Taxonomy Strike

@joe_fish That is very odd that blocking can apply to IDs. I perfectly understand blocking a user from messaging you or something, even if it's not for harassment and they just don't want to talk to you.

The argument for blocking people from IDing coming down to protecting people vs. protecting the work seems fatuous. People have to work with people they don't like all the time. That's part of being an adult. This is like the difference between telling an employee they can't harass another employee or just outright firing them for actual misconduct, and telling an employee they can no longer use the break room because another employee doesn't like them and keeps their lunch there.

Most of the hypotheticals people were using in that thread didn't apply to you in the slightest (and some seemed to be implicitly accusing you of wrongdoing, which I am very not okay with) and appear to be cases of advocating for overreaction because somewhere, sometime actual problems happened. But these issues could be easily separated mechanically by simply removing blocks for IDs or outright banning actual harassers, which I'm sure already happens.

This seems to have happened months ago and I had no idea. tiwane did say in the thread he messaged the user and resolved the issue, however, so I'm not sure why this blew up now, unless you remained blocked or something else occurred The user in question doesn't even appear to exist anymore.

I appreciate everyone's support. I've been inundated with kind messages from my fellow iNaturalists. Glad to know that my curatorial efforts here have not gone unnoticed.

To answer your question @blue_lotus, I had actually had 2 users that had blocked me... one of these was reversed without much drama, as that user had apparently been misusing this feature to block people without cause. But the other user cited in this journal post is a "Curator" who apparently has specifically taken issue with me, for reasons beyond my comprehension. iNat staff have refused to intervene, claiming that they don't see a pattern of misuse.

Curious that the user has renamed their profile twice [edit: 3X] since I published this, and also twice deleted/reuploaded the observation that sparked this nonsense. But apparently none of that raises any red flags for iNat staff.

sigh taxonomy strike continues...

Hi @stefadrian,
I'm comforted that I'm not the only user engaged to fixing the taxonomy who has problems with incorrect users. :)

About blocks according to iNaturalist's indications it isn't allowed to block a user just because they don't like the IDs but I'm not surprised that in fact this rule is ignored by iNaturalist.

In general, however, blocks are useful to me, in fact some particularly obtuse and aggressive users which they didn't like my IDs (which later turned out to be correct), they have started to attack me personally.
For example an user started attacking me on every my Aplysia ID while another entered my profile and deliberately disagreed with my taxa on several of my G. incognitus IDs, just to spite me.
I had to defend myself with the user block, in fact I'm using all 3 blocks.

I have also been threatened by an iNaturalist moderator with suspending my membership because I thought that a bad photo in which no living beings were visible I had flagged that no living beings could be seen and I had to give explanations because the user complained about this.... and it didn't matter that I had more than 36.000 IDs or that one photo was so bad that you couldn't see anything.

I understood and accepted that the logic of iNaturalst is to be able to manage an enormous amount of records with a minimal commitment in terms of moderation so the rules are very generic, moderation almost non-existent and the logic is based on not giving rise to any conflict rather than making the reasons of those who work correctly. This approach has its advantages and disadvantages, iNaturalist doesn't seem like a place where there can be "an always fair and positive environment" but without this logic such a large site would probably be unmanageable.

I think it is important to use iNaturalist in a light and serene way, we not pretending that it is an "optimal" or "right" site, but only a particular site managed by algorithms and poorly moderated which in concrete terms can lead to interesting and positive situations but even in dull situations.
If a user blocks me it's not a problem for me, this means that iNaturalista will receive 60,000,100 wrong IDs instead of 60,000,000, the important thing is that the iNaturalst logic can manage another 70,000,000 photos with correct IDs, even better than well-moderated and ethically correct sites (such as Naturamediterraneo).

I therefore hope that you will soon resume having fun with iNaturalist and giving intelligent users the possibility of appreciating your always useful and interesting interventions, not asking iNaturalist for the "justice" it cannot give.

I fully agree with the the comments made by @rpillon!

@esant
When a user is blocked, are they also automatically reported to the iNaturalist moderator?
No.

When you block a user, are you given the opportunity to dig deeper into why you're blocking them?
No.

I assume the effect of a block on a user extends to IDs in order to prevent ID harassment/retaliation. Are there any other easy ways to prevent this problem that don't necessarily result in a user lockout?
The effect of blocking a user is that neither you nor he can intervene or identify each other's records and they do not appear in your searches. As far as I know the only way to stop an inappropriate user is to block him or contact the moderators but the latter are not very present and not very lucid. So the only effective and autonomously managed way is blocking.

In my opinion the distortions due to reciprocal blocks, such as those of ID system by the majority, such as IDs of photos with insufficient quality, etc... are typical mechanisms of iNaturalist logic and in the very bige number of records managed by the site they have a few relevant effect. Moreover even if 1 user is blocked there are always another 100,000 users who, if they think so, can intervene and make IDs. I understand that they can be unpleasant mechanisms but these are also the basis of iNaturalist, they are functional to its logic in which the site must self-manage.

iNaturalist is a site that should be taken with great serenity and patience ;)

hey @joe_fish
I'm very sorry to hear about what happened. I hope the administrators wake up and change these strange rules..
I am grateful for all the identifications that have helped me. don't go anywhere.. :)

Hello Joe,

I’m so sorry to hear that you feel forced to go on strike to make yourself heard. Your work is appreciated so much, by myself and I’m sure by many members of the community. Without people like you INaturalist would be an empty shell. I think the matter can be solved quite easily by disabling the blocking of ID’s done by curators. @tiwane : Hello Tony, would this be an acceptable solution and is it technically possible? Many thanks for your help in this 🙏.

I hope that you return soon Joe. Don’t forget that you’re not doing all the work for INaturalist, but for all the people that use it and that benefit from your great knowledge. Because of you I look at corals in a completely different way and I’m sure that there are many people like me in the community. I’m truly very grateful for the way you helped me to connect to the underwater nature.

Best regards,
Jean-Paul

Hi Joe,

I completely understand that it’s an imperfect solution, but I guess in a multi-purpose platform like iNaturalist (it’s both a way to connect people to nature and a great research tool) perfect solutions are hard to find. I guess it would be very logical to make you curator (like all other specialists that are clearly having knowledge of a certain family or order) and then the solution would already be a bit less imperfect. If a specialist like you gets blocked, it’s bad for the whole community. If a layman like me gets blocked, the effect is nihil. I think the most important thing is that we realize that we all need each other. There’s no great research tool without people that upload observations and there’s no connecting with nature without the knowledge of specialists.

Best regards,
Jean-Paul

My thanks for all of the identifications you have done out here in Micronesia, you have been important to identifications in this region and your identifications helped spark my son's interest in marine photography, observations, and identifications. Again, my thanks for the positive impact you have had out here and on my children.

I just found out today, that you are on a strike,(me beeing focused the last days uploading Cnidarians on iNat)....I am so sorry on how this developed. I fully understand your point and accept it, but am really sad about your abscence. Thank you very much for your past support as it was a milestone on my journey of understanding the ID of stony corals....I really hope that this strange policy of blocking identifiers will be changed and you will return. iNat would not be the same without you...

I just saw this post today, and agree with most of the opinions expressed. Responding to one point, I agree with others about the forum administration. Anyway, as a compromise for the issue being discussed, what about updating the website so that if a user blocks you their username and icon will display as anonymous, you can't view their profile, and their observation location and date display as obscure or private? Also, the point people made that you can already simply log out and see all the observations is relevant, since a majority of bad actors may be outside of the website, which is a problem in it's own right, unless there's evidence otherwise that I'm unaware of. In summary, the location and username could in principle be hidden with a website update, which would protect users as our first concern, so why hide the observations?

"there are a number of policy decisions made that actively inhibit the desire of experts from contributing their time here"

Agree

Two big ones for me are 1) lack of provisions to safeguard the work we put in (at present, those who do not make substantial positive contributions can delete or unhelpfully modify content with impunity) and 2) lack of effort to promote the idea that contributors should be acknowledged for large-scale efforts, properly credited and, if appropriate, consulted and directly included when users (sometimes data miners and rival colleagues) monetize the resource.

It is also unacceptable that when conflicts do arise dedicated experts may be assumed a priori to be in the wrong, whereas those blocking or complaining may be assumed to have a legitimate grievance, even if the latter have made near-zero contributions to the site and likely do not understand its functionality or culture. It seems at times that maximizing participation (even by those making little or no positive contribution) is a higher priority than is retaining the most dedicated experts.

@johnascher hit the nail on the head. agree with all of this.

I understand the issues, I too have the feeling that if we try too job hard and we have too many expectations we end up being hindered and disappointed in this site.
My advice is to use iNaturalist with a light mind, to take it as entertainment, a sort of game that can often give an excellent scientific result but is sometimes hindered by the logic of the site.
It is not a site that pays much attention to correctness or to the gratification of experts but if taken in the right way it can lead to very interesting scientific results and it can to be a space where meet several nice, interesting and intelligent users.

What is going on on this site lately? I didn't even know ID'ing the first image when different species were present was even frowned upon. It seems like only recently a lot of long-time experts are getting targeted for stupid things.

