"When should I agree with somebody else's identification?"

You people are asking way too much from citizen scientists, pretty much expecting us to freely gain the knowledge required matching numerous college degrees. Insane. I have opted out of the community entirely, so my problem with iNaturalist has been solved completely. Hopefully some day I can backlog all my photos and delete my account.

And you do not want me to get into a discussion of some of the attitudes of “experts” on here as to why I feel pressured to hit “Accept” at this point.

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Hello @beepboop, I’m sorry to hear you’re having a frustrating experience.

I do want to remind you, all activity on iNaturalist is completely voluntary. There is no pressure for you to personally identify an observation to species level; I myself often add IDs anywhere between Kingdom and Family. Those with the knowledge necessary can always come along later to refine the ID – or, you may find that you learn enough over time to return and make a finer ID on your own.

Many identifiers are very busy people, and may not choose to add an explanation to every ID they add. But if you ask (as you have) many of them are happy to answer questions. As an identifier myself, I don’t always expect a previous identifier to agree with me, even when I do explain myself – but it is always nice to have a civil debate. If you are unsure as to whether you can agree with another’s ID, it is OK to leave your ID, withdraw it, or politely ask for more clarity.

Many users will add observations with only a coarse initial ID, and that is totally acceptable, welcome, and helpful. I do it all the time – I do have some specialties but I would hardly claim to be an expert in anything.

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Do you mean “agree?” If so, this speaks directly to the issues of the AI and the UI “gently suggesting” an action, and some (many?) users just following along.

If you could elaborate, perhaps this is a conversation worth having.

You haven’t solved the problem rather than created one for your data now becoming much less useful, deleting it will just result in you loosing many hours of your life that could be spent with a benefit and resulted with nothing. Ask yourself why are you doing it in the first place.
Nobody in this thread or anywhere said you require a degree, there’s no degree in iding stuff to start with, and from your comments it seems you misinterpreted some things entirely. You don’t have to be the one to id your stuff, if you don’t know all species then what’s the problem, don’t id it to that level, if you’re not agreed with ssp id just say it in a comment or mark the observation as “can it be improved>yes” so it on’t reach RG with 2 ssp ids.

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My only obligation as an observer is to post as good and honest a record as I can (and the photography sometimes isn’t all that good). Identification is optional and not fully my responsibility. I personally agree with identifications if I think they’re right, or just leave them alone. Sometimes a second person comes along and agrees, sometimes not. That’s OK.

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No, the difference may be subtle but it is important: you’d better have a reason to base the agreement on. Otherwise you’re just making it up.

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Yes, yes, yes! Every day I come across observations where I do think the ID is correct, but since I do not feel confident in my own skill level with that taxon, I move on. Not that I disagree – if I disagreed, I would put the ID I believe is correct – but because I don’t feel I know enough.

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No one is asking you to know anything. We just ask that users don’t add IDs when they don’t know something, which is perfectly OK. If you would like to agree with an ID and would like to learn more about how to ID similar organisms, that’s great too, but it’s by no means required. Also, anyone on iNat is a citizen scientist, not just the people who may not be experts in a particular field.

So in a sense, yes. I agree it’s impossible to be able to ID everything and it’s impossible to be an expert in everything. This is why it’s OK not to agree with every ID.

I think this will only make your problem worse. In this case you will have to review every single ID on every observation to see if you agree, instead of letting the community taxon go where you cannot verify—which is perfectly OK.

This is also controversial and you don’t have to agree with this ID method. Opting out of the community taxon on these observations may be appropriate.

And FWIW, you don’t need college degrees to make IDs or learn about nature. I only have a high school diploma and I love learning more and helping ID others’ observations. Frankly, you don’t really learn that much about IDing things in college.

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then I will often follow that single observation and may agree later. Either way I learn as I go

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