One clear issue is that the people doing ID’s on the site are not the only ones providing support and services to the site. Paying identifiers but not folks who do translations, or who update range information or curators etc. Where do you draw the line and decide who is worthy of paying ?
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If the expert who adds IDs, is a biologist employed at a university or museum, paid with public funds - then time spent visibly on iNat reminds taxpayers - Why are we paying the salaries of biologists? Citizen science from the scientists to the citizens.
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There are reasons for experts to participate and some already get them. The observations accumulating on this site are a golden resource for researchers who take the time to invest in curation of their taxa of interest.
This site is a new phenomenon and it will take time for it’s real strengths and weakness to become apparent and equilibrate. Some experts will never figure out that with a bit of effort on their part they can use the observations of a growing army of volunteers to further their research. Impoverished as they are it makes no sense at all to pass up such a resource. I think most will get it and when they do they will make sure that high quality photographs and descriptions are available for their taxa and they will spend time IDing not just for altruistic reasons but because it serves their interest.
The iNat project is a work in progress that has grown explosively because the model has great appeal and, for the most part, it works. It could be better and I think it will be. Growing pains are not a surprise. At this point I think what’s needed most is outreach and a sales job about the benefits of engaging from expert users who are already seeing those benefits. They are real and for many it will be persuasive.
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You’re right about that. It would be up to iNat’s administration team to divvy up the subscription funds. I didn’t intend to suggest that all the subscription funds would go to highly rated identifiers – funding needs to go to the infrastructure, the (excellent) IT team and administration, etc. But it seems there’s a shortage of quality identifiers. I’m willing to pay into a fund that helps support them and keep them interested in participating, and I think the fund would get more money coming in if there was an official subscription system, with perhaps a few perks associated.
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Donations to the site (click the button at the bottom of any page on the site if you wish to do so) already help to cover all of these except paying users.
Any change towards some kind of a tiered system, be it paying users to contribute, giving perks to those who contribute financially etc would be a massive change in the ethos of the site, and needs very careful consideration in my mind.
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Have you spent time around many taxonomists? It doesn’t take long to hear stories about manuscripts and books waiting to be published just as soon as the old entrenched expert dies. Then we can finally fix the taxonomy.
Do you know an expert with a list of experts?
Sorry for the snark. This is a bit of a dead horse topic.
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It usually has only 1 name on it. A couple if they have coauthored something.
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I do not think it is a good idea to start paying the identifiers. I can say this very freely, because I do IDs, I am professional and as most of the taxonomists I do not wallow in money. But if I am paid, I will loose fun I am having here, I will have obligations, will be stressed, etc. etc. How to attract more professionals? Advertise among professionals, show both the fun and the use for society and for nature. That concerns not administration of iNaturalist, but all the members. Advertise among the bureaucrats who govern research and research financing. Just recently I had an opportunity to read a most annoying document of a new European programme concerning biodiversity preservation and studies. It included part about the citizen science but was obviously written by somebody who has absolutely no clue about citizen science, citizen science projects, how they work and what problems they encounter. I wrote very scathing commentary on that part but I doubt that it will reach the point - one voice is never heard.
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List of acknowledged specialists in different fields in UK.
https://www.brc.ac.uk/recording-schemes
Note the huge disparity between invertebrates and other taxa - likely representative to some extent of the discrepancy across taxonomic groups in species diversity and complexity.
Looking at parallel trends visible in iNaturalist data for UK …
Birds
120000 observations
5000 identifiers
438 of the 620 species have been identified
Plants
500000 observations
5000 identifiers
5100(?) of the 4000 species identified
Insects
300000 observations
5000 identifiers
5000 of the 27000 species identified
…it becomes clear why someone like myself, primarily recording invertebrates, might have a significantly different experience from others on this thread I think, like @astra_the_dragon…and might find the lack of expertise ( as well as the rebuttal of it as being an issue ) more problematic than those working with other taxa.
The discrepancies in understanding around this seem likely in part at least, attributable to broader taxonomic bias. Arguably, something we should all be striving to recognise, understand and tackle - here especially, as well as in society around us.
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For what it’s worth, physical specimen museums at universities rarely have uniform taxonomies in their collections, especially if it’s a large collection. Some of this is due to the labor involved in changing specimen tags and the corresponding info in their databases which results in long lag times in implementing a new taxonomy. In other cases, it can be due to who last examined and added an ID to the specimen (different opinions and taxonomies used by the experts). Some specimens have not been examined for decades by anyone and until an expert comes along and looks at it, it might stay misidentified or with an old name. If you go to one of the online collection databases such as ARCTOS or VertNet to look for specimen records of a species, you need to be aware of this and of the synonyms (many out-of-date) that might still be in use in a collection.
iNat is different in that everything is online (the “specimen” as well as the data) and thus can be reviewed more easily and revised faster, but that doesn’t guarantee agreement or uniformity in nomenclature. Some accommodation for different opinions by experts is probably needed, although the current system generally works if you accept the fact that the name that gets assigned might not always be in line with the taxonomy you prefer. Taxonomic change can be a slow and messy process.
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Agree with this, for example I don’t use BugGuide much anymore because while accurate, the expert only identification system makes it unclear if my ID suggestions are contributing at all, and means it takes forever to ID something to species level
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There are reasons people choose anonymity or semi-anonymity, even abandoning their robes of expertise, because of bad experiences on other platforms. Ask any woman, POC, or LBGTQI about threats, insults and stalkers. Some may want this to be a safe place, and not want enemies to follow.
Thank you for supporting anonymity
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Sorry for the slow reply. I was just informed of that feature a few days ago by another user, but I appreciate you sharing your knowledge of the data quality assessment with me as well. I’m thankful for the additional tips you’ve provided me with though, and will be sure to leave a comment when or if I mark an observation as needing to be confirmed or improved.
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