There really needs to be some kind of control of drive-by users, but it seems like a lot of the policies are being tailored to them, oddly. I feel like admins don't want to alter people's uploads in any way, which I understand, but that really should be done in the case of deleting duplicate observations, since about 99 times out of 100 people refuse to delete their dupes, or people who've posted twice then disappeared for 5 years and have obs that are screwing up data, especially when they have a group of friends that do the same and now there are 3 bad ID's for something which sometimes can never be rectified, or as in this case, when a user uploads a bunch of clearly different, identifiable species and refuses to break up the obs. These are things which could easily be done by mods of some sort. And the types of users that do this sort of thing aren't likely to cause long-term issues with the site anyway, since they're almost always drive-by users.

I don't mind papers using our data. My own ID's have shown up in papers. I feel like that's kind of the point of doing what we do. It does seem like a lot of experts are being punished lately in order to satisfy odd personal feelings though. I think the admins are seeing a trend and coming to the conclusion that experts are just assholes, rather than perhaps that there could be improvements in site policies.

It really depends on the error. Wrong dates or locations missing typically are actual error and I've seen regular users do that and yeah they do tend to correct them. But the sorts of people that don't understand how the site works and upload a bunch of images of different species, then go silent and do nothing when corrected for literally years is pretty high.

"As demonstrated for many years at Bugguide."

A lot of these issues have already been solved by other sites.

"when it was proposed to ban further agreeing identifications"

I'm not aware of this, like to ban further agreeing IDs beyond those that bring something to RG? That would be terrible.

"The point of an academic scientist identifying all observations for a taxon-area combination is for the same records to be extracted without serious credit if any, and often without a simple thank you, by other (rival) academic colleagues to be used as fodder for their academic output?"

I mean I expect this information to be used by the scientific community. Don't you? There are many ID's I've made that have expanded ranges of a great number of species. I would very much like to see the scientific community use this data. Personally, I'm not that concerned with credit for ID's, although it would be nice to see if it was relevant to the paper. Now having said that, I would like greater respect shown by this site to its major contributors/specialists.

Here's the crux of the issue: you can't have the data on your site used for scientific purposes, while also not wanting that data curated in a scientific way. You don't get both. At some point, the admins of this site are going to have to make a choice whether they want this to be Twitter 2.0, with all the toxicity that entails and none of the virtues (because Twitter doesn't have any) or whether they want this to be a serious citizen science site. The two are not compatible, because the twitter crowd will always produce an endless stream of imagined complaints with ever greater demands regarding "solving" these non-issues - like totally imagined "harassment", which is why we're all here to begin with.

"Scientists, experts, who needs them anyway? They are gatekeepers and killjoys who are only happy when they can dunk on us. About time to give them the boot so we can have a liberated (insert your favorite institution here), where at last everybody is respected for his personal opinion without being corrected by a weird set of rules we don't understand in the first place!"

... nope, I don't think it is a specific iNaturalist problem. It is a Zeitgeist problem.

"Help, help, they are oppressing my wishful thinking by facts!!!"

People tend to feel harrassed just by being corrected. Shame that iNat is supporting this notion.

"Experts think they are so clever. What do they think I am?? Stupid???"

Scientists are perceived as gatekeepers of a cashcow ideology due to an utter lack of comprehension of natural sciences by most people. A notion that is hyped by Graham Hancock et al., promoted by Netflix or History Channel. We can see it in every part of society.

"I don´t need science, I use my common sense instead."

cringe

One improvement we fought for. And won.
Plant + var or ssp used to UNhelpfully = plant. Not, thank you.
Now
Plant + var or ssp = species. Which fits human logic, and is filterable for taxon specialists.

I am struggling with, encouraging newbies to just add any ID - pick one at random from the Pretty Sure list.
Followed by fighting the CID algorithm. Must. Find. MORE. Identifiers.
Undermined by Ancestor Disagreement. Must. Find. EVEN. More. Identifiers.
Give me honest Unknowns!

I guess that all worked for a small group in California when they started?

One general note here, was that yesterday a curator made a strong argument here in my defense that I was unfairly treated and unfairly punished to lose my curator status, and I agree with that assessment whether or not the comment will be restored.

And frankly non-scientists (me too) who come to iNat from other social media, are hoping for an informed ID. If that function is not supported and encouraged - there are plenty of other places to get WOW great picture!! and who cares what it is, it's wow end of. It is identification that makes a niche for iNat on social media.

"It is not a science platform, it is a social media platform."
I always found that notion to be far out on the weird side tbh.
It is a social media platform for biologic observations and taxonomic biology. This is not at all mutually exclusive! Like a chess site is a sm-platform for chess players. It doesn't matter if you are a champ or a newbie, but in order for this specific platform to work, everybody has to attend to the rules of chess. Wanna play checkers instead? Sorry, dude, wrong social media-platform here.

Uttering this notion about the social media platform seems to be a parrot reflex by staff/curators, a "portcullus-answer" to almost every idea of enhancing the scientific output of the site. I fully acknowledge that some staff members really put an effort into it, answering to questions, discussing those ideas and so on, but in the end ... always "portcullus", it seems ... ;)

BTW - out of all observations, what percentage of observations is this discussion about?
Is the percentage meaningful enough to require data cleansing?
Can one easily data cleanse the miscreants observations?
Could a tag be added to mark such observations?

I think that iNaturalist doesn't want to change, it doesn't want to be a predominantly scientific site and therefore it will not be. I think it's instinctive to try to suggest changes towards what we want it to be but it's not what the admins want.

I think that having expert users with more weight in the IDs would be a choice that brings with it not only advantages but also new problems. Who will spend time and energy selecting and monitoring experts? How do you decide who is an expert? For example, if there is a user with more than 1,000,000 identifications on all Phylum (of which 99.99% has only copied the previous ID even if it is wrong and has never argued for a single ID) he should be considered an expert (genius?) or a mythomaniac? If there is a very experienced user who has ID only 100 records but for very hard and rare species how do we understand it? If a well-known university professor accustomed to examining dead specimens makes many misidentifications in identifying live specimens, is he an expert?

I think iNaturalist will have many problems in the future, I don't think the main ones will be those of the semi-automatic logic for the IDs and for the (very little and very bad) moderation but for having an ever larger database (continuously growing) with too high a percentage of bad photos qualities (often unidentifiable) with too few experts willing to dig through bad photos to find one interesting photo.

I think an expert must take iNaturalist with its strengths and weaknesses, understand that it is not a scientific site (it pretends to be one just to distinguish itself), and certainly it isn't a site for protect nature (it pretends to be one but photos that required harm to a living organism are welcome), must it is a site that to need to have patience and the right spirit. With its strengths and weaknesses, it is still a particular site that can be very useful and interesting, if not taken too seriously.

Personally, it would be enough that the site moderators in the event of conflicts to have the intelligence and education to understand if one of the parties in conflict should be protected more for having demonstrated over the years that he is a serious and expert user that he is acting for the good of the site or not.

@joe_fish I enjoy submitting to citizen science and hope that my observations could provide some contribution to this.

If however, there is a better site, I am happy to transfer my observations there and close this account.

Thought#1: it appears that the moderators are ignoring the issues in this forum. Whilst having a whinge-fest may be cathartic, one has a choice as to whether or not to use the data. If you chose to use the data, given items 1, 2 and 3, data will need to be cleansed.

Thought: Could a tag or project be created and applied by an expert/ curator that would inform users that specific observations (your list 1, 2 or 3) needs to be cleansed?

iNaturalist can certainly have a scientific utility, in these years I have been able to make 3 peer-reviewed scientific publications using it: one on the distribution of two species (but I had to personally identify the 1100 records used and in any case discard a hundred of them) and two for the just by having met other experts on this site.
iNaturalist is only a tool, if used in the right way it is useful (for me mainly to relate to many kind and intelligent users and to find little known species), if instead we dedicate ourselves entirely to the site we risk disappointments. There are many spaces in iNaturalist that cannot be fixed but it has also managed to create niches of excellence.
Getting angry with iNaturalist is like getting angry with a toaster, in my opinion it makes little sense, we need to accept it for what it is and try to use it for what it can do.

I really like and support @rpillion s take.
I get frustratetd sometimes .. especially when moderators and admins seem to lightheartedly take the risk to drive prolific IDers such as @joefish or @bdagely away.. think that will harm the site an it´s goals on the long run.
It is for sure a good thing to try to change thing that can be improved.

However, in the end it will cause problems if you try to use the site in a way it is not really built for. It is a compromise and yeah, one needs to think about what is the most important goal and what are maybe site goals.
I think the most important goal is to connect people with nature, motivate them to spend their time with it. I feel the science aspect is somewhat secondary.. which is ok. However, it is also important to keep the balance. I don´t know how many people will continue to want to connect with nature via this site, if their observations will not be evaluated anymore, because the IDers feel unhappy and leave. Uplaoding your observations and not getting any feedback might not be very motivating for many users.

And I am rather opposed against the idea of experts getting another status... it is really hard to impossible to easily evaluate what an expert is. A degree does not really need to mean anything compared to personal interest and experience...

