I have no knowledge of specific observations, but if a sound file didn’t have evidence of the organism the observer IDed as, it would be reasonable for an IDer to tick “no evidence of organism” even if they can hear the sound.
I think with sounds it can be very difficult, because a given sound could be produced by many organisms, including anything moving in the wind. So if an observer can definitely say “I know it isn’t that” they may not be able to provide any other ID, and just tick no evidence. With a picture, it’s almost always possible to provide some other ID.
Two of the ones I saw (made by others) had clear bird sounds in them.
I’m confused as to what the rules are now. If someone posts a picture of a spider and someone disagrees with the ID, or if the picture isn’t clear enough to ID to species level, should it also get marked as “no evidence”? I usually see people simply disagreeing with, say, the observer’s species-level ID and suggesting something broader, for example.
I understand the concerns that a sound might not really be made by a bird, but this is also true of photo observations, no? To use the blurry spider picture example, it could just be a spider-shaped shadow or mold stain, it could be a toy someone stuck to the wall, etc. Except most people don’t automatically assume that this is the case and that the observer is trying to game the system.
If sound observations can never be really “proof” of an organism’s presence, why allow them to become research grade and not automatically mark them as casual, similar to observations with no evidence?
Maybe the guidelines just aren’t clear on what to do with sound recordings and their worth, maybe I’m missing something, but I just find this confusing and applying very different standards to similar scenarios (just in different media)
I’m definitely not saying that sound observations provide no proof in general. There’s lot of good quality IDable sound recordings on iNat. If there are clear birds sounds, they shouldn’t be downvoted for evidence.
What I am saying is that with lower quality sound recordings, it’s possible that there is no audible evidence of a particular organism in the recording. If that’s the case (there’s nothing someone can identify as a living organism), then giving a thumbs down for Evidence is reasonable.
With a photo, there’s usually evidence for some kind of organism - even a really blurry photo can often be IDed as something broad (plant, bird), so it wouldn’t be appropriate to downvote Evidence. But with low quality sound recordings, it may be the case that there is no IDable evidence that the sound was produced by any living organism (like ice squealing, etc).
One other reason that this can happen with sound recordings is if people upload a “blank” observation to record the time and place and add a sound file later. Some IDers might have ticked “no evidence” (though this is unnecessary since a blank/empty observation is already not verifiable). If the observer then later added a sound file manually, they may not have noticed the downvote of evidence.
I’m going to hope the sounds were uploaded later, then. I can believe that my obs doesn’t have the most obvious sound, but the ones I saw from other users had clear bird sounds and were not particularly low quality.
The first is sampling bias. If I search through casual-grade photo observations, they are awash with correctly-labeled “captive/cultivated” observations. So it may take me a while to find an observation with an incorrect DQA (and even longer to find an incorrect DQA not associated with the “organism is wild” field). That doesn’t mean there are fewer incorrect DQAs for photos compared to audio, it just means you have to sort through more correct DQAs to find them.
The second is audio is reviewed less frequently than photos. So once an incorrect DQA is added, it may never be corrected unless the observer themself counters the vote. Only a few identifiers review casual-grade photo observations (mostly to provide IDs for captive/cultivated organisms), but I bet even fewer review casual-grade audio observations.
Regarding the captive/cultivated field, it seems like it’s a frequent misclick, including from observers themselves. Everyone I asked responded with something along those lines. My best guess is something about the mobile app interface or some browsers, maybe!
Good point about reviewing DQAs and incorrectly marked ones not being seen as often! I hadn’t considered the review aspect, just the initial votes.
I am wondering why a recent observation of mine, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/171255050, is still at “Needs ID”, even though 4 other identifiers along with myself, have identified it as
Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus)?
Perhaps I am missing something?
Thanks.
Looks like a beginner user had ticked “Can still be improved”. I counterweighted with a “No, it’s as good as can be.” Always worth checking that field for observations that are not at RG - rarely used but every once in a while, that’s the issue.
Just found this one at genus; marked CID as good as it can be with >2 IDs. I tried adding and removing an agreeing ID to rule out the need for reindexing.
Not in this case, because the observer’s ID doesn’t match the community ID and they opted out of community ID. It will only become RG when the observer changes their ID to match the community ID (or the community changes its IDs to match the observer’s ID, which is less likely here).
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.
Description of problem Observaton tagged as “Casual” but, it has all the criteria of "Needs ID
Step 1: Upload photo
Step 2: Add ID of “Fungi including mushrooms”
Step 3: Use the map to drop a pin
Someone identified it down to the Genus.
Am I missing something? This seems pretty straight-forward as a regular, old, acceptable observation.
Are the photos not registering with the system/website? They are JPG files. Shouldn’t it be “Needs ID” at least?
