Human (Homo sapiens) vs Humans (genus Homo)

[Stacey Greenstein]

A significant fraction of the observation of living people are ID'd as Humans (genus Homo) instead of Human (Homo sapiens). This is especially true when it's a group of people in the picture, but it also happens to single individuals. I do my best to clean up these observations, and to tag one or two other contributors to help in this cleanup.

However, it's annoying to have to do this. I'm thinking there could be a more learning-friendly way for this to be done. Perhaps a change to the website such that the user gets a confirmation box with text along these lines: The genus Homo (Humans) contains only a single living species, Homo sapiens. Is this a living human? Yes/No

[Ben Phalan]

This happens with other taxa too. For example, Ospreys (Family Pandionidae) have only one extant species. Same thing for Gray Whales (Family Eschrichtiidae). Would it be possible to ensure that such taxa are never the first option in the drop-down menu, but that the relevant species is presented first instead?

[Charlie Hohn]

i think the cause of the issue is simply that the genus Homo has the common name 'Humans' so when people type humans it comes up. If you just delete the common name from the genus, it would never happen unless someone specifically types in 'Homo' and doesn't add sapiens which wouldn't happen very often

[Stacey Greenstein]

I'd rather not remove... how about renaming it to "Ancestral and modern Humans (Genus Homo)", but also giving it a lower priority in the listing than the species?

[Scott Loarie]

To me this seems like something the crowd is handling nicely as is,
there's only one verifiable obs of Homo at the moment
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?lrank=genus&place_id=any&subview=grid&taxon_id=43583

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--------------------------------------------------
Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
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[Stacey Greenstein]

I'm trying to find a way to make it even easier for the crowd to start with the right spot, so that fewer folks have to touch the obs to get it verified. Renaming the genus seems to be the simplest change.

On Jul 6, 2017 9:08 AM, "Scott Loarie" <loa...@gmail.com> wrote:

To me this seems like something the crowd is handling nicely as is,
there's only one verifiable obs of Homo at the moment
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?lrank=genus&place_id=any&subview=grid&taxon_id=43583

On Thu, Jul 6, 2017 at 8:47 AM, Stacey Greenstein <stac...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd rather not remove... how about renaming it to "Ancestral and modern
> Humans (Genus Homo)", but also giving it a lower priority in the listing
> than the species?
>
>
> On Wednesday, July 5, 2017 at 5:58:33 PM UTC-7, Charlie Hohn wrote:
>>
>> i think the cause of the issue is simply that the genus Homo has the
>> common name 'Humans' so when people type humans it comes up. If you just
>> delete the common name from the genus, it would never happen unless someone
>> specifically types in 'Homo' and doesn't add sapiens which wouldn't happen
>> very often
>>
>> On Wednesday, July 5, 2017 at 4:51:29 PM UTC-4, Ben Phalan wrote:
>>>
>>> This happens with other taxa too. For example, Ospreys (Family
>>> Pandionidae) have only one extant species. Same thing for Gray Whales
>>> (Family Eschrichtiidae). Would it be possible to ensure that such taxa are
>>> never the first option in the drop-down menu, but that the relevant species
>>> is presented first instead?
>
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--
--------------------------------------------------
Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
--------------------------------------------------

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[Stacey Greenstein]

So, the genus has been renamed to "Humans and Allies (genus Homo)", which was not my suggestion. While I understand the logic in that naming, having "Humans" be the first word is still causing folks to select it for living people. "Ancestral and Living Humans (genus Homo)", as I suggested, may be better because it moves the key word further to the right, meaning it's harder to parse. Also, when typing "human" into the ID search, the genus comes up earlier in the list than the species. In at least instance, I think we really should force the species to come up in the list before the genus. I know the link you listed shows very few or no observations currently sitting at the genus level, but that's because the small number of us who have been patrolling the genus have done a good job. I'm asking for a small change that will help us do that job (giving us more time for other observations) and in helping the initial contributor to make a better choice.

[Scott Loarie]

you should be able to manage names from the taxon page

>> > email to inaturalist...@googlegroups.com.

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>>
>>
>> --
>> --------------------------------------------------
>> Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
>> Co-director, iNaturalist.org
>> California Academy of Sciences
>> 55 Music Concourse Dr
>> San Francisco, CA 94118
>> --------------------------------------------------
>>
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>>
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