If we calm down and refrain from grandstanding this may help iNat admin to find more bandwidth to improve the site

Not an 'expert' but having googled, the others on this thread are not 'grandstanding'

@johnascher "taking steps to ensure that our efforts are properly credited when iNat data are mined en masse by rival academics"

I'm curious how you would implement that request?
My curation of anemone observations has been used in another researcher's comparative study...
https://mbr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41200-021-00216-6
I wasn't acknowledged in any way by those authors (despite having communicated at length with one of them), but I also wasn't the only user to provide IDs on the observations.
Who deserves to be "properly credited" for iNaturalist data, and what does that entail?
Are you looking for a brief acknowledgement or coauthorship?

"I'm curious how you would implement that request?"

I suggest that site admin and others connected to iNat make public statements to the effect that 1) these are valuable scientific data that are being used for high impact research and policy and that therefore 2) data quality is important and 3) any large-scale, sustained, and thorough efforts by experts to render datasets publication quality should receive due credit. Then there need to be improved site tools, much more reliable data sharing and use agreements (esp. involving GBIF, which has its own issues!), and greater emphasis going forward on the scientific merits of the site in addition to its participatory aspects (which are also very important).

Many additional ideas are presented here https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001843

"I also wasn't the only user to provide IDs on the observations"

In some cases IDs (and observations) are truly crowd-sourced and it is not feasible to separate major vs. minor contributors, but in many cases there are obvious outliers among identifiers in terms of volume and/or originality and reliability of identifications who certainly merit particular mention (esp. if working as a team in a coordinated way as we do for bees, e.g., @neylon, @bdagley, and I and others have worked together to upgrade North American Bombus whereas @azhagu and I upgrade Asian images; the problem is that major Bombus projects to date have not fairly credited major identifiers of specimens or images). In such cases it should be quite clear simply by checking ID statistics who is doing large-scale work with intent to upgrade the dataset as a whole to publication quality. It seems disingenuous for colleagues who know who we are and who even solicit ID help from us and who routinely apply advanced statistics in their papers on a large scale to claim to be unable to determine who is and who isn't a major contributor. How is it that sophisticated scientists cannot apply basic statistical thresholds when determining if and how to individually credit data owners/providers/upgraders/validators? Why should it be difficult for quantitative ecologists or conservationists to notice when someone has contributed an order of magnitude more IDs than others? Several colleagues focus on detecting subtle shifts in populations (e.g., of bumble bees) but then claim to be unable to detect extreme outliers in ID effort even when iNat conveniently provides summary totals (at least in Explore mode).

"Are you looking for a brief acknowledgement or coauthorship?"

Of course this entirely depends on whether iNat data was central to the paper (or other research product) or supplemental and whether there had been coordinated effort by an identifiable set of identifiers working as a team (this is frequent in the bees) or if ID effort has been dispersed (truly crowd-sourced as seems to be the default assumption). The main reason to include the most important identifiers as authors is that they surely have unique insights into the data that could improve the study. Failing to include identifiers leads to suboptimal and potentially misleading use of recordsets. see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344709327_Heterogeneity_in_large-scale_databases_and_the_role_of_climate_change_as_a_driver_of_bumble_bee_decline

I am not myself very interested in perfunctory thank yous (especially as part of an undifferentiated collective) but I am very interested in seeing some recognition, even if not in the preferred currency of Academia, of the strenuous efforts of non-academic scientists and especially of emerging experts (often students, including those from under-resourced institutions and countries). @joe_fish

Here is an example of a paper that mined all iNat records of Euglossini for the USA but did not credit or even thank those of us who collectively (and in one case individually) checked identifications of 100% of these records (vs. 0% by the authors). https://bioone.org/journals/florida-entomologist/volume-106/issue-1/024.106.0110/Spread-and-Distribution-of-the-Naturalized-Orchid-Bee-Euglossa-dilemma/10.1653/024.106.0110.full

Even though this species ID is "obvious" there was much need to clean up records confounded with Augochlorini, to reject unverifiable reports of this species from Mesoamerica, and to otherwise ensure that these data were fit for use.

Many changes are surely desirable but I think we need to be patient and not get too fixated on certain local issues such as individual tools that are lacking or are counterproductive. These can be dealt with in time. I think there are some big questions to answer regarding whether iNat is or should be a serious scientific resource or whether it should value participation and collectivism above all else?

@sibnaturalist
... has been proposed before (in fact, by me as well). In the past there have been a lot of reasonable ideas to fix this issue, proposed on various occasions by various people (in the forum and via pm to admins/curators). It is why I support this move by Joe, because all that happened in response to this specific issue was polite variations of the staff comment "We hear you, but we are not gonna change anything concerning your ideas."

@johnascher
If there is an issue, it should be brought to attention so it can be adressed properly and maybe even fixed. But yeah, I guess you could also call it "stirring up drama". ;) I don't think that this problem is just like any minor deficiency of the site, I think it is a main issue. I think it is scaring off specialists (academic scientists who would spend their time and expertise on iNat for free) both from continuing to participate as well as joining iNat in the first place.

@nomolosx
I agree it is a circular discussion. But only the argument is, not the users involved, some of whom hear about this issue for the first time. It was not that Joe jumped on a strike the very second he was denied a request. This has been an ongoing issue for a while now (longer than I am part of iNat, it seems), with ample feature requests by different persons, discussions with staff, discussions on the forum .... but as I said above, the answer of choice always seems to be something like "We hear you, but we are not gonna change anything concerning your ideas."

I sympathise with @joe_fish - it may not, be the best response, but it is his despairing one.

I am neither a scientist nor employed, so I'm free to express my own opinions - but various threads make me realise that use of iNat is very different for working scientists @johnascher Those 'cautious comments', but not committing to an actual ID for example (not you!)

Chewing over iNat is social media first with the deliberate lack of support for identifiers in favour of observers. I wonder if iNat targets vanity metrics for A Word from Our Sponsors? Easy to explain and justify rising obs and observer and species numbers. Not so easy to to justify to NON-scientist funders ID to taxon and taxonomy convolutions. (Disclaimer - my camera case is National Geographic - but I paid - to advertise for them)

Not acknowledging people's data from iNat lurches down to - I found it on Google and now it is MINE. People scrape text and images (even slicing off the watermark) and are DEEPLY offended when I whine about theft of intellectual property. Copyright? What, is that?

Somewhat curious how this new project was even able to be created. Isn't there a 50 observation requirement before you can create traditional projects? The creator in this case has: 1.

Also interesting, 1000 observations in the project already that they presumably want to use for research, and in the identification department, has placed: 1.

It does kind of look like the plan is to take no part in this community, add nothing to it, but reap the benefits of the work we've done. If the project owner(s) does become an active identifier and spends time finding and improving observations, then great! That's wonderful, we need more experts on here placing ID's, and I wouldn't in that case have a problem with the data being used. But right now, it looks like that's not what we're going to get, we're going to get a project that collects our work and leaves when it has sufficient data for a publication for someone else.

A more charitable interpretation @dianastuder is that an overly enthusiastic student (and lab) may rightly perceive the value of the resource (as fodder for research publications and as a way to increase outreach) and wish to advance an ambitious project without duly considering the existing participants and their existing efforts (e.g., the existing project on meeting bees). Since none of the people involved seem to have engaged much in the site in any capacity (see above comment by it seems very plausible that naivety is a big part of this. Also, being charitable @neylon, there may be a plan to take part, but it would be better practice to actually engage with the existing community in a serious way before launching an ambitious project branded to a particular lab.

I suggest that we have a serious discussion about these issues in general, such as ongoing industrial scale scraping of biodiversity data by some prominent research labs worldwide, as opposed to focusing too much on this particular example (which after all hasn't achieved much yet).

Uncharitable on my side, since I'm not a working scientist. How do you deal with plagiarism? Avoid being plagiarised? Away from iNat.

The amount of data now available on iNat moves to generation 2 level, where fresh guidelines need to be established. Within iNat as well. Some barriers and rewards - my focus is on encouraging people to work thru the ID backlog. Instead of the iNat default - bring us - thousands of obs - the identifiers are waiting eagerly!

I agree there are gems to be found. And a lot of low hanging fruits also.
That is not the problem. The problem is that there is no motivation for users to become identifiers, no reason for identifiers to strive for expert status, and absolutely no reason for experts to join iNat ... besides maybe from personal reasons like being interested in IDing difficult species to a speculative subspecies level (which is then frowned upon) ...
Basically I am annoyed when after another night shift of reviewing and identifying Bivalve species I keep on reading how identifiers should do better ... ;) no, not really annoyed .... but yes, I think the identifiers are doing a great job, they are singlehandedly keeping this website alive and thriving. No, not the observers are, the identifiers are. I think the next step is up to iNat administration to recognise this and react accordingly. But instead I perceive this friendly condescending attitude of "oh, we are doing fine here, weirdos complaining is part of the game, nothing to phone home about." In the meantime, unidentified Anthozoans are piling ...

I chose not to login for 3 weeks, and will continue to reduce my identifying (and curation) somewhat until the issue over my curator status is corrected. Anyway, one thing I noticed while I was away is that Joe is shown as being suspended on the forum, which I don't know the details of, but that the staff later said on the forum that he could come back if he wants. Which would seem to suggest that sometimes users are punished too harshly or unjustifiably, and without the review or agreement of the greater user community or oversight groups. Although to be clear, I do approve if punished users are given second chances, and especially if the original punishment was unfair. I also noticed two sections of the curator guide and terms of use that I didn't remember, which may explain a lot about how some identifiers often feel ignored by the staff.

