# Why is this Observation Casual/Needs ID/Research Grade? - "Official" Topic **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Tags:** web\ **Created:** [June 9, 2020, 12:21am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186 "2020-06-09T00:21:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![jasonhernandez74](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/jasonhernandez74/32/33615_2.png) [@jasonhernandez74](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/jasonhernandez74)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2023, 12:06am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/213 "2023-02-15T00:06:39Z")
Yeah… I’ve changed my ID approach over this. As I go through a species that I know is almost always cultivated in a given location, marking every observation as such (with case-by-case exceptions if I see evidence), I sometimes come upon one that that is Research Grade because the observer specifically countered someone’s “not wild” vote. When I get through with it, the observer will discover thet they only have one vote. The problem is that I also only have one vote. Therefore, there is a possibility that if I provide a second species-level ID after voting “not wild,” the observer could turn it to Research Grade by countering my vote, and there is noting I could do about it. So: I don’t provide a species-level ID, unless there are already two of them. That way, someone countering my vote will only send it to Needs ID, not to Research Grade. ---
**Author:** ![Star3](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/star3/32/73028_2.png) [@Star3](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/Star3)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 8:25pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/214 "2023-03-13T20:25:31Z")
Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can. **Platform** (Android, iOS, Website): Website **App version number** , if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About): **Browser** , if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Chrome **URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages**: [Subgenus Pyrobombus from Fairfield, WI 53913, USA on July 12, 2021 at 12:57 PM by Star D… At the crane sanctuary · iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/86995106#activity_identification_0a54934f-71b3-46a6-b5eb-c32a62072c61) **Screenshots of what you are seeing** (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: [https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/](https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/)): ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/inaturalist/original/3X/b/7/b760205d14ee67ac5eef9524a1d81665c6bedf38.jpeg) **Description of problem** (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.): There are 5 IDs…2 at genus Bombus, 3 at subgenus Pyrombus (a subgenus of Bombus). Observer has NOT opted out of community ID. It’s had 2 agreeing IDs for genus for 8 months, before the subgenus IDs were added (which are not dissenting), so shouldn’t it be RG? ---
**Author:** ![Star3](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/star3/32/73028_2.png) [@Star3](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/Star3)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 8:26pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/215 "2023-03-13T20:26:27Z")
Maybe it just needs to be re-indexed? ---
**Author:** ![jwidness](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9d8465/32.png) [@jwidness](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/jwidness)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 8:29pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/216 "2023-03-13T20:29:41Z")
Observations at subgenus don’t automatically go to RG, it needs to be voted as good as can be. ---
**Author:** ![Star3](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/star3/32/73028_2.png) [@Star3](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/Star3)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 8:32pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/217 "2023-03-13T20:32:20Z")
~~Seems like an oversight, no? Since they go to RG at genus without being voted “as good as can be”.~~ I thought things could be RG at genus w/o the DQA vote, but I can’t find any examples, so I mustr be remembering it incorrectly. ---
**Author:** ![sb100](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f17d59/32.png) [@sb100](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/sb100)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 9:20pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/218 "2023-03-13T21:20:56Z")
Whenever in doubt about why an observation is not RG, scroll down on the page and there is a handy box where it outlines which requirements are met, and which aren’t. And on the right hand side you can see the specific reason why it doesn’t meet the requirements for RG, in this case it reads: The below items are needed to achieve Research Grade: - Community Taxon is precise ![Screenshot_2023-03-13_16-19-36](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/inaturalist/original/3X/d/0/d0a14ab4e490ab2a9742fe0afc36bdc06ec41649.png) ---
**Author:** ![Star3](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/star3/32/73028_2.png) [@Star3](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/Star3)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2023, 9:31pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/219 "2023-03-13T21:31:19Z")
Thanks, @sb100 ! And thanks for merging the topic, @jdmore ; I was off the forums for a bit and forgot there was an existing topic for these. ---
**Author:** ![marina\_gorbunova](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/marina_gorbunova/32/31454_2.png) [@marina\_gorbunova](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/marina_gorbunova)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2023, 10:57am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/220 "2023-03-14T10:57:35Z")
Nothing higher than a species can be RG automatically. ---
**Author:** ![jasonhernandez74](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/jasonhernandez74/32/33615_2.png) [@jasonhernandez74](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/jasonhernandez74)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2023, 10:01pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/221 "2023-04-06T22:01:11Z")
Thank you for the step-by-step instructions. There is one observation that somehow two people voted could still be improved even though the community ID is already at species. I put my one countervote, and @ commented the two. ---
**Author:** ![swampster](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/swampster/32/37519_2.png) [@swampster](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/swampster)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 5:37pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/222 "2023-06-02T17:37:06Z")
Ok, I tried to skim and check if a similar question has been asked before. I didn’t see one, but it’s a long thread and hard to follow at times. Feel free to link to a specific post in the thread if my question has already been answered. Please see [this observation](https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/131763973). I identified the caterpillar to genus. Once others confirmed the genus ID, I clicked “No, it’s as good as it can be” because it is my understanding that there are a number of _Datana_ spp. caterpillars with orange “necks” that occur in GA that cannot be reliably separated. Of course, this vote moved the observation to RG, but when someone else added a species-specific ID, that became the observation ID (still at RG). I could of course add a disagreeing ID back at the genus level to bump the observation ID back to genus. I’m bringing this up not because I disagree with the ID, but because this seems like a loophole where an observation can reach RG with a consensus of one. ---
