Community Identifications 2014-01-30

In brief: We're changing the way observations are identified so that the taxon agreed upon by the iNat community will be the primary taxon associated with each observation, i.e. the taxon used in searches, in determining research grade status etc. If you prefer the current system in which an observation's taxon doesn't change unless you change it, you should opt-out some time before February 7, 2014:

1. Go to http://www.inaturalist.org/users/edit
2. Uncheck "Accept Community Identifications"
3. Save your settings

Not so brief: All set? Cool, here's the long version. Currently, you are in full control of the taxon associated with your observation. Everyone else can add identifications, but your observation isn't associated with a taxon until you agree with those identifications.

However, this is a problem for people who don't realize they are responsible for their own data, or for people who just add some observations and then abandon the site. The community puts work into adding identifications, but the observations remain unlinked to taxa and ineligible for research grade status. It's a bummer for identifiers, some newbies, and especially for project owners who often recruit a bunch of one-time users for an event who never return to confirm IDs.

So what we're doing is introducing the idea of a "community taxon," which is sort of like the identification that the community of identifiers agrees on. The algorithm we've come up with is a bit convoluted, but roughly, it chooses the taxon that more than 2/3 of identifiers agree with. You can see an example of this by appending test=cid to any observation added in the last few weeks, e.g.

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/505772?test=cid

If you want the gory details on the algorithm click the "About" link beneath the community ID, or wade through the even more crazy diagrams at https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/88. So far we're just calculating the community taxon without affecting any existing data or quality grade, but what we're going to do is set the community taxon as the primary taxon affiliation for an observation, unless you opt out. This means that if you like the current system of personal control, you will have to set a preference saying you don't want to automatically accept the community taxon as the taxon for your observation, as described above.

You will also be able to reject the community taxon on a case-by-case basis:

Posted on July 11, 2020 07:07 PM by hannahsun99