Which essentially state that any decisions made against users are only made at their own discretion, and that any user can even be suspended or have their account deleted on inat or the forum, with or without cause, with or without notice. This was surprising to read. I also noticed that once on the forum the staff publicly commented that sometimes they do or will make mistakes. But the solution they offered was just to tell them if you think they made a mistake. My main point being, if someone can punish users in any way at their own discretion but also says they'll sometimes make mistakes, is there sufficient accountability to protect the rights of contributors? Ideally, I'd prefer those terms of use and curator guide to be updated to ensure fairness toward curators and all users. Feel free to share if anyone has feedback on these topics.

Curator guide: If you demonstrate by your behavior on the site, forum, or other communication that you are unwilling to abide by these curatorial policies, abusive to us or members of our community, or otherwise unreasonable, the staff will revoke your curator status, or just not grant it in the first place. What constitutes abusive or unreasonable behavior is at the discretion of the site staff.

Terms of use:Termination. iNaturalist may terminate Your access to all or any part of the Platform or Services at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately. If You wish to terminate this Agreement or Your iNaturalist account, You may simply discontinue using the Platform and delete Your account. All provisions of this Agreement which by their nature should survive termination shall survive termination, including, without limitation, ownership provisions, warranty disclaimers, indemnity, and limitations of liability.

"With or without cause" is a huge red flag for me, because by definition, it encompasses "because I felt like it" or any other capricious, bigoted, or biased reason. If I see that proviso, it is safest to assume that there is no accountability.

I was also just told that there are no plans to reinstate my curator status, supposedly because I've been flagged "19 or more times." Yet, all of the recent flags were proven to be invalid, and on many of them curators or even Tony and Scott themselves actually resolved the flag as that I didn't violate site policy. So in other words, it's preposterous to tally up flags when almost all of them were invalid and dishonest, which was conceded by the staff themselves. This is a kangaroo court, no pun intended.

Thanks. Well, the idea to separate those two functions in the future is actually already planned by them, although I don't think it would be good. Because it basically just takes away powers from only certain existing curators, which could make curator flag resolutions less fair. I also remember on the forum it was once suggested to remove the curator status from all curators who hadn't completed any or many curation tasks. People pointed out in response then, that doing so would be unfair because some curators focus all their time on ID, but if that suggestion had been taken many of them would have lost curator status.

So, there has been a history of powers being removed from some or all curators over time. An even earlier example from before I joined, was that users were once granted curator status more readily, and curators could on their own make other users become curators, which was an option that was taken away later. Currently, it can be hard for many users to get approved to become a curator, but not everyone has the same chances as others.

For example, when I first applied a year before the second time I applied (which was when I became a curator), staff said that I had a communication issue with "user." I responded that this was false, to which they apologized and corrected themselves. Still, they didn't make a curator at that time and stopped replying. Similarly, recently another Hymenoptera identifier applied to become a curator, and staff even said he was accepted, but then didn't update his account and stopped replying. It's things like that, and how the terms of use say that anything can be done to any user with or without cause, that make me concerned about honesty, fairness, and accountability. As someone said above, the ability to block expert IDs, and as I'm adding to demote or suspend them without cause, does seem to be tinkering with the dataset. However, I'm not intending to just complain, but would like these things to be improved in a constructive manner.

mamestraconfigurata

Nothing that I received let me know why my post was flagged and removed. And no, I don’t want to know who complained about it. The language of the post may have been a bit vague, but I was talking about a blurred photo that a person was kind enough to reply to in a constructive manner. I didn’t insult anyone, or mention names. Or even links. One of your guidelines says ‘Assume people mean not harm’. I’m seriously ticked off by this.

That does surprise me. Flagging one of the kindest and most helpful people on iNat. RIP

It seems that @bdagley was demonized by some curators for preferring to identify the first image in a series precisely, but why should our valuable ID work (on the primary image) be rendered least common denominator (rendering it inaccessible for downstream use) just because 1) the observer is unable or unwilling to achieve timely deletion of off-topic extra images in accordance with site rules (even after being notified explicitly of the problem) and 2) the site lacks continues to lack the tools and culture to address the problem efficiently and harmoniously?

There is a genuine problem here, but the identifiers are not to blame, especially those who have worked tirelessly to annotate erroneously linked images (too often a thankless task having no effect since observers rarely seem to make prompt corrections to their submissions) while also sharing constructive ideas for how to improve the site.

It is the responsibility of the observer to delete/repost erroneously mixed images yet few do this. The site needs new mechanisms to address the problem that do not entail loss of identifier effort. Why should expert contributions such as species identifications including novel records of biogeographic and conservation importance be assigned near-zero value as seems to be the case when a lowest-common denominator solution is mandated? Why should identifiers be blamed for downstream problems caused by the chimeric records when it is the observer who is supposed to delete off topic images, especially when explicitly instructed to do so?

I created a petition-like excel file vote for anyone who'd support me regaining my curator status, feel free to pass it on to others. For clarification, I also learned that there is no third party or employer to speak to if disagreeing/appealing punishments like having curator status removed. To vote, just add your username or name under the first one in the shared document (link), or you can publicly or privately tell me and I'll add it. Thanks very much in advance, hopefully this will be effective and my issue can be settled soon, allowing us to resume discussing the other community needs and requests. I'll also publicly defend any other users this happens to in the future, and although I do make website suggestions or feedback at times, will be careful not to even potentially be flagged in the future, hoping that there will be no more conflicts.

Thanks very much @rpillon and others who endorsed me, the votes are now over 70 although I'm still waiting to find out if my curator status will been reinstated.

By the way, I just learned that a taxonomist was flagged multiple times at once, which was similar to what previously happened to me. In case you want to comment on the flags: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags?utf8=%E2%9C%93&flagger_type=user&flagger_name=&flagger_user_id=&user_name=johnascher&user_id=johnascher&flaggable_type=all&deleted=any&flags%5B%5D=inappropriate&flags%5B%5D=other&reason_query=&resolved=no&resolver_name=&resolver_user_id=&commit=Filter.

In case you missed this
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Summaries-of-identification-effort-on-iNaturalist-Panels-a-and-b-summarize_fig1_372310054

25% of IDs made by 130 users (top 0.06%)

50% of IDs made by 545 users (top 0.3%)

That is a blunt quantity tool - my insect equal to your taxon specialist ID. I am torn between gratitude to identifiers. And horror that it rests on so very few shoulders!

Also - tool built for us by an active iNatter. With yesterday's shiny new added feature!
If you install it, you can see
3 IDs by Diana - ignore
3K IDs from bdagley - either he is VERY active, or he knows whereof he speaks - and we quickly learn which it is.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/inaturalist-enhancement-suite-chrome-extension-v0-7-0-identifier-stats/44002/24

If 3 more use it, we will be another elite band of 300 ;~)

'Many IDs' is a tool to use. If an identifier is unknown to me - I try their profile - working on the taxonomy of ... okay.
What do they observe?
What do they identify? Where?

For example https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/114652347
166 for tonyr who wrote the book on proteas and can tease the hybrids apart. He calls them Frankenflora
11 for nigel - interested in protea species
3 for me
That puts a number on what I know. Ask tony, but not too often - he is swamped in notifications, as he curates protea obs across iNat.

I have heard of, but haven't yet tripped over, someone who IDs to rack up to the top of a leaderboard.

I am not disagreeing with you. If I would come across that behaviour, I would flag it for iNat staff.
(And Tony is forthright but polite, about knocking optimistic protea identifiers back in line!)

Looked at a few of yours (and will be aware of who to be cautious of in future, one is already on my maybe not list) - What about amestwooceans ? Lately I have been asking her for our marine life.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/115318245
This shows 376 for you - WAY ahead of every one else!
I will pick 'fish' out of Unknowns. That is my limit.

@dianastuder
I don't have a great opinion of the efficiency of the moderation done by the iN staff (and judging from this post I'm not the only one), furthermore if a user doesn't explicitly violate the rules and I hope he makes also useful IDs, so I have nothing to report.

However, even though I haven't reported anything to the iN staff, all the fuss I've made to fix many hundreds of randomly made IDs blocked by users who don't care about the right IDs hasn't escaped the attention of the iN staff. In fact, the iN staff intervened by scolding the user who according to them behaved incorrectly: they therefore scolded me because I asked other users ignorant about fish to help me support my IDs based on links to scientific publications. The providential intervention of the staff has angered the supporters of the IDs argued by me (who disliked being called arbitrarily ignorant of fish) and convinced me to suspend my deleterious task to fix South Africa's fish species.

If you want to live peacefully and use iN (which also has many positive things) the important thing is to take things lightly and with a lot of patience...

I hope you are right. Perhaps we should make a wish list for Santa?

Ancestor Disagreement
(vanishing) Placeholder text
Notification Management
Prevent global Opting Out

I raised some identifier-based ideas in the currently most recent comment on this journal post today: https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/84677-introducing-the-inaturalist-geomodel, in case anyone wants to read or consider commenting.

