If you scroll down to the āData Quality Assessmentā section, it will explain why something is Casual, Needs ID, or Research Grade. @schoenitz voted āYesā to counter an item that was voted on in that section and itās Needs ID again.
This big, long explanation doesnāt really cover why an observation with two clear photos, a date/time, and an accurate location gets a āCasualā label.
Can someone please explain it and leave out the āResearch Gradeā rating?
It was my bad, I got ahead of myself and checked the āgood as it can beā box before it had two russula IDs
Sorry 'bout that
(I was probably in the zone XD)
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Referencing RG is important, because it is one of three statuses that an observation can have and they are non-overlapping. To understand why an observation is in any one of the statuses, you also need to understand why it is not in the other two.
Ticking āNo, itās as good as it can beā will make a Needs ID observation either Casual or RG. Since this one had a Community ID at Fungi Including Lichens (bottom R of your screenshot), when Itās as Good as Can Be was ticked, it would become Casual. If that is ticked when an observation has a CID below Family level, it will be RG.
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In that long explanation in the tooltip, itās this highlighted one:
Observations will revert to ācasualā if the above conditions arenāt met or the community agrees
- the location doesnāt look accurate (e.g. monkeys in the middle of the ocean, hippos in office buildings, etc.)
- the organism isnāt wild/naturalized (e.g. captive or cultivated by humans or intelligent space aliens)
- the observation doesnāt present evidence of an organism, e.g. images of water features, rocks, landscapes that donāt include the organism, etc.
- the observation doesnāt present recent (~100 years) evidence of the organism (e.g. fossils, but tracks, scat, and dead leaves are ok)
- the observation no longer needs an ID and the community ID is above family
- 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 observerās ID
It had been voted as no longer needing community identification and the community ID was above/coarser than the rank of family (kingdom Fungi).
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Thanks, bouteloua.
I found out that an identifier accidentally checked a checkbox too soon. It was identified to Genus level.
Iām sort of glad it happened now. I usually just upload my observationsā photos and try to be accurate with the rest of the information. I never really explored the identification process thoroughly.
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Give it a go. Try to identify a few observations in your area, or maybe of birds in North America (or whatever setting you want to try out). Any observation that you donāt know you can just skip. Itās a fun thing to do, youāll pretty quickly figure out what an identifier sees about an observation and what happens when you add an ID to somebody elseās observation.
Youāll also pretty quickly get to know the regulars (people and species), which can be rewarding as well.
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Yeah, the birds are always identified quickly. I never get a chance on many of those. LOL
I have gone through the āUnknownā observations from time to time. There are usually some things in that list that I can add high, general level identities like āFungi including lichensā, āInsectsāā¦ stuff like that. I know there are people who are very knowledgeable in those areas and look for observations identified at that high, general level.
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Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website
App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About): na
Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc): Safari, same in Firefox
URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/649317
Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):
Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):
Step 1: Given the activity I would expect this observation to be tagged Girardia, not Platyhelminthes.
And there are several more old observations like this, including:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1084471
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1119179
all found via this search
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?hrank=kingdom&lrank=phylum&order=asc&place_id=any&taxon_id=52319
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Moved this to the existing topic for these questions. In this case and this case, the observer opted out of community ID. See the top post in this thread for more information.
For https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/1119179 everything looks fine, I believe? The majority of the community agrees at the phylum level, there arenāt enough finer IDs that to override the seahare ID and the phylum-level IDs.
Thanks for your replies, but I frankly find this a bit hard to understand.
In cases 1 and 2 it seems odd that an observer would tag an observation at the phylum level and not permit this to be refined by the community. Should one ping the observer to ask if they intended this?
And in case 3 there are five IDs for flatworms vs. one for seahare. I am not sure why the ID cannot be refined, but I guess such is the algorithm.
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You can leave a comment asking the observer if they intended this. Some people choose to opt-out of Community ID sort of reflexively and without fully understanding the consequences, but others do it to maintain full control over observations and do so for all their observations. In these situations, assuming that the CID has reached a good consensus, you can tick āas good as can beā in the DQA which will take the observation out of the needs ID pool. Other IDers may just choose not to ID observations that have opted out of CID to avoid the frustration of observations like this.
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Thanks, Iāll try writing a comment to see if they really intended this.
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Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website
Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Chrome
URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/184351066
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/172248900
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/161767719
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/161341903
Hey! I noticed 4 of my observations have become casual, and Iām not sure why? The only thing they have in common is that āThis ID is as good as it can beā is checked, but I was under the presumption that would make them eligible for research grade when at family/tribe, not mark them as casualā¦
Is this a bug, or am I just misunderstanding how that checked box works?
(moved this to an existing topic)
It will if the Community Taxon is below family and above species. In this observation the Community Taxon is at Superfamily:
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No - the observer has rejected the CID algorithm. And the polite queue of identifiers. And taxon specialists who have filters set (review all proteas for example)
Yesterday I had Unknowns from Africa which did, have IDs. For that observer I marked all as Reviewed. Done.
Opted out should be a banner up top - next to Research Grade / Needs ID / Casual / Opted Out
Identifiers should have a personal setting - I do not want to see (global) Opted Outs.
The single obs from a taxon specialist, where they have good reason (I did the DNA analysis or whatever) - those I respect.
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My observation got marked as casual the moment I uploaded it: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/196067090 . Itās not missing any more info than the other observations I have uploaded today, and the only thing different is that the location is open rather than obscured.
Edit: It says that the organism is not wild. The deer were seen in a park and were released there a long time ago, but are not captive. Does that not count as wild?
iNaturalist automatically votes organisms as captive if more than a certain percentage of those in a given area have been marked captive. You can vote against this if you wish. Deer in a park are a bit of a gray area but if they are prevented from leaving by fencing or receive veterinary care, then they would probably not be wild. If they are free to leave a reserve but just choose to be there, I would consider them wild.
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A lot of identifiers seem unaware of the ācan still be improvedā vs. āas good as it can be.ā I regularly come across observations which have more than enough IDs to make RG, but are prevented by a ācan still be improvedā vote. Whenever I see an observation at Needs ID and with multiple IDs, I check for that.
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