Seeing threads about people gaming the system to reach a high number of identifications …. Seeing firsthand, newcomers adding and agreeing to incorrect IDs without realising the impact on the dataset… Seeing the mistakes amateur identifiers make even when well-intentioned (myself included!) Heari…

To be clear, my thoughts around “disempowering” newcomers were really with those who literally just signed up. They have less than 100 obs in a taxa… and no ID experience… and start adding 10s or 100s of species level IDs in taxa where its not possible, without realising the time it can take others …

That way some real experts will never be at the same “level” as other users, there’re many of them who don’t upload any observations at all.

I’m not saying they need to upload observations per se… I’m literally just on about an implementation akin to the forum intro. Even just the smallest intervention possible to explain the basics to users on arrival. A tutorial, a note, a popup, an email. How does it work with new users at present? …

I agree, more and more popups and tutorials, probably more is needed not to get new users separated in any way, but to make clear for them what iNat is about, probably having each new member reead through tutorial, more complicated than one we have today for the app, with links to forum and popular …

The great thing about iNaturalist data isn’t that it’s always correctly identified (it may not be) but that (1) there’s lots of it and (2) it’s verifiable. It may or may not be right, but if you need to know, you can find out. That’s really valuable.

[image] sbushes: Even just the smallest intervention possible to explain the basics to users on arrival. A tutorial, a note, a popup, an email. How does it work with new users at present? You can see what new app users view here https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/guiding-new-users-without-scari…

Ok, good to see, thanks! Its a bit difficult for me to imagine, as I don’t use the app. Will have to download when I get my phone fixed :) I know trying to help my mum to use it remotely this last month, she has struggled a bit - especially when I tried to explain about things like withdrawing an I…

[image] sbushes: I can’t imagine many website users clicking through the links on the email. This is what new web users view when they first log in. I’ve updated the link I sent above with this screenshot: [image] Guiding new users without scaring them off Logging into iNaturalist.org acc…

As has been stated before, this issue’s been discussed quite a few times throughout the course of iNat’s existence, and as bouteloua quoted me earlier, any possible “expert” rating would be based on iNat activity, not external factors. I think better onboarding (we’re just starting to draw up some …

i agree with @tiwane about the identifier motivations - i don’t think you can flatten those into one idea of expertise. (i am not a trained expert in the contexts listed here but do rank pretty high up the leaderboard.) i respect both rationales he provided for myself. i’ll add two things in additio…

Why not empower recognised experts?

General

bouteloua July 16, 2020, 6:57pm 92

You can see what new app users view here https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/guiding-new-users-without-scaring-them-off/2242/5?u=bouteloua

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Why not empower recognised experts?

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