I have become afflicted with this distraction as well, although I tend to
focus my attention (regarding other users' submissions) on the few groups
that I know reasonably well (taxonomically and geographically) and which
don't get a lot of attention from others—for instance odonates
continent-wide, moths and tiger beetles within the Northwest, etc. I tend
not to worry about birds since there are plenty of other users who spend
time on them. It doesn't replace OdonataCentral as THE online database for
Odonata in North America, and for birds it's no match for eBird, but when
you spend a day in the field photographing lots of living things (birds,
bugs, mammals, plants, mushrooms, etc.) submitting them all to iNaturalist
is a fun way to contribute to a wide audience.
The way the site and the community vetting process works makes for an
interesting dynamic with other users and sometimes it feels like you have
to "play the system" to get the result that you feel is the accurate one
for a particular submission. The criteria that go into the community-driven
IDs, and whether it becomes "research grade" is all a bit complicated. I
once tried reading through the algorithm used to determine community IDs,
but I quickly lost interest. The IDs that users put on submissions, as well
as whether the submitter has chosen to retain control of their IDs (instead
of going with the community ID), have direct impacts on the outcome.
One frustrating situation is when users provide IDs at taxonomic levels
above the species level inappropriately. There are good reasons to do so
and poor reasons, but I won't bore everyone by elaborating on that in this
venue.
Bottom line is that the more people who get involved, the better, but users
need to have some idea of their limitations when putting IDs on their
submissions and those of other users—and be willing to submit to the
expertise of others as appropriate. And those who consider themselves
experts need to recognize that no one is perfect and even they can make a
bad call once in a while. Except for me... ;-)
Jim Johnson
On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 9:15 AM, Mike Patterson celata@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[swalalahos] <swalalahos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I recount my adventures on iNaturalist, the citizen science communal
data collection site.
http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/northcoastdiaries/
--
Mike Patterson
Astoria, OR
For which it stands...
http://www.surfbirds.com/community-blogs/northcoastdiaries/?p=3132
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