You have all my solidarity, similar episodes happen often, my advice is always not to take iNaturalist too seriously. It would be natural for me too always try to improve it but it's a losing battle: iNaturalist remains a poorly moderated social network that cares little about the scientific aspect or correctness.
Many times in improving the site I have come across rude or incorrect moderation interventions, but in my opinion the best way it is to be able to ignore them to remain calm. It's absurd but wanting to do science too well or seeking justice in iNaturalist can be unnecessarily stressful.
Stories like yours have helped me understand that I'm not the only one who suffers from certain absurdities of the site and has helped me live it more peacefully.
Despite this, if taken in the right spirit iNaturalist can be pleasant and often, but not always, give positive scientific results

Thanks for your comments. I also like Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm.

I agree. I'll have to check out the second book that was mentioned but have read Don Quixote and am a fan.

Has anyone ever seen something like this? I was reviewing my old bee and wasp needs id obs. from 1 to 2 years ago, to add IDs or make obs. with the best ID they can get RG. Ichneumonoid wasps are among the hardest hymenopteran (bee/wasp/ant) groups to ID to species level. As I was viewing one of my old ichneumonid obs., I noticed an identifier had added a leading genus ID in the past. I was about to ask them if they could explain their ID, but then noticed curators or staff permanently banned them. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/135967139. I'd never noticed that identifier so don't know why they got canceled, and can't find anything about them.

The last time I noticed an ichneumonoid identifier get banned was entomokot, a South African identifier and observer. I never knew either of them, and had occasionally noticed entomokot be out of line in comments, but remember he knew many specific ichneumonid and braconid wasp IDs few others knew. To be fair, the one time he commented to me I didn't like what he said, but also didn't see his comment as worth replying to. He was banned 2 to 3 years ago, which set back a lot of ID progress in that wasp group. Anyway, my takeaway from just now noticing that another identifier was banned is that the ID skill, investment of ID or observation time, and relationship with community members (good and/or bad) should be taken into account when admin decide whether to ban users. Including, that the community of identifiers and observers who're familiar with a flagged user from their IDs, obs., or comments or messages should have a say in whether they get banned. Feel free to discuss.

If the description you give of his comments is accurate, I haven't seen many of his comments, then I wouldn't disagree with your description and am not agreeing with him. Regardless, I don't know the user's history so was never imlying I was defending the user, and even said they were rude to me the one time they commented to me. My general point is that in most cases most people who contribute most to ID and/or observation don't know what other banned people commented or why they were banned, and that the community of people could ideally be involved or made aware when a user is going to get suspended. That said, I agree that some offensive users should get offended, which would also be what the community of users would most likely agree on.

I notice you haven't commented for awhile, but wrote this comment seemingly directed at me. Despite never saying you disagree with my earlier similar comments. As for me, I've only commented time to time on here, often with months in between. I didn't misuse the thread, as the comment history will show. We also all agreed with joe_fish that it would be better if identifier IDs could be prevented from being blocked. I dislike your comment, and wasn't distracting the similar focus of the thread, but am done commenting for the time being.

Possibly relevant, I shared this old forum example in an earlier comment. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/off-topic-flagging-on-this-forum/3083. I heard that user made sockpuppets at some point, I think on the inaturalist side of the website, but don't know if it was before their forum post. Some of the comments and flags between the forum mods/admin and the user suggest mods justified misusing user flagging/punishment based on other separate things they disliked about the user. Without fully knowing that situation/history, my takeaway has always been that admin still shouldn't be unfair or nontransparent, period. It also seems to set a general precedent that could be used toward any users, that admin can bend or break rules, or modify what's said to be "true," like 1984.

When I deleted my forum account, Tony warned me that creating forum sockpuppets could result in suspension. I didn't need a warning, why would I waste my time doing that? I even said I'll never come back under my own account. But, I like most of the regular users on the forum. So, it does seem disruptive how some forum mods in a sense divided parts of the community by marginalizing some people who gave website suggestions/feedback.

As for mtank's comment above, we briefly spoke and there's no conflict between us.

My taxonomy strike is to deliberately refrain from adding any ID to duplicates and / or multiples.
I will not ID each duplicate, I will leave a comment with links to the other obs.
I will not ID multiple species as the lowest common denominator - so taxon specialists can see them. NO! Thank you.
I will not ID one specimen which has its field marks scattered over many separate obs. Again a comment with links, flowers are here ... leaves over there ...

Finally I won't use broad planty IDs unless desparate. My politely following iNat guidelines 5 years ago comes back to haunt me today. Still. Sitting. At Plantae. If I had left them at honest Unknowns someone else would have seen them in between.

I check Kingdom Disagreements for Africa. Also plant IDs above family for the Cape Peninsula.

I had a nice workaround. Life + Life + Good as it can be = Casual, which took problem children (needing to be resolved by the observer) out of Needs ID as a service to our small pool of active identifiers. Not acceptable to iNat staff. Multiple species are not Life. Go figure ...

It sounds like you're happy to continue to see where the discussion leads, which was all I was checking. As I messaged @bdagley privately, I didn't have an issue with any particular comment, and I didn't mean it to seem like I was singling any comment out.

It's too bad you haven't been able to get a resolution to this yet, and I'm still missing your expertise.

I had a user disagree with an ID from a couple of us to the point that he insulted us, and called in a friend to fire insults at us. When I fired back at his friend, the observer said how rude I was and that he was blocking me.

Annoyingly, the curator hid all inflammatory comments, except the one where the observer said how rude I was. So it looks like there was this poor innocent observer and then I came roaring in and had to be blocked. I complained that leaving that comment open while hiding all the rest makes me look bad, but the curator said he didn't see anything wrong with it.

Here's what the observer's friend said to us:
"do you think when they blinked the bee flew away and a different bee magically appeared?"
"some bee expert you are if you can’t see that sometimes things look slightly different when light hits them different."
"do you think when someone puts something behind their back it’s gone forever too?"

I agree about the blocking points, I've been blocked by only one or so user that I noticed so far, but have come across their observations and it's inconvenient not to be able to add an ID. I also noticed something strange, that if I added an ID to a user's obs. who later blocked me, I can no longer withdraw my ID but I can still delete my ID.

On a separate subject, I noticed there was a discussion today about the RG accuracy experiment results, which I added a few comments to near the end (https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/89255-we-estimate-the-accuracy-of-research-grade-observations-to-be-95-correct). I think that the RG accuracy is difficult to estimate but seems to have been at least slightly overestimated and that a larger experiment would be needed to learn more.

I agree. I tested it out once, not knowing if it would allow me to delete it. The result was that one of my IDs is now deleted but I wish I could take it back.

Anyway, I've been working for awhile on a shared spreadsheet compilation doc of inaturalist community requests, of all categories, including not blocking expert IDs. Think of it as a "best of" the taxonomy strike and of similar past discussions. Similar to feature requests, you can vote on each request (which requires using a gmail account), and even add additional requests. They also include some of my past feature requests that Tony censored on the forum, yet ones that didn't (and he didn't say) violate guidelines. I hope that at least, you'll enjoy reading, voting, or adding to these, at least to give an indication of some of the goals or requests we have for the website if/when they become possible to implement. I don't have any "plan" for this beyond that, but anyone's free to share the public doc link.

One suggestion I'd give is that it would be most effective to share the doc link first with those who would likely be interested in contributing to it, but maybe waiting to share it more publicly (e.g., on the forum) once a decent amount of votes are added to it. I'm also going to share it with like-minded Bug Guide contributors. I also want to remind that my intent and that of this doc is constructive, to help the community and improve the website. I, who joined in 2020, have also by now grown tired of the way people who made helpful suggestions or pointed out bugs, and have contributed extensively to ID and observation, have often been dismissed or mistreated at times by certain admin and admin-related people, so it's possible that this may represent my last word on most of these matters, in any venue. Thanks everyone for all your hard volunteer ID, observation, and curation work, great ideas, resolve, and fun and cooperative attitude, cheers. I'm proud of everyone here, and many who aren't on this page, for willing to stand up for good ideas, their rights and originality, and for their general community spirit and fascination in exploring nature and contributing to biodiversity and conservation research.

iNaturalist Community Requests (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1b0VFdSO5iI8PbovZ4YNjyoIUGxP2KOy8iFZXz-ak43I/edit#gid=1754535465)

I struggle to read that as the line of text scrolls off the screen. (I can scroll from side to side, but)

If you could write the text
on two lines so it fits better?

On second viewing, I found the Voting columns.

I only found this now, but I was blocked by the same user you were over DQA votes. In fact, I originally assumed they were changing their username to prevent ME from finding them.

also iNat has NEVER presented itself as a academia site. I've been told many times in the early days of the site not to worry over bad mapping, bad IDs, etc because the purpose is to 'connect people to nature' not to generate data. 'the data is just a byproduct' is what i was told. Which i find it hard to rectify with the current taxonomic policy to add cryptic species taxonomy that can never be identified without genetic analysis to a site that primarily uses photos as its mechanism of confirming ID.

