Just in order to prevent someone cheating in the leaderboards, or prevent wrong ID being too many to be cover.
In other word, Why RG need two same IDs instead of other number?
Cause hard taxa won’t get more ids most of the time. Even two is a lot to get often.
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I agree on it.
In Mantis and Katydid what I am good at. Many IDs of rare species are given only by me.
Once there are already a wrong ID, I have to call some reliable researcher to agree with me or waiting for the uploader to change his mind. Or this observation will never be correctly ID.
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I agree with the OP. Personally i’m very against the idea of agreeing with observations that are already research grade just for the sake of being a “top identifier”. I would even go as far as to say that many of these people are merely “top agreers”
The even more annoying part is that when the ID turns out to be wrong, they refuse to change their IDs
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Agreed @cthawley. I have been systematically going through all the Terrapene observations and trying to confirm them to subspecies (if possible). I have also been trying to add the annotations of life stage, living/dead, and sex where possible. I have expertise for this taxa so why not add my ID while I am at it? Even if 20 people have already IDed it it doesnt hurt. It also helps to be able to filter by observations “not reviewed” so that I can easily find new ones and reduce the number I might miss.
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I too have been a bit puzzled by people affirming that my giraffe is a giraffe, or whatever. But I can see its useful for a taxon expert to keep track of which observations they have identified, and which are still to check - and it does no harm to add weight to the consensus.
As a largely non-expert identifier, I would love a finer control on notifications on observations we have previously id’d or commented on. I think this might be in the works?
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I, too, add ID’s to correctly identified Reseach Grade observations if I’m reviewing that species. It’s a way to say, “I have seen this and I agree.” I know that I could use “review” to get the observation from showing up for again for me, but if I’m there checking, why not add an ID?
I do consider a dozen agreeing ID’s of the same observation to be a waste of ID effort. And running up one’s own number of ID’s just to get to the top of the leaderboard is silly cheating and quite annoying.
However, I learned long ago that we can’t make other people better. So I sigh or mutter a few choice words, whichever feels better at the time, and move on. There are more useful things to spend my attention on.
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[Thomas :] It’s not disturbing for me. Sometimes, a research grade observation is not so obvious and needs contradiction (it happens for me at least once a week). And, precisely for this reason (that somebody can lately affect the consensus), the community of people that are convincted about an identification should reinforce the robustness of the database. It’s the very principle of participating science : the number of interactions counterbalances the lack of standardised methodology.
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And I love that you and other experts do that! Please keep going!
Even though I value every ID made in good concience, it´s just a fact that the opinion of certain (expert) people on certain taxa leave me with more certainty that a certain ID is right (or wrong). I would hate missing out on those opinions, even if they be the 10th ID on an observation or made after a year or langer or whatever.
Just today one observation from me which is 6 years old and has 7 or so IDs already got confirmed again. Ok, why not? I don´t see a problem there but it might serve a good purpose for the IDing person which keeps them going.
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Yes. So imagine how much more angry they’d be if adding IDs were impossible 
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It’s not possible to unfollow your own observations. It works to agree with the ID and also have agreeing notifications turned off, but usually I am not willing to agree (because I know nothing about the species) and so I’m stuck being notified.
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Oh, I did not consider the angle of “getting too many notifications” in my reply. Then, clearly, this may be an issue and the solution would indeed be finer control about what notification you get as opposed to some regulations on the IDs. This is a general principle, applicable to application design even outside of iNat: solve problems where they are - if the existence of the ID does not cause issue, but the notification does, then the latter needs to be fixed, not the former.
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The iNat Community Guidelines ask that we assume others mean well and states
One of the main purposes of iNaturalist is to help other people with identifications, so adding a lot of identifications is both accepted and encouraged.
So there’s nothing inherently wrong with users adding extra agreeing IDs, and like others have stated there are many good or neutral reasons why someone would do it. You can turn off notifications for agreeing IDs (I did that many moons ago) and you can mute users if you don’t want to be notified of their actions. The revamped notifications system will have other options and will help you sort out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
I think there are some things we could and probably should do to reduce incentives for those who blindly agree to get on the “leaderboard” behavior, like count only improving IDs, but since a good chunk of iNat is about generating usable data, things like number of IDs and such will always be tabulated and searchable. And humans being what we are, that will incentivize some folks.
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I said agreeing with correct IDs, not incorrect ones. I never agree with IDs without doing the proper research, and I think everyone should follow suit, but that just isn’t the case sometimes.
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I agree too because of
- checking the all IDed species under that genus i know instead of clicking review to find out wrong categorised ones (easy way for me while i ID)
- its my suggestion to the species that i m learning, and if somethings added i like to get notified
- i know that if user deletes their accounts; their comments, IDs etc gets deleted too, so who knows you are just there to support as a base in time.
i like to get more supported ID on my observations since it becomes more solid i believe. also as a leaderboard, more people will be there to ask advise on that species and more chance to find an active ones.
everybody has probably their own reason who knows, but at least it doesnt harm as i see.
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It’s great in my opinion when an world expert confirms the ID that I’ve proposed, after another person (whose experience may be equal or less than my own) has advanced it to RG.
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From my perspective, on my own observations that I am fairly certain of, but not an expert, I appreciate more IDs than just two. It helps me have confidence in my ID. And even those that I do think are fairly straightforward, I’m not terribly bothered by more and more IDs. It does very little harm and people may want to add IDs to things they know to help grow their confidence in identification. I don’t know the particular motivation of users who seem to add IDs to a lot of research grade observations of fairly common and easily identifiable organisms, but I wouldn’t assume it’s for leaderboard reasons. I know in my own experience that my brother and I always identify each other’s observations (only if we know it, of course) because I always view all of his observations anyway, and why not confirm them if I know them. I also don’t want to clog up my Favorite observations too much, but if I’d like to follow an observation because it interests me and I am confident in the ID, then I will identify it. Also, if I’m in the Identify page and click on something that 1 second earlier was confirmed, I’ll still add an ID because I am there and agree and I don’t see this as an issue.
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I think OP talks more about 7th+ ids, birds always get so many, partly because of how id tab loads, but mostly because 3-4 other people have to check them again long after they got RG.
I won’t turn off confirming IDs, because that second or third one is important to me.
But I will unsubscribe when the fourth etc chime in.
If I could turn off confirming IDs after the third one …
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I think it’s helpful in cases where the person is carefully and systematically going through observations to verify/bolster/correct them. I think the only real downside to scrolling though a list of 100+ notifications is I might accidentally miss a reply/comment from a different user.
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