I’ve noticed while going through casual observations that there are many that are marked Location/Date inaccurate when I can find no indication of what is inaccurate about it. For example in this ob two people marked the location as inaccurate [link removed by forum moderator] about 4 years ago. Looking at it today the observation location matches the user’s other observations for the day, so I made a comment and flagged it as accurate. Soon one of those two people came back, thanked the user for fixing the location, and removed their flag making it not Casual anymore.
The user who posted this has not been logged in for 4 years. Which means that he corrected his location 4 years ago and nobody noticed because the observation was already dropped into the casual category where it is unlikely to ever be looked at again.
My suggestion is that when a user updates the date or location that the the flags on Date/Location is inaccurate be removed. I recommend that over notifying the people who flagged it in the first place because I don’t think it should depend on the users who made the flag still being active to reconsider. I think it’s in the spirit on iNat to trust that dates/locations were corrected accurately, just like with a new observation, and leave it up to other users to once again determine if those dates/locations are inaccurate.
Yes, I agree, very good suggestion.
However, I looked at the observation you linked and saw that it’s “casual” because two users marked the organism as not wild. In this case, the location issue was resolved, but that didn’t change the casual flag.
I would double check but since the link was deleted I no longer actually know which observation I posted, when I last clicked it I thought it was no longer casual. That’s not really important though, because I saw this 3 times over the last few days with dates and locations on 4+ year old observations. It’s common enough of an issue.
Edit, I went and found the post again, I’m 99% positive those Not Wild flags were not there when the location was resolved. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two users who voted on this forum post are the ones who added that flag.
I agree with this in principle, because once an edit is made, the premise on which previous votes were cast no longer exists.
That said, I would still like the upcoming new notifications system to notify the voters when an edit is made that removes their votes. Otherwise, this could be abused by an observer who is intent on getting Research Grade (for whatever misguided reason) just making a slight edit to clear the votes, without really addressing the issue that was voted on.
I think the best option for friendliness and accountability is to reset the appropriate flag on edit and notify the users who set the flag to come and reevaluate the date/location. But, depending on those other users to maintain an active account indefinitely, and to check their notifications, and to be responsible enough to follow up and remove the flag themselves is a lot to ask. I don’t think it would be fair to the user who made the observation to depend on all of that happening.
i don’t think the flagger’s reconsideration is usually necessary even now. if there’s just one person who marks the observation’s location flag as bad, then the observer can easily negate that by marking the location as good. it’s not often that i see multiple people marking the location as bad, unless they’re both trying to negate an observer’s good location flag on an observation with an obviously bad location.
In practice, this rarely seems to happen, which is why I always now try to remember to say something like “For now I’ve marked the date as inaccurate, so please reply here if you fix it so that I can remove the vote.” Most people don’t know the Data Quality Assessment section exists. It’s at the bottom of the page, often below a significant chunk of empty white space on the website, somewhat hidden on Android, and it’s not actually possible to vote on location accuracy on iOS.
that’s fair. if the observer doesn’t know this function exists, then i guess i would rather have the system automatically (offer to) add a good location vote for the observer than to remove other folks’ votes.
In the observation I (tried to) link which prompted this suggestion there were two users who both marked it inaccurate, I marked it accurate and that wasn’t enough to remove the Location is inaccurate flag. So even if the observer did flag it Accurate themselves nothing would have changed. That’s actually exactly what happened in this example, if bouteloua had not seen my comment and come back to remove her vote the observation would still be considered innaccurate.
It’s not that common, but on occasion I’ve seen observations with a lot of people all flagging the same issue. Albeit usually with a zoo animal marked as Not wild.