I don't think it's only taxonomists who lose their cool at all. I know i'm an outspoken critic of taxonomic policy, but i also know several 'extreme splitter' academic types to whom i do disagree with them classifying certain taxa to the species level but they are wonderful people and other than my annoying comments, it doesn't cause problems. We can disagree and that's ok. When people act out and bully based on taxonomic views, or anything else, it isn't appropriate. And like i said i've made mistakes too, so i am not trying to be hypocritical here. Just it's more complex than taxonomic splitters and experts being blocked out of some sort of manipulation of the algorithm. I think that form of blocking does occur, but i think it's rare.

And to be clear i don't really fully agree with the 'connecting people with nature... data is a byproduct' view either. I think the site needs to be realistic about taxonomy and i think experts need to be respectful same as everyone else - no free passes to people because of their social status. Beyond that, i think accuracy is VERY important, it's precision we don't always need on a site like iNat. If something has 20 cryptic species, do we want a citizen science site to designate them all as species and make everything lump into a much larger genus? I'd say no. Do we want subspecies or some other entity so experts can track these things when identifiable? Sure. And there's middle ground like subgenera groupings too, when we can get support for them.

By the way, that situation really pissed me off. Especially how the comments were hidden: the curators left the comment up where the observer says how mean I am. So if you're looking at that thread, it looks like everything was peaceful, and then I came in roaring and had to be blocked. I complained about leaving that comment up since all of the context was being hidden, but they said they didn't see any problem with that statement. So an observer can call in a friend and the two of them insult three curators, and afterward say how rude I am? I'd say that the concern over the observer is frequently coming at the expense of the identifier.

it may very well be you are in the right in the situation you explain, i've seen some pretty biased and inappropriate behavior by curators, who were usually selected for their taxonomic expertise not for their ability to navigate conflict. I just don't see any upside in getting me involved in it too since i'm not necessarily the most tactful person on the planet either. I'm talking about broad systemic needs, not individual arguments here.

To your point 2nd though, I do agree that conflict curation and taxonomic curation should be separate. Skill in conflict resolution does not translate to taxonomic expertise anymore than taxonomic expertise translates to skill in resolution.

"I'm talking about broad systemic needs, not individual arguments here."
Well on this thread there also some broad systemic changes that get discussed, but it seemed an example would helpful in this case.

@stefadrian wrote, "I think a split of iNat into two subsites would be necessary to ease those problems, one site for the general use, and another site for academic purposes."

Honestly, I think that would be a very bad idea. The academics would retreat into their ivory tower and the laypersons on the general site would be disconnected from the knowledge and understanding that the academics currently bring. Which would simply resurrect the problem that iNat was originally trying to counteract.

A couple points. One, as in the title, this post is mostly re: that we (most here) don't want at least the IDs of identifiers to be blocked, whether or not users can still be blocked. Some of us suggested alternatives for how this could work. For e.g., a blocked user could still add IDs to a blocking user's obs., but not be able to tag them, comment to them, or send them direct messages. And/or, the blocking user's profile page, profile icon on obs., etc. could become blank or anonymized, and/or their obs. location could become obscured. I'd further suggest blocking be retired completely, but with an alternative. This would be to send (significant, worthwhile) user conflicts or concerns to the staff (or whomever designated to do this). The latter would then either suspend true offenses (e.g., stalking or threatening), make no action (if non-applicable), or give a warning and recommend that the users typically don't talk to each other and don't "overly focus" on each other’s IDs all at once (but they can still ID their obs.). In short, blocking becomes retired and truly offending users just get suspended, which still preserves users' comfort and safety (e.g., of stalking, harassment, or threatening). Muting is also currently an option (although I'm unsure I like it).

One of the newer commenters here who referred to "horrible behavior" by unspecified users (maybe me, John A., or others?, but I won’t assume; I don’t know) previously demanded I not talk to him, but didn't block me, although I don't know if that's allowed since the staff didn't mandate that and I don’t think it’s in the guidelines. Another user also said the same thing to me, without blocking me. I don't believe there's currently a rule where a user can ask another (who the staff haven't told) not to speak to them at risk of punishment, nor that there should be. I think a user could request another not talk to them, but it would only be truly enforced if staff said they can't or risk punishment. Or, if the user repeatedly continued to talk to them (excepting flagged user or curation request discussions, where it’s always fair for everyone to talk), then at that point staff could determine whether punishment is warranted. Yet, I’d also prefer that user punishments by admin incorporate additional feedback from the community, not only admin (who've in some proven cases behaved unevenly), and that punished users can appeal punishments (if applicable), where appeals also incorporate community feedback. Or for an HR-like third party to help resolve such punishment appeal issues, but there is none. If iNat were likened to a govt., it would be a top-down admin, lacking checks and balances (conflict of interest).

Re: neylon, he didn’t seem rude, and is at least correct that certain curators sometimes are uneven in how they hide comments or flag users. Re: the website goals, I was glad to see and (surprisingly) agreed with Scott's recent confirmation that "One of iNaturalist's core goals is generating high-quality biodiversity data to advance science and conservation". So, the staff themselves have settled that "debate," and in the way most of us here prefer. As a side note, I and others believe the estimation that RG is 95% accurate is an overestimate and that Scott should've consulted more (if any?) identifiers before designing the experiment, to prevent it's limitations/flaws. That said, I agree it's generally good that the community and at times admin are trying to think about and calculate accuracy.

To me, it’s not necessarily required or helpful to try to distinguish between which users are experienced or expert identifiers, although it is fair to point out if one has expended a long time volunteering, which will naturally increase their experience or expertise.

I was also somewhat surprised to see certain users (even before recently) jump into this discussion that seem not to share some of the viewpoints on blocking or on emphasizing data quality of many here, but of course it is public and so anyone can. I've also appreciated how this thread, while primarily focusing on not blocking IDs, has functioned as a kind of alternative forum that has slightly different focuses and moderation. In my opinion/experience, the forum mods sometimes overly-, unjustifiably, or unevenly flag (or split off) user comments, so I am glad this isn't on the forum. Also, unlike the forum, I appreciate how the community here has allowed us to discuss related topics, meander or speak tangentially to some extent, etc. (the dreaded forum mod “off topic” crime, which has also been used unevenly at times there), while at the same time remembering and always eventually returning (after other discussions end) to the main topic raised, handing joe_fish back the mic so to speak.

@jasonhernandez74 I didn't think about separating them totally without any connection. More of an "academic upgrade" for observations. The term "Research Grade" is implying too much in the current usus, bordering on being utterly ridiculous in many cases. There should be a way for researchers and taxonomic websites to distinguish wether an observation is just "confirmed by others" or is really "RG" in a strict sense (academic-taxonomic). Maybe by means of some additional rules applied for identification, such as: you may opt out of taxonomic opinion any way you like, but then your observation will not reach "Academic Research Grade" status, just "Confirmed By Other Users" ... something like that.
And btw being of the academic persuasion myself ... I would not at all retreat into any ivory tower, but still try to drop IDs on laypersons observations. On the contrary, in the current situation I see too many taxonomists retreat from iNat or not joining up in the first place, Joe being just one example.

yeah the big advantage iNat has is documentation and accountability. While there are a fair bit of fled users, here on iNat you can often contact the observer, and you can also judge the merit of IDs based on the community and the people involved. You can't do that in most GBIF datasets. And as a person who's worked with other ecological data, i think inat data when the user is familiar with the data is every bit as good as the normal 'official science' data collected by underpaid seasonal field techs .

Right, here I can disagree with an ID and while yes sometimes people block or ignore, overall there's usually a positive response from that person or the identification community. It's often impossible to track down field techs, grad students, etc who create a lot of the other data on GBIF.

@blue_lotus And then when they have sources it's amazing how often they're woozles.

So, I'd favor GBIF (and any similar site) to provide more of an easy-to-see disclaimer upfront on their homepages explaining that it's global map of data is actually a collection of different datasets that vary in accuracy, collection-methods, expert verification, etc. inat itself (and/or the inat RG records dataset page on GBIF) could probably also benefit from a disclaimer like that. Bug Guide (which has higher accuracy than inat)'s homepage does give such a disclaimer at the bottom of it's own homepage (although maybe not on it's BG dataset page on GBIF).

If anyone's interested, I created a discussion about GBIF trying to prevent data submitters from submitting inaccurate or out of range data to GBIF, back in September, here. The GBIF admin are very nice and have been grateful for all of my volunteer suggestions, work, and bug reports (unlike certain members of certain other site admin). That chat hasn't really kicked off yet, but in theory anyone could create a GitHub account and chime in (or create your own “Issues” topics for GBIF or inat). My main suggestion as neylon also agrees with is that ideally records would include at least some kind of photos with them. The better and more photos the better, but even a cellphone pic is better than nothing. Unfortunately, many of the GBIF museum specimens that did include photographs are distant aerial views looking down at a specimen.

One other side-note about an inat-GBIF synchronization issue I noticed. I assume that inat didn't originally have "infraranks" like subfamily, tribe, subtribe, subgenus, and complex, they just had family, genus, species, and probably subspecies. The latter RG inat records currently matriculate to GBIF correctly. Yet, later on in inat's original history, I assume maybe inat identifiers or staff or devs decided to add infraranks like subgenus. Which have been an improvement on our end. But, GBIF still doesn't include them. Hence, GBIF currently has nearly 7,000 bumblebee "genus Pyrobombus" (which is actually a subgenus) records on it's site, mostly from the inat RG records GBIF dataset. I also mentioned this to them, but am inferring that it may be difficult, costly, or time-consuming for GBIF to update to add infraranks like subgenus, so it may take a long time (or more requests) for that to change. GBIF admin would like to add/fix that in time, though. I raised that last March here. To me, that issue isn’t only GBIF’s (despite occurring on GBIF). It would seem that inat should’ve checked with GBIF what would happen on GBIF if inat added infraranks before they added them, which I assume didn't happen. So, I suggested that the two websites' admin or devs discuss that issue and what could be done about it (no word from inat yet). In the meantime, hopefully no one will publish a new paper about "the new genus Pyrobombus."

