Why does this observation is set as species?

Hi all,

I was wondering what happened here:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39313305

Someone uploads an insect from Costa Rica, and marks it as a species from South America: Dysdercus chaquensis. The bug belongs to the Dysdercus genus, but it’s a different species.

The community corrects this ID, but instead of reverting to Dysdercus at genus level it keeps showing the observation as D. chaquensis. - why?

1 Like

Update: I saw that the user has opted to reject the community ID, but the observation is not marked as casual, only as “needs ID”. When I look up observations from Dysdercus chaquensis it includes this observation.

Because the observer has opted out of community ID which means their ID is always shown as the observation label, no number of disagreements will change it.

2 Likes

It only gets moved to casual after a certain number of disagreeing ID’s are added, just to get it out of the ID pile. I’m not sure what the exact number is, nor how that is impacted by ‘how much of a disagreement’ there is (ie like this where the ID’s agree with genus, but not species vs. a case where the disagreements are more coarse)

1 Like

Read this: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-thread/13186

1 Like

According to iNat’s help guidelines

However, note that observations will become Casual grade if the observer has opted out of the community ID and the community ID taxon is not an ancestor or descendant of the taxon associated with the observer’s ID.

I can’t fully understand the reason of this rule marked in bold, this is troublesome in cases as this one.

When you mark those “as good as can be” they become casual, faster than waiting for tons of ids.

2 Likes

I’m pretty sure it is not done upon getting to the algorithm standard for a community ID. I remember the joy that was this observation : https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/39827048

And it took multiple ID’s beyond the community ID threshold to get it to casual.

I suspect some deference is given to the observer, as you dont want to make a record casual immediately given there will be cases where it is the observer that is correct.

2 Likes

Thanks all. With my ID, the observation is marked now as casual. Still this is unfortunate, because the observation is a Dysdercus anyway, and now goes into casual. But well, I think those are the issues related to opting out.

1 Like

It’s not your ID moving it to Casual, it is the vote in the DQA that the ID cant be improved. If I add a ‘Yes’ vote to that to offset the No vote, it returns the observation to Needs ID. Whatever the threshold of disagreeing ID’s is, it has not yet been met.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.