extra stuff in common names / should only curators be able to add/edit names?

[Ken-ichi]

Hey all,

There is a person who continually changes the common name of the genus
Homo to something that includes notes about only using it for fossils,
e.g.
"Ancestral and modern Humans (do not use this ID for living people,
only for fossils)", which is not, in my opinion, entirely rational b/c
humans are not fossils (yet) so it is accurate to identify things as
Homo, if not specific. I've asked them to stop in private and
presented my reasons but they don't agree. Their argument is that this
helps prevent people from making relatively meaningless
identifications of the genus Homo. So I feel like I have a couple
options:

1) Update the Curator's Guide and/or the FAQ to specify that common
names should not include metadata about how to use the name and
suspend this user if they do not comply with the new policy

and/or

2) Make it so only site curators can add/edit names

I feel like changing the rules so I can cite the rules is lame, but I
also feel like names should not be a place for information that is not
the name and that polluting them with extra notes like this is
confusing and sets a bad precedent.

So my questions for you all, do you agree with the policy in 1, and do
you think 2 is called for or going too far? I've also invited this
person to comment here if I have misrepresented their position.

[Cullen Hanks]

I agree with both. The first for sure regardless of this situation. The second if you feel inclined and it becomes necessary.

It sounds like their intended annotation falls in the realm of identification guidance. It would be nice if there was a wiki space for id guidance like in big guide? Just a thought.

Best,

Cullen

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[Scott Loarie]

1 sounds pretty benign to me.

Not sure more generally, but preventing obs of the entire genus Homo (ie not just the species Homo sapiens) from becoming RG would address that persons concerns. That also seems pretty benign and might kick the more general issue down the road unless there's other instances of this type of thing becoming a problem

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Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
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[Stacey Greenstein]

I'm the culprit.

I started a thread here a few months back to get the listing of which taxa have a higher priority in the listing, so that folks who innocently pick Homo instead of Homo sapiens will be less likely to do so. That suggestion was denied. My next step to trying to prevent folks from picking the wrong taxa was to add the "metadata" to the taxa name in parenthesis. That seems to work to reduce (but not eliminate) the selection. When other folks change the name back to not have the parenthetical, the number of hits on the genus again rise.

Cullen and Scott, I've tagged you both in many of those observations. So you both know the frequency of the incidents, and that, in the grand scheme of things, it's fairly small.

I'll again urge that some logic be included to push the genus down further in the list, so as to prevent it from being used either accidentally (because it's the first item in the list) or maliciously (because it pops up early in the list and so is easily selected).

As for the legitimacy of picking the taxa, my argument against it is this: Picking the genus ID is a statement that the IDer does not know which species the observation represents. As there is only one extant Homo species, and that species is well known to all observers, picking the genus taxa is disingenuous. Therefor the only legitimate ID for a living person is the species ID. As a corollary, the only observations valid for the genus level would then be fossils. Hence my choice of wording of the parenthetical I add to the name.

To change a rule so as to quote the rule, I would say that is a