@neylon Agreeing with most of your points. I guess the effects of drinking vary by person and limit. A few years ago someone recommended "don't drink and ID," while a few others said sometimes it's okay, that their IDs can still be accurate. But unless you're at your own place, it doesn't make much sense to drink and ID on inat if you're in a social setting anyway. Unless it's at an inat identification party or something (could be an idea, even over zoom or something?). But if someone does drink (or do whatnot, not everyone drinks, or not everyone only drinks) and ID, they should definitely check the next day to make sure they don't need to correct any misidentifications haha. I once talked to a museum curator who was in the process of retiring, who had a joke. Someone calls up a retired curator a few years later and asks them a entomology taxonomy question. He replies, "I don't remember anything - I've been an alcoholic for four years!"

Although just a joke, certain other people seem to remain more functional or to even consider it a kind of superpower.

Re: 95% RG accuracy, I agree and said elsewhere that I believe certain very well-reviewed groups that have a lot of identifiers may indeed be at or above 95% accuracy, although no one's ever checked. But I think the iNat experiment was estimating that for all global wildlife taxa, on average, the RG accuracy is 95%. That seems to be a clear overestimate, since we know that certain wildlife groups aren't reviewed/identified nearly as much as others, or have fewer experienced identifiers working on them.

Commenters on that RG accuracy experiment also pointed out issues like that the sample size was far too small and that the threshold to consider a user a validator was set far too low (someone merely guessing enough IDs could meet the criterion). That subject also came up elsewhere in a discussion re: Bug Guide (which is only about North America insects and other "bugs"). On BG, they actually do distinguish between users, so 90% of the people making IDs are considered experienced identifiers/experts/curators (called contributing editors), which is part of the reason the BG useres and I (who am a BG editor) maintain that BG still must have a higher overall % RG accuracy vs. inat (when considering all included taxa).

Following the format of how @dianastuder mentioned things that are her "taxonomy strike," I recently decided (re: my lost curator status) that part of my taxonomy strike will be to typically no longer make curation requests, even to add newly identified species on the website for the first time. Most global vespid wasp taxonomists in real life who use inaturalist aren't curators here, so I've already been unable to help them add their first species IDs for the last year (except for rare cases where "search external name database" allows any user to add a species, but then that that species is sometimes ungrafted or doesn't have the most precise parent taxon anyway). Yesterday, a newer vespid curator who the staff seemed to intend to replace the void left by me said I'd been the best vespid curator (although, I don't claim to the absolutely best vespid identifier).

Similarly, for bee taxonomy, curator johnascher mostly focuses on identifying, and some taxon changes are truly difficult to learn how to make due to the way the How-To documents are written, so there was also a bee void left there with me gone. The staff seem to have tried to replace me with egordon88 (who I like) for bee curation and insectobserver123 for wasp curation. Yet, neither of them have had much time or otherwise haven't made some curation requests for other reasons. So, the void left by Scott/admin rashly and invalidly removing my curator status (before the users who know me best even had a chance to comment, and with no option to appeal the decision, despite nearly 200 voters on my petition) remains. Another factor involved in this is that it wastes much more time to have to write curation requests to newly add certain accepted species to the website vs. in some cases curators can validly just add new species immediately.

Lastly, many of my (mostly bat) curation requests made around 2021 before I was a curator were ignored and never fulfilled for years, if ever, and even some of my recent bee/wasp curation requests (or requests to merely close concluded flag discussions) have also been ignored. That said, I will still indicate in new species observation comments, and my Project for First Bee and Wasp Records, that new species may or have been observed and identified, which would make them easier to add to the website later. My one other exception is that I may rarely make curation requests if they regard a genus I'm writing a research manuscript about, e.g., I'm currently writing about the global distibution of potter wasp genus Delta species. But, even there, given my often being ignored, it may actually be more effective for other people to make those curation requests. An e.g. (for the potter wasp genus Eumenes) from today is here.

@dianastuder Yes, fortunately, which is current row 40 in the spreadsheet. I highlight "successful" request rows in gold. (Incidentally, the lack of this feature previously was what led bouteloua and a curator-who-shall-not-be-named by his own request to flag me a year ago, which was part of what led to loarie removing my curator status!). Yet, there is another even better second stage of that request, represented as a separate request: to be able to unlink the unrelated photos to generate two "children" observations, one per species. That's how Bug Guide works, and works much better. This is current request row 41.

Definitely.

I feel your pain for splitting off rare species.
But with multiple species - only the observer knows which was where when.

If either of the three of you can clarify how best to phrase the 2 (or 3?) newer requests you just mentioned, either I or you can add them to the spreadsheet, and then I or you can tell us what row number those are listed on.

re: to split off observations to ID rare species in photos that aren't the focus without praying the user will comply.

One thing to look out for is if critics would say that would violate the observer's photo copyright license. I can think of a few possible alternatives (and alternatives can be mentioned in the requests, in anticipation of critics). One is if the original observation (obs.) is simply duplicated a second time, but for the ID to be for the other species. The duplicated obs. would still be the copyright/owned by the original observer. Something like a new DQA option may allow for such splitting. In a second alternative, a new obs. is created by cropping part of the original obs. This, too, could retain the original observer's copyright/ownership, but may be harder to implement (unless the observer consents) since it may be conisdered a "modification" of the observer's original photo.

By the way, not that anyone has to do so, but I've been a little puzzled that no one but me on this thread about not blocking expert IDs voted on that spreadsheet request (current row #185). (And that many people here didn't vote on my curator petition, which people are welcome to contact me privately about to ask more details about, or give me feedback on, given that I'm putting myself out there sticking up for a lot of issues/people and got punished in the process; although, I also don't like to belabor/repeat my curator petition issue too often.) As a clarification, people are free to privately tell me if they think I should rephrase any of the spreadsheet requests, or for e.g. if they disagree with the wording of my request 185, they could write their own alternative version of it on another row.

Oh, so were you that "anonymous alligator" or someone editing? haha.

Yes, adding your name to the cell to the right of the last person who added their name (not over it). The highlighted Rules and Notes cell near the top of the spreadsheet also explains everything in more detail.

Lastly, I just went through and partly edited many of the requests that no one but me had voted on yet. One thing that does occasionally make my writing difficult is that I can write in too much length sometimes (but often think people might misunderstand what I mean otherwise). On the other hand, I've often seen people (also including me at times) write things so briefly that they come across as vague or unclear. Most of the requests near the end are about ensuring the admin including staff, mods, etc. use fair practices. I for one am very unhappy that they can read our private messages... let them only read them if they get flagged, we can't read theirs (current request row: 54). One thing I did when editing various requests was to change certain references to "staff" to "admin" and to quality "certain admin sometimes" have done this or that, so as to not make it seem like someone considering voting on it would be hesistant to be criticized as "challenging" or "criticizing" the staff. Overall though, I left references to the staff where necessary, and most of my edits were just to make the requests more concise.

Lastly, to explain unlinking photos (current request row 41), see the following comment that I cross-posted to the new Experiment post today:

Given that the concept of the new DQA vote option of whether the ID subject is in every photo of the obs. has come up in this discussion, and that I (as in the past) suggested that it would be even better to allow the obs. to be unlinked (split) into two verifiable obs. (vs. rendering both photos unverifiable), that terminology that some identifiers like johnascher use originates from the similar website and early inat influence Bug Guide. This is an example of how it works there: https://bugguide.net/node/view/671812.

1 of 2

I'm a little confused by what distinction you're making. In any case, I'm suggesting that the new inat DQA option be replaced with one that would work exactly as Bug Guide does it. Here are examples of what would happen on BG in different scenarios.

Obs. 1. Photo 1=bee and butterly, photo 2=bee and butterfly (the observer specifies which subject to ID). Solution: no "unlink" needed (no violation of rules), yet the observer could optionally upload the photo(s) twice, so that each species would get it's own record.

Obs. 2. Photo 1=bee, photo 2=bee and butterly. Solution: no violation of rules, the ID subject would have to be the bee. Yet, the observer could optionally re-upload the second photo to make it a butterfly record.

Obs. 3. Photo 1=bee, photo 2=butterfly. Solution: "unlink" to create 1 bee record. and 1 butterfly record. [which on inat if done this way would make the obs. remain verifiable, vs. the new DQA option makes everything casual grade]

There are probably a couple other variations that I can't think of right now. Basically, I'd suggest replacing (deleting) the new iNat DQA option with the "link and unlink" option, which would also be a new DQA option, asking if the ID subject organism is in every photo (regardless of whether additional species are). Yet, for the time being, and even before this new DQA option, I and ohers had "unofficially" been marking obs. with one species in photo 1 and another species in photo 2 "no evidence of organism," making them casual. There are several benefits to that approac: no wrongly IDed photos get sent to the inat or GBIF species galleries, and the fact that the obs. becomes casual actually is among the mos effective ways to get the observer's attention. And then if the observer does fix it (deleting photo 2, typically re-uploading it separately as as different record) I make their obs. verifiable again.