**Author:** ![thomaseverest](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/thomaseverest/32/63220_2.png) [@thomaseverest](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/thomaseverest)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 5:40pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/223 "2023-06-02T17:40:19Z")
A loophole if it’s misused. If the IDer thinks the community taxon can be improved, they should counter your vote. If you are pretty sure it can’t, you should bump it to genus. If you’re not sure, you can just remove your vote. ---
**Author:** ![swampster](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/swampster/32/37519_2.png) [@swampster](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/swampster)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 5:55pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/224 "2023-06-02T17:55:06Z")
> [@thomaseverest](#): > > If you are pretty sure it can’t, you should bump it to genus. Agreed, but my reason for bringing this up is not because I cannot move it back to genus if I so desire. It’s really easy for me to miss notifications, so if I don’t notice (as I didn’t for this observations for several months after the species-level ID), it’s hard for me to take corrective action. The observation should either stay RG with the genus-level ID displayed, forcing the species-level IDer to counter my DQA vote to get their ID displayed -or- a species level ID could possibly automatically add a DQA vote. However, the problem with the latter is a DQA vote stays even when the observation’s ID level has changed (though that of course is a problem even if the species-level IDer manually counters my vote). ---
**Author:** ![sbrobeson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/sbrobeson/32/26432_2.png) [@sbrobeson](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/sbrobeson)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 6:00pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/225 "2023-06-02T18:00:41Z")
(and @anneclewis ) there was a very long thread on the issue some time ago: [https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/wild-american-bison-are-captive/24143](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/wild-american-bison-are-captive/24143) I’m not aware of the current state of the situation, but you can check out the thread. (apologies if this has been posted before!) ---
**Author:** ![jwidness](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9d8465/32.png) [@jwidness](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/jwidness)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 6:05pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/226 "2023-06-02T18:05:54Z")
I can’t offer much of a short-term solution, but I will note that eventually notifications will be revamped, which should make it easier for you to keep track of your notifications. The problem with a single ID going to research grade has been noted before in [this bug report](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/research-grade-with-only-id-at-that-rank/3270) (and even earlier in the Google Group), and also there is an [existing feature request to better separate the observation taxon from the community taxon](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/search-by-observation-taxon-or-community-taxon/3620). ---
**Author:** ![swampster](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/swampster/32/37519_2.png) [@swampster](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/swampster)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 6:15pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/227 "2023-06-02T18:15:13Z")
> [@jwidness](#): > > I can’t offer much of a short-term solution Thanks! No solution needed, especially since there are corrective actions that I can easily take for this observation. It was more of a “just so you’re aware”. I did not realize that the observation taxon and the community taxon are separate (or at least not in the way explained by [this post](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/research-grade-with-only-id-at-that-rank/3270/4)), so that is helpful information! Has there ever been a feature request to have votes for “can Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” specific to a taxon level rather than the observation overall? ---
**Author:** ![jwidness](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9d8465/32.png) [@jwidness](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/jwidness)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 6:57pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/228 "2023-06-02T18:57:52Z")
I think the closest to what you’re suggesting is [this one](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/eliminate-the-observation-level-can-the-community-taxon-be-improved-dqa-item-in-favor-of-an-id-level-cannot-be-improved-flag/26945). There are also (at least) two other requests related to votes for “can be improved”, [here](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/reset-can-the-community-taxon-still-be-confirmed-or-improved-after-taxon-swap/9266) and [here](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/remove-yes-votes-from-the-can-the-id-be-improved-dqa-when-the-community-taxon-improves/27273). ---
**Author:** ![graysquirrel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/graysquirrel/32/127_2.png) [@graysquirrel](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/graysquirrel)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 7:32pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/229 "2023-06-02T19:32:34Z")
Feel free to message or tag me if you need an extra vote on one of those, or on something that’s been erroneously voted captive. ---
**Author:** ![lothlin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/lothlin/32/40591_2.png) [@lothlin](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/lothlin)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2023, 8:01pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/230 "2023-06-02T20:01:49Z")
As a short term fix, what I would probably do on an observation if that happened is comment with your reasoning why it should stay at genus and @ the person. I feel like most active people would, hopefully, respond to the note. ---
**Author:** ![yayemaster](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/yayemaster/32/12153_2.png) [@yayemaster](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/yayemaster)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2023, 3:42am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/231 "2023-06-03T03:42:00Z")
It’s all been fixed, that was months ago. ---
**Author:** ![doodoodoodoo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/doodoodoodoo/32/29155_2.png) [@doodoodoodoo](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/doodoodoodoo)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2023, 11:09pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186/232 "2023-07-05T23:09:20Z")
I’m confused by some of the things I’ve been seeing with sound observations getting stuck as casual. I noticed that one of my recent sound observations was marked as having no evidence of the organism’s presence. While I can hear the sound on my device, I could maybe understand someone being unable to hear it. Except I got curious, and looked up “casual” observations with sound. I’ve found at least a couple of observations that are clearly audible but were still marked as “no evidence of organism” for some reason. What’s going on with this? Meanwhile, I also noticed some observations (not by me) that were marked as captive and it didn’t make sense to me. After asking a couple of people who had marked them as such, it seems like this was an accident, and I wonder how many other observations are stuck as casual because of this. This seems to happen mainly with sound observations and I wonder why! Is it some kind of glitch/bug? [Previous page](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186.md?page=10) [Next page](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-this-observation-casual-needs-id-research-grade-official-topic/13186.md?page=12)