Says up at the top: "If the Data Quality Assessment section looks good, then it’s possible the observation was not “reindexed” properly, and the system has not registered its true current data quality state. When a part of an observation changes, like its ID, a DQA vote, someone faving it, iNaturalist reindexes the observation to reflect the change. However, this sometimes doesn’t happen due to a glitch or a bug. You can force an observation to be reindexed by voting in the DQA or faving the observation. Give it a few seconds and the observation’s data quality grade might change to an accurate one.
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Yup, but it really seems those glitches and bugs rarely stay until anyone looks them up and maybe fis their source, we help those obs so quick and they become normal again! :D
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It was a brand-new observation when I looked at it. I was just looking in “casual” observations to see if any should not be there and it was the first one I saw. I will keep this glitch/bug in mind.
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Why is https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/61949261 Casual? It was marked “No, it’s as good as it can be” in the DQA, but the Community ID is at subfamily. I thought subfamily was low enough to become RG rather than Casual.
Subfamily is supposed to be low enough, but it’s supposed to be conditional on the Community Taxon, not the Observation Taxon.
Right now, the green checkmark next to “Community Taxon is precise” on the bottom left is testing whether the observation taxon is less than family, which it is (Subfamily Tipulinae is lower than family).
The text on the right correctly says that the Community Taxon is not precise enough – Superfamily Tipuloidea is too coarse.
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Right, thanks. It sounds like it was incorrectly marked then, since while it may not be able to be improved, it definitely can be confirmed.
I’m kinda sure it can get to genus by those who knows american Tipulinae.
Useful post! I have a couple of casual observations that I can’t figure out why they’re casual. For example this one: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/22127426. Why?
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Someone had marked the “ID is a s good as possible” button and the seemed to have push it to the casual…
Thanks graysquirrel for the advice. I have generally very few casuals, bbut I found two falsely marked casual observations as well.
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I have a few like that one. If someone uses the DQA to mark “Community ID cannot be confirmed or improved” while the Community ID is at family level or higher, the observation becomes Casual. I just leave mine though, since I figure whoever IDed it was confident enough that it couldn’t be refined further. Example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67972485
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For this example you gave I would actually be pretty surprised if “Diptera” would be all you can do. I think this one can at least go to family level with this bodyshape, if reviewed by someone who knows his stuff. I am actually not even sure if diptera is really correct here…
So if at all, your example even proves for me that one should be veeeery careful with this ID-button, especially on such a high level and when nobody even confirmed this ID yet.
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It also can be an aphid I’d say now, depends on how you see structures between the legs, a single lateral shot would give a family easily or just a close one, I’d say legs are long enough, but body is short to wings.
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Actually thought about aphid as well when writing i am not so sure on the diptera Id
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Thanks for your post! I was surprised to find so many of my observations marked as Casual. Some correctly, though. But as to the others - I’m not sure I understand why some were marked as casual.
For example:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26585415
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/10753286
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/69548676
seen as -
and
Someone marked the ID as “as good as it can be”, which renders any observation above subfamily level as casual.
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thanks. so I can revert that by saying that “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?”, right?
Yes. And you can always test that out by adding the vote (and then taking it away if you want). It won’t generate a notification.
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I have made well over 1000 observations over a period of several years, yet I have had some of my observations downgraded to “casual” because someone has decided that the organism was “captive/cultivated”. I have always assumed that if an organism is growing a reasonable distance from other cultivated/captive organisms and in association with other wild organisms, it’s WILD whether or not it is a native species. Likewise, a native species obviously planted in a garden, is cultivated. If I contribute an observation of a captive/cultivated organism (and I have a few times), I will check it as such. I feel like I know a lot better than a person simply looking at a photo whether my observation was “wild” or not, no matter how expert that person may be as a naturalist. I believe that one of the most important things this database can contribute to science is the documentation of the spread of escaped/invasive species. If people downgrade observations to “casual” simply because an identifier feels that a non-native organism is captive/cultivated, this contribution will become much less valuable. Perhaps, rather than second guessing an observation by deciding it is captive/cultivated, and therefore casual, a person helping with an identification could write a note to the observer and ask him or her, perhaps pointing out the criteria he/she should use for making that determination.
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You can easily make these observations “Verifiable” again by checking thumbs-up on “Organism is wild”. This will counteract the Not Wild vote. By all means do so if you are sure the organism is wild!
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