On another related matter, I recently contributed several long, thoughtful analysis comments to loarie's posts about the recent and current experiments. In one, I mentioned that I'd been invalidly flagged one year earlier for IDing photo 1 in an obs. that has a different species in photo 2, and pointed out that your link demonstrated (as I demonstrated in the past) that "use the broadest ID that encompasses both species" is actually only a suggestion, not a mandated rule. Therefore, I was wrongfully flagged a year ago. When I was flagged back then, the user singled me out, only flagging me and not flagging multiple other active identifiers who also like me only identified photo 1 vs. use a broad ID. I commented to an identifier that the curator had chosen to skip over flagging, "did [the flagging user] get you too?"

By which I meant, the flagger singled me out unfairly. Then, loarie then mischaracterized what happened as that I "insulted the flagging user" (another curator also inaccurately chimed in that I should assume the flagging user, who had a history of bullying and mocking me, "meant well," which was untrue since they singled me out. Secondly, as mentioned, we discovered IDing photo 1 isn't against a mandated rule. Yet, that was part of the reason loarie claimed I had to lose curator status, because I'd "insulted" a curator by pointing out that they singled me out and also were inaccurate that I'd broken a rule.

I basically didn’t even sleep at all overnight partly due to this,

Almost invariably less is more.
to be honest tl:dr

@bdagley I've definitely broken the "use the broadest ID that encompasses both species" rule as well. Often in fact. I usually decide what to do based on the situation. If it's multiple species present in a photo (ie, of a sponge garden) and there's no clear indication of what the subject is, then the broadest ID usually works well. If it's multiple photos of multiple species, then I usually ID from the first photo and suggest the observer split off the rest. I think it's odd if there's something wrong with that approach, or even that there's rules at all! I agree with you that it should be read as a suggestion.

Overriding this thought process is that it's the observer who owns the observation and I will usually defer to their (reasonable) wishes.

On unlinking or splitting observations, I'm (appropriately) split on the issue. I don't think an identifier should be able to unilaterally modify another active user's observation (or create a new one on an observer's behalf, which is what splitting ultimately is). However, most of the problematic ones are from users that just do an observation dump and never use the platform again (ie, for a class project), so it will never be fixed no matter how many comments get added. In that case it is a good thing if an identifier can make the split. Maybe a compromise solution is that an observation can be "opened up" for unilateral modification (splitting/combining) if the user has less than X observations and has been inactive for at least Y length of time.

For context, I've accidentally combined photos of multiple species in one observation. If I get told of my mistake via comment, I can simply split them and it's fine. However, if someone can just split it for me, then a new observation is created on my behalf without having going through whatever processes I attach to uploading obs (ie, like tagging, adding to projects, determining if it's captive or wild, etc.)

'If it's multiple photos of multiple species, then I usually ID from the first photo' @mtank

But - frog, daisy and bird IDed as frog - doesn't make sense.
For that we have a shiny new DQA

new DQA Feb 2024 - only one species please
https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/90263

many BG users are unhappy because the better photo quality (etc.) of inat essentially drove away probably 75% or more of the current or would-be future BG users

Really? What drove me away from BG was that my observations get frassed if they aren't publication-quality photos.

Although as I said, I'd prefer that "the Bug Guide DQA option" be added, whether it replaces the recently added iNat DQA option (which is a slight improvement) or whether both remain. Because they do different things. In the iNat DQA option, photos of all species become casual grade and may stay lost there forever, and by definition if the observer has become inactive. Versus the "BG DQA tool" would create multiple verifiable observations for each species. But if an observer is permanently inactive (e.g. a student) or dead (unfortunately) the current tool will only relegate their photo to "wastebin of casual grade."

Someone once asked on the forum, is, or why are people, treating casual grade as a wastebin? And the near unanimous answer was that's because that's pretty much what it's functioning as. With the exception of good photos of cultivated plants, animals, or humans (used sparingly), I'd say. I upload maybe 3 casual obs. per 100.

Casual grade is somewhat analogous to the Frass section of Bug Guide that Jason alluded to. In which, they actually recycle (delete) the photos in there over time. It does also seem to me that there's a lot of sheer clutter (blurs, duplicates, etc.) in the inat casual grade category that it might be good to at least recycle certain kinds of "frass"-like photo (the meaning of frass is excrement, as BG intended). Jason, I think if you take decent enough photos on BG either no one will frass them or you can "appeal" it by commenting to them, or telling me (I'm a BG curator). You could consider re-joining BG, you all could. I like their forum much better: zero moderation but also virtually zero user conflicts, imagine that. Sometimes it seems that the excesses of inat and inat forum moderation/punishing is (unintentionally) actually driving divisions and conflicts in the community.

yeah i'd probably leave the site and possibly delete all my observations if they started 'frassing' photos on here, outside of copyright infringement and such.

Anyway, here's the current BG Frass collection. As I immediately notice and am somewhat surprised by, some of the photos seem to be in clear or clear enough quality so as not to frass, like this. Except, the editor gave the rationale: "damaged, poorly curated specimen," so that may be debatable (in past years, BG didn't even allow any specimen photos at all), and reinforcing the point that BG editors sometimes curatore "their" preferred groups differently, but it's also possible to debate with an editor whether a given photo should be frassed. This is another e.g., frassed by the same editor, presumably because it's blurry, difficult or impossible to ID to species. When I first started BG in 2021 I frassed, but became annoyed by the lack of "standards for frassing" and typically no longer frass. And finally, this is a frassed bee image (probably for poor quality and difficult to ID) that I disagree with (John, I, or others can probably ID it at least to family), so which I'll explain my reasoning and now remove from frass. So, it is possible to "appeal" your photos being frassed, or to debate it on the BG forums, so I wouldn't recommend anyone leave just due to the frassing.

Overall, I always still recommend everyone make an account on both BG (whose admin I think are fairer) and inat (despite that I think admin fairness needs to improve in some way). inat also owes a lot to BG, I think inat is basically based on BG. And, having a BG account doesn't obligate people to use it for X number of hour per week or month, so many of us actually only check in on it infrequently, and there are also far fewer obs. uploaded. Other highlights: more educational towards beginners including children, virtually no moderation, no flags (and thus no flag debates), no forum moderation/censorship, live in-person member events (although I've never been near enough one to attend), many other things, and observers (contributors) that tend to be overly grateful and thankful for the identifiers' time (yet the last is also true of many inat observers as well).

BG is also planned to be updated to BG 2.0, which hopefully will improve it's navigation, image quality, speed, etc., but that's been delayed for many years. Reciprocally, when some of the BG editors criticize inat, as I also partly do, I actually also recommend that they all use both sites too, but with the caveat that I understand why some people may choose not to use inat out of data quality concerns/principles (re: the AI and RG system, is their main complaint). Both sites have unique features and pros and cons. I've often heard and agree with the description that BG is like an field guide and inat is like the citizen science portal (yeet technically they're both citizen science portals) for the "clearninghouse" GBIF. Both sites have unique features, pros and cons. And of course, BG is only for people who like insects and other "bugs."

About a month ago I created a spreadsheet of community requests. I'm glad a few people read and vote on some of the requests, although overall few did, which can limit whatever impact it might've had, although I didn't necessarily expect much to come from it, it's kind of just like a poll. But, connecting to my thoughts, I think, and a few people have actually told me in the past, that many users are actually "afraid" to voice even neutral feedback/suggestions or especially differences of viewpoint, not only re: my document but on the forum, or in the comment threads of the inat. journal posts, etc. This is unfortunate but unsurprising, since it's been my experience, and my observation of others', that users who give feedback are often dismissed, not replied to, or even argued with or criticized for making website feedback. Or claimed to ask for "too much" or make "too many" requests. Meanwhile, some mods have created more feature requests than anyone and no one criticizes them. Overall, and including the issue of not blocking expert IDs, it seems there's still an unhelpful gulf between admin and (many) users, and that certain users are typically dismissed and/or criticized more than others, particularly those who've given the most feedback, even if they gave it neutrally and respectfully.

Lastly, there seems to remain a lack of transparency into site decision making and actions. E.g., I believe the staff have been able to read private messages between users, which one taxonomist called "unethical." My memory is the "warning message" you get when a user first sends you a private message used to indicate staff can see the messages, and that I once emailed staff and they justified it as "inat. is about transparency," yet we can't see their private messages. I incidentally brought this up recently in one of the accuracy experiment threads. Since then, the "warning message" when a user sends you a private message the first time no longer says staff can see the messages. I wonder if this was a result of my comment. Regardless, the problem is that that just obscures whether the staff can see our private messages, which is an e.g. of a lack of transparency. And if certain of us merely ask them, they probably won't even reply. If anyone does find out, please share. We at least deserve to know whether our messages are private, even if they won't be. And flagged private chats already become visible to staff, which is a good reason why no one (staff, or others) should need to be able to view them otherwise.