Because I’m nearly monolingual, I use Google Translate fairly often. Problem relevant to iNaturalist: When the paragraph being translated is mostly in the writer’s native language with scientific names (Latin, Latinized, or Greek), the scientific names are often “translated,” with peculiar results.
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Great post here, I’ll definitely revise my profile a bit from reading here!
Not all of us are professionals, so as a hobbyist, I find adding “favorite resources” (books, websites, etc.) to be a bit more useful than links to publications which demonstrate expertise in the area.
Beyond that, I value folks who interact in comments when identifying or who respond to tagging (@) more than credentials. They seem a bit more passionate or maybe just a bit less busy, I’m not sure.
Maybe a more quantitative measure of expertise is looking at one’s mavericks and putting in a link for those in one’s profile? Someone with pages of maverick IDs maybe doesn’t have as much expertise as someone with a handful?
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But they may be Proud Mavericks, forging ahead as taxonomy catches up with them.
Or the maverick may be, the one, who is right.
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Thanks @invertebratist. I’ve often wondered what’s most appropriate and how much is too much to put on a profile. I’ll update mine, probably when I work through the shells from the last Spirits Bay trip (yes, I brought back some fine shell washup to sift through again).
One question I have - I understand that publication lists, etc., are important for scientists but is it OK to put up reference to self-published books? So far I’ve kept my private website and iNat contributions completely separate. That’s partly for privacy reasons (not having locations on the photos on my website blog) and partly because I thought that admitting to vanity publishing might be frowned on on iNat.
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A few decades ago that might have been the case, but in today’s publishing world, I think any judgment is reserved more for the merits of the content than for how it was published.
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Pfffttt … don’t tell me what to do with my profile 
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Agreed! There are plenty of people that have links to their own websites, including those that aren’t obviously related to iNat but are just part of their lives. If the books are relevant to what you do on iNat, I think it’s totally appropriate to mention that you’ve written them/list them.
I think that there probably is a line somewhere for self-promotional profile content that wouldn’t be ok (explicitly trying to sell something, links to a commercial site that directly profit you, etc.), but I think that there’s plenty of opportunity to post without going that far.
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Pffft?
best able to identify birds, mammals, and to a lesser extent, plants
That is all we need 
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Maybe withdrawn mavericks is better?
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Yes! I was hesitant, for a long time, to post links to the nature-related publications I’ve worked on because I was concerned it might be viewed as trying to commercialize my profile, but then I realized how helpful and interesting it was to see similar info on others’ profiles (and yes, I’ve bought some books as a result). Even if the content isn’t directly relevant to iNat, it’s nice to learn a little more about the people with whom I’m interacting. This is, after all, a social network, and I find it a bit of a bummer when an iNatter with really interesting observations or a shared focus on identifying a group I’m into has nothing but a blank profile.
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Maybe worth adding some of these publications to topic: Books by iNatters - wiki, if appropriate? I find such profiles with links to their own works helpful, especially when it’s focused on a locally relevant niche. Besides, don’t book publishers end up making most of the money, anyway?
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I also find it interesting to see things like this that round out who another user is.
The other thing that users can do if things aren’t really relevant to iNat but an important part of who they are that they want out there on iNat is to write a journal post. These aren’t as used as much (and of course it’s still not appropriate for totally spammy/promotional content) but it can be helpful for compiling info about a specific topic. I see some users having links to journal posts about extended iNat/non-iNat content on their profile which are often helpful and interesting.
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Oh … I have 59 pages of those. Good or bad?
Mostly the result of pushing ignored Unknowns in a hopeful direction.
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Excellent? Looking at:
There are 1633 pages there so that’s 96%+ or only 1 in 27 undos for every identification.
Edit: Corrected after @cthawley’s comment below.
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Had a look at mine, and found some that were puzzling. I didn’t remember mis-identifying so many Cranberry Heaths (or any, actually). But when I looked at a couple, I understood. Taxon Swap withdrawals are included, and probably make up more than half of my results.
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I think there’s a typo in the link with the username (which I don’t think exists). That might default to all identifications or something? I respect Diana’s effort a lot, but I know she doesn’t have >5,000,000 pages of observations!
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Thank you, corrected!
Interestingly, the page counts disagree depending on which “identifications” URL is used, 226 vs. 349 (at time of posting):
- https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications?user_id=vreinkymov
- https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications/vreinkymov
The first one’s a more useful, since it has a pie chart.
The second is better for embellishment.
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I was also surprised at the amount, and actually this page shows quite a mix that in the end is not so helpful I think.
many, many taxon swaps like this: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/38124586#data_quality_assessment
For sure some blunt mis-identifications like this (mostly on my own observations, as there I am more in a situation to ID stuff I don´t know much about) https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/37844975
But then also some of those “proud mavericks” as I have them seen be called on the forum, that turned out to be accepted and resolced like this https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10053281#data_quality_assessment
In the end this maverick-page does not tell me anything about IDer quality unfortunately
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I take a few bits of information away:
- If mavericks are less than half of all identifications, the identifier isn’t randomly guessing.
- If withdrawn mavericks are there, the identifier engages with the community and takes feedback.
- Looking at withdrawn mavericks vs. the observation thumbnail shows whether identifier is choosing easier or more difficult IDs based on how similar the two appear.
Personally, I’d like to have only 10% or fewer of my identifications be withdrawn mavericks, but I can see how looking at this metric could become problematic for similar reasons as leaderboards can be.
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This is not always the case.
・Most people who randomly guesses just agree with initial IDs which are usually correct. In that case, they won’t have many mavericks.
・While I do a lot of ID corrections, since I always tag multiple active users when I do corrections, I do not have many maverick IDs left.
In fact, I try not to leave marverick IDs because they don’t really change the community ID when left as marverick.
・Also, identifiers have different approaches. I personally go through all the observations of molluscs within New Zealand, including the ones posted before I started iNaturalist, so I have rather high percentage of supportive IDs. This made my pie chart look pretty awful, but it is certainly not that I am randomly agreeing.
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