual, e.g. the one I photo, may be wild one (one that came up from seed instead of being planted as a young tree) but that’s unlikely. It’s also unknowable for any one tree. (No, they’re not planted in rows.) I mark them wild. I figure that helps map Douglas-fir better and anyone who knows this area well enough to do research here knows about this issue and can make up his own mind.