@jasonhernandez74 – I use “reviewed” pretty often for observations I have seen and have nothing to say about. Mostly for observations I lack skills to identify. I add an identification, even if there are already several correct identifications, if I am working through a species and trying to be thorough. I want to indicate to myself and others that I have seen it, thought about it at least a little bit, and think it is whatever taxon I say it is. So to me, “reviewed” and an agreeing identification aren’t equivalent.
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I sometimes do this myself (sometimes I add more IDs when the observation is already research grade) but most of the time it’s when the page just hasn’t reloaded, so I can’t actually see that the observation is research grade.
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If there is no prize for the leaderboards, I see this as a non-issue. You certainly do get to see though which are the more popular creatures :p
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There’s certainly a prize of personal satisfaction.
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Okay, there is the problem of repeating ID I just meet today.
There are often taxonomy changes in Arthropod. If the change happen (Like raising or deviding new genus or species) but the observation has accumulated too many old IDs, It will cause more effords to make the observation back to right place.
More annoying thing is that some observations are very old and those identifiers may not be active now. Sometimes it can’t count on them to change their mind.
In not sure how this is relevant. When the taxonomic placement of something changes, curators do a taxon change. Outdated species name X is changed to new species name Y. And all existing identifications of X are switched to Y automatically (with one minor infrequent exception).
If there are 10 in your mind needless identifications of X, when the switch is done they all automatically change to Y.
If for some reason you’ve found a case of duplicated names where both the old and new names are still active, then just flag it for a taxa change.
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It is not the case.
Sometime there are species only ID as Genus. But later the Genus was devided. Both of the Genus are active, it will become a problem.
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The exact same principle of taxa changes applies to genera or any other level in the taxonomic tree.If Genus X is found to comprise 2 different ones, it can be split into Genus X and Genus Y, and assuming the geographic distribution of those new definitions is known, all identifications automatically updated.
If the geography overlaps, the observations will be updated to the lowest shared taxon, family, etc.
Simply put, taxonomic updates, at any level do not require users to ‘correct’ ID’s when done via the curators taxon swap tool.
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I have many times seen examples where species IDs updated but genus IDs didn’t. Or at least, that’s what my memory tells me, although I don’t have an example in hand to show you. I could be remembering incorrectly, or perhaps sometimes the name change is carried out incorrectly.
In many cases the precise range is not known. You dont need to add this to a taxa swap (at any level, including species swaps), but if it is clear, you can. As you go higher up the taxonomic tree, it becomes less possible to do. Or alternatively, it is known and they overlap, so you make a judgement call, do the swap with the geographies defined, push all the id’s up even further, or dont try it and wait for human intervention.
I suppose in that 2nd case, any extra ID’s are ones that need humans to overcome in the event of taxonomy updating, but it’s a bit of an edge case, I don’t see people bulk adding genus level ID’s too often.
I don’t think people do it to gain leader board rankings, so yes it doesn’t matter much as related to the topic of this thread.
Sometimes there will be an observation where the first few IDs were extremely incorrect, and so a whole string of subsequent people chime in to try to tip the community ID away from that, even people who aren’t totally sure of the species and just add the genus. That would be a case where I’d see a lot of genus IDs in a row. Or rarely on hybrids that don’t have a species name. (Many horticulture plants don’t have a species, but then again most of them don’t have enough identifers for the issue to come up!)
Maratus griseus was an easy taxon swap from Hypoblemum griseum, but the prior hypoblemum albovittatum to Hypoblemum griseum wasn’t, and required a group of us to manually review and change NZ obs over. It took an effort, and there was much tagging involved to weight over some of the more voluminously IDd observations… But it wasn’t overly arduous to do so. In fact, it was quite a community building activity, all things considered! I would still encourage anyone that thinks they will be around to change their IDs to add their weight to an already RG observation, and certainly wouldn’t discourage those that think they won’t be, but just wouldn’t encourage them to.
I have recently had reason to rethink my views on this. Yes, please, keep adding more IDs. That way, someone being pedantic (i.e., not that I misidentified it, but that they bump it back because they are only confident to genus – or that they think iNat’s accepted name is a synonym of another name) will have less overall weight.
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Yes, this can be a problem. Whether the issue is a taxonomic change or an originally incorrect identification, the more identifications the observation has, the more additional identifications are needed to change the name for iNaturalist. It’s frustrating.
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The opposite can be frustrating, too. One person has a different taxonomic opinion, and you lose your research grade.
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When I’m going through taxa I am particularly familiar with, I honestly pay zero attention to whether it’s marked RG or Needs ID. I agree with the correct ones, disagree with the incorrect ones, and use “mark reviewed” for unclear ones I might want to revisit in the future. I see no harm in making my opinions known - especially as it protects against the ID vandals who like to go around deliberately misidentifying stuff.
For those who are getting too many notifications, there is an option to turn off notifications for IDs that agree with your own - I suggest doing so, it’ll help a lot.
Blindly identifying /agreeing with stuff you have no clue about is another problem entirely, but I don’t think there’s much that’s going to stop people from doing that - it’s just one of the annoying bits of human behavior.
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It doesn’t help, it cuts out all needed ids, first agreements that we need to see, so you have to have it turned on, new system will have your and others notifications separately, but it wouldn’t be able to do anything with mass agreements, only muting can help.
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Just curious, but why do you need to see first agreements? If it’s not refining or disagreeing with whatever you’ve identified something as? I sometimes would like to know who is putting in the time to ID my observations so I can drop them a thank you, but that’s the only use I really have for it.
I have 7k of needs id observations, surely I want to know when there’s at least one less! And I want to know who ided it, remember the name and maybe ask them next time I need help with this taxon or just be grateful to the person.
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I like seeing a third ID, especially if it’s by an expert. In cases where ID was disputed, whether I turned out to be right or not, it was good to see multiple IDs that reinforced the correct ID.
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