It is much worse when many users repeatedly provide a generally obviously wrong identification… and this happens
3 Likes
As a user that systematically goes through new observations, both RG and needing ID, I also do not understand what is wrong with adding additional agreements to an already RG observation. Given that the user is operating under the terms of iNaturalist and only agreeing when they themselves are certain of the ID, they are using iNaturalist as it was intended. Personally, I do not mark my observations as being “as good as it can be” until it has accrued several agreements from the community and has strong evidence to being a certain identification.
It seems that this is an issue not the very act of agreeing to RG observations but of doing so without a a verification by one’s own knowledge. The notifications can be a real inconvenience but the solution would not be to discourage people from assessing RG observations because it helps to have many (informed) opinions for each observation. Focusing the conversation on changes to the notification system and encouraging people after a certain number of agreeing IDs to mark that the observation is “as good as it can be” on the Research Grade Qualification section may be a more helpful response.
6 Likes
There has been some mention that adding ids is part of their species differentiation learning process. This confirms what I thought when I have gotten multiple ids from users adding to what is already research grade. Aside from the experts who have taken upon themselves to curate those species they know well and add their id rather than just mark it as reviewed, there are others I felt were fine tuning their acuity and knowledge of identifying species by practice, practice, practice - I would probably do this with bird songs more if I could.
I also realize that not all of us have the access, equipment, freedom, or mobility to make observations let alone make daily observations of that organism that has our yard as its home. I am sure there are those that can only or choose to only participate in iNaturalist by making identifications. Sure, they may rise to the top of a leaderboard but who knows if that is even significant or not to them. I am not going to concern myself with the few that make this their goal.
I should be so lucky that the toughest thing in my day is too many notifications.
What comforts me is knowing that people with a wide range of backgrounds, abilities, challenges/limitations or not, can participate in something that exposes them, virtually or not, to the vast array of organisms found in nature all over the world.
They can track their venture by observing, faving, reviewing, and/or identifying. How great is that?
15 Likes
ditto. The other advantage, is that when you re-review in a months time (or 3 years… etc), your ID on the observation is a clear indicator that you have already looked at it, and unless you have a change in your concept of the species, there is no need to re-review it.
10 Likes
The sum total of training for iOS users is a sweet little video of less than 1.5 minutes. It covers
- how to use the app to take a picture observation
- how to ID it using the AI
- how to Share the observation.
A person really has to go looking or stumble accidentally on the website to learn any more.
I expect (hope☺️) more training features are included in the coming new iOS version.
I edited my post to reflect that I was commenting on learning species differentiation rather than learning how to use iNaturalist. But learning to use the site is important too.
4 Likes
Part of it is also frustration about the disparity in what receives identifications. If you have tons of Needs ID observations of plants and fungi that have never received an ID, it’s a lot less satisfying to see a notification and find that someone has confirmed something obvious that already had 3+ confirming IDs.
This doesn’t justify judgment of any particular identifier or identification, since they have their own reasons for identifying, it’s more about the efforts of identifiers as a whole.
4 Likes
That’s true. Sometime there are some hard and rare IDs I made and hoping to receive confirm or discussion or just simply thank from the uploder but being bury under a bunch of repeating IDs notification of common species. Just annoying.
Those one who repeating ID under RG is usually “batch operation”. Not only under one observation but many at a time.
1 Like
I understand this feeling as well. It is unfortunate that it is more difficult to find people that can confidently ID difficult taxa in the same number as easy taxa. It indicates that more guides and keys ought to be made available to the community. Rather than a deductive approach of discouraging users from participating where they can successfully ID a taxa, I believe an additive approach of trying to encourage the community to grow their knowledge would be more beneficial to the community. Users do feel better when they can feel they are a part of the process, even if others have gotten to that observation before them. And a number of those users that have a positive experience may seek to learn more about IDing less popular categories such as plants, fungi, and invertebrates.
I stress again that I feel the same frustration as a majority of my observations are invertebrates. I personally do not object to users piling onto observations as long as they are using their knowledge accurately. A public community like this will always have people using it more casually than others. But having the opportunity at all to become a part of the identifying body will always be a net positive for recruiting citizen scientists to the iNaturalist mission.
4 Likes
We have projects that filter observations identified by a particular subset of users that we trust to ID those groups. These users add a lot of agreeing IDs to RG observations so that they become part of that particular project
For example we have a Flora of Tasmania project that accepts only RG obs that either of the curators of botany at the Tasmanian herbarium have to have confirmed before they can become part of the project.
10 Likes
How does that work? Do you set up a project that excludes observations not IDed by certain users? I am not aware of such a function
Interesting. I will not do that. I regard agreeing to RG observations (at least of easily identifiable organisms) to serve no real purpose, so I try very hard to not accidentally do it. Honestly it’s like a game for me, especially earlier today when I got caught up in a “race” against @luissilva4 to identify some of @fffffffff’s observations! I started identifying them, then noticed that Luis was IDing them one second before me, so I skipped to the end and started reviewing them backward. A fun twist to my identifying!
3 Likes
Yes, you can set up an automatic project to select observations by most criteria generally available in the filter box. I originaly intended our Vascular Flora of Tasmania project to provide images of trustworthy observations to accompany the Flora of Tasmania Online, which does not use images. One way to ensure that only quality-controlled observations are presented is to ensure that only those obs identified by trusted users are included in the project.
2 Likes
If an observation is RG already and correctly ID, I will no more add my ID.
But If it is because loading slowly I will still keep it. But this is rare in mantis and katydid. people tent to make basic IDs because many spcies are hard to be recognize by unknowlegded user. So everytime when I make an ID (Now matter former ID loaded or not) the observation is not yet RG.
2 Likes
That’s interesting because “identified by” is not available in the filter box, although it does exist if you manually type the parameter into a URL. I don’t see it listed as a requirement of your project either, but perhaps it doesn’t display all requirements? I know little about projects but if the ability select by identifer does exist, that would be useful for me.
2 Likes
After looking into it, I’m pretty sure project requirements are not able to specify a particular identifier.
1 Like
I think you’re right, sorry. The project does the basic filtering of geography, taxon and RG, and we use a machine-crafted search URL to restrict observations to those of particular taxa that are in the project AND have been IDd by one of our users.
3 Likes
EXACTLY. They specifically choose the ones that have the least doubt to repeatedly ID
2 Likes
Are people unaware that you can mark an observation as reviewed without adding an ID? I even mark whole pages reviewed using the “mark all reviewed” button, if there are few on the page that I can meaningfully contribute to.
3 Likes
I think most are aware of it. It’s in a pretty un-missable spot on the page! But the point @lera makes is still valid, a marking of reviewed does not say anything about what the reviewer thought of the observation, other than they “saw it”. An ID on the observation, of the level that they are confident, is a far more informative marker… and comments add further again to what the identifier/reviewer thinks of the observation, so when coming back to it much later, they can more clearly see what their previous conclusions were. Many times I have gone back to an observation and thought “I put Family on that? Why did I not think it was at least genus?.. oh, yeah the eye arrangement… this time I’ll make a comment as well…”
7 Likes