I looked at a couple of them, and they did not have two confirmations. Even then, I’m not sure how it works for domesticated life.
EDIT I looked at all of the examples, and none of them have two identifications needed to get to research grade.
As long as no one marks them Captive, they can become RG same as anything else.
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Blockquote
You can always see who marked an observation as “not wild”. Just click on the number(s) beside the notification. If it was iNat, that’s indicated.
I think the clearest resolution to the OP’s query about this would be an explanation from the OP in the observations as to why it should not be marked “not wild”, taking into account the current indicated locations (or correcting them, if they are not quite right). If populations of feral domestic dogs and cats are in the neighbourhood, then a note to support that (if the OP feels these are significant sightings) would clear it up. Otherwise, it doesn’t seem out of order to assume that a cat seen in a neighbourhood is probably not a feral cat, and that domestic dog tracks in someone’s yard probably aren’t from a feral dog. If the plant sample was picked elsewhere, but is being shown in the backyard, then the location could be corrected to where it was actually found, and that explained in the observation.
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I know this isn’t the case for s-a-l-t, but to be fair, a lot of users are just on the phone app and at least on iOS you can’t see why observations have been marked casual or by whom. And plenty of casual users don’t even know there is a desktop version!
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Yes, you can see that iNat marked it, but not an explanation of the process (or more realistically) a link to an explanation of why (an explanation on the observation itself would take up a lot of space). Maybe the little iNat ID flag that come sup could be a link itself?
I’m a pretty experienced iNat user, and I didn’t know about why/how this happened until recently. So I think it’s a good assumption that many other users don’t know as well. Heck, many beginning users don’t even know about the DQA section at all! I can definitely appreciate how it could be frustrating to feel like your observations were being classified as casual and not knowing why (even if I think the system is behaving well in this case). It’s also an issue because this info isn’t readily accessible via app as well as @antrozousamelia pointed out.
So I wouldn’t want to change the auto-categorization process itself, just make it more transparent to users, so new folks don’t get unduly frustrated.
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Has anybody else noticed that some observations aren’t having the community taxon updated after a new ID is added? For example this https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/76551250
is sitting at Columbidae even though it has and ID to species. I’ve seen this a bunch the past few days and if I withdraw my ID it will go to C. livia but until then it doesn’t seem like it’s updating.
(screenshot in case it decides to randomly fix itself)
Yes, this is normal for subspecies IDs. It currently takes 2 subspecies IDs to change the observation taxon. You can read about why this is the case and suggestions to change it here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/leading-subspecies-ids-should-change-the-obs-taxon-like-leading-ids-of-other-ranks/139
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presumably missing something obvious, but this won’t shift from casual even when i reindex
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41760822
I resolved a flag on the photo, it’s back to RG
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thanks, I’d checked for flags on the observation itself, but not on the photo
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I can’t figure out why this observation of mine is casual: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/81884480. Can someone enlighten me?
It does not appear to be marked as Casual, at least for me. It is marked as Needs ID, which just means nobody has agreed with the ID yet.
It now shows as “Needs ID”, but was definitely “Casual” when I posted this. I notice someone checked thumbs up for “Organism is wild” since I made this post. There was never a thumbs down for that.
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I withdrew my own initial ID as a “Mantis” to get what the community identified as “Arizona Mantis” to “Research Grade”.
I do not understand why the people who ID it as Arizona Mantis “disagree” (according to iNat) with my ID as “Mantis”, but I would like to learn if anyone knows. Thanks in advance!
Edit to include link: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/89972551
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Your ID was for an organism in the genus Mantis. The others disagreed that it is in the genus Mantis; instead, they agreed with each other that it is a species in a different genus–Stagmomantis. When you withdrew your ID, there was then agreement as to genus and species among the remaining identifiers, so the observation became Research Grade.
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I didn’t realize my “mantis” was not a “Mantis”. Thanks for helping me learn.
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I can’t figure out why this observation is “casual.” It’s not an automatic iNaturalist designation, I don’t see any data missing, and no one marked it “as good as it can be” or “not wild.” https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/92699857
I clicked on Location is Accurate (Yes) and it flipped from Casual to Needs ID … then unclicked my selection and it stayed Needs ID. I’ve noticed that sometimes some element of the DQA seems to not function, hence a Casual status.
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I think it’s better to leave those before staff checks them, for sure reindexing works fine in most cases, but there could be some crucial info about why it happens.
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