Sorry I answered twice. I was trying to answer another commenter.
That’s what they were saying- if someone suggests a subspecies and no one disagrees with it, then that’s what the CID will be. I don’t think observations can be “research grade at the _______ level”. They’re just “research grade”or not research grade. If the community ID and/or DQA meets the requirements to reach “research grade”, ie it’s ID’d to species level or finer CID with multiple “agrees” or the DQA says that the genus-level ID “cannot be improved”, the observation gets marked as “research grade”. If someone takes something that was “research grade” and adds a finer-than-species ID, it just stays “research grade” and now has a finer ID on it. The designation of “research grade” is not effected by what subspecies/varieties/etc. are added on beyond the species ID, so whether you agree, disagree, or abstain from voting on a subspecific ID shouldn’t have any impact on whether the observation is classified as “research grade”. In other words, an observation with a subspecies CID and a “research grade” designation in no way implies that multiple people have agreed on the subspecies.
Part of the confusion may be that RG shows at the top of the observation next to the ID. However, the RG designation really depends on the Community ID/Taxon, which may be different (down and on the lower right on the webpage).
The leading subspecies ID may show at the top, but the Community ID may only be at the species level.
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Looks like I misremembered what it said. Here’s what it actually looks like:
Clicking the yellow/orange box adds a disagreement but clicking the green box doesn’t.
Let’s say someone adds a subspecies ID on an observation, but I only know what species it is. Then, I would click the green box when adding a species ID. If I know it’s not that subspecies I would click the yellow box, which would move the observation back to species (if it’s not a maverick ID)
It’s possible that the identifiers didn’t feel confident enough to support the subspecies ID, but they couldn’t rule out the subspecies either. Or, they forgot to add a disagreement.
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That is the ‘soft’ disagreement option. You are supporting sp. But you are not ‘hard’ disagreeing with the ssp. If CID was already at sp, then your ‘don’t know’ makes no difference either way.
You can have RG and CID at ssp. (if you have 2 at ssp and no previous disagreement to confuse CID algorithm)
Or, if there is only one ID at ssp - it remains at RG and CID at sp (till that second ssp ID comes in)
You are incorrect. This has come up over and over and over for me. If someone suggests a subspecies and EVERY OTHER COMMENTER says no, you can only ID this to species, and it is not an example of that subspecies, it will still be marked as that subspecies and labeled Research Grate for that that SUBspecies.
The problem is that iNat doesn’t see changing the level of identification as disagreement. So if someone has IDd a bird to subspecies level inappropriately, as in the Red-shafted Flicker example, an infinite number of people can disagree and it will still be listed as research grade and the ID will still be listed as the subspecies. That is what I mean by “research grade at the subpecies level.”
As long as the species-level ID is added as a disagreement (yellow button; see @lj_l’s comment), this should not be the case.
However, I do not know what happens if the observer withdraws from the community taxon in this situation.
This isn’t correct. Adding a higher-taxon ID will be seen as a disagreement if the identifier indicates it as such.
For example:
Here I added my ID as a non-disagreeing ID. So the taxon of the observation did not change.
But, if I add my ID as a disagreeing ID, the taxon of the observation does change.
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The simple answer is that the three extra species-level IDs don’t add any extra weight to that Research Grade ID when there are also two “better” (more refined) subspecies IDs.
Personally, I try to avoid subspecies in most of my records unless there’s good reason to include it (e.g., the subspecies is very distinct; it might in fact be recognized soon as a separate species; the conservation status of the subspecies is different from the species as a whole).
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An annoying complication is that if someone puts a non-disagreeing higher level ID on the observation, that dialogue box tends to stop appearing and we can’t make a hard disagreement.
I think that only happens if you use the “agree” button beside the non-disagreeing ID. If you type in the taxon instead, it should always appear if the taxon you type is higher than the display taxon.
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If you don’t get the hard disagree option.
Delete.
And try again - I have learnt painfully to make sure my ID lands where I expect it to, and the CID algorithm is keeping up with me.
Or vice versa, as the case may be.
That algorithm gives me nightmares, and generates a stream of forum posts, so it is not only me.
24 February 2023
I really appreciate you typing this out and that’s a great save. Thank you. And thanks for sorting out the Flicker. I’ve misread the Orange Bar for months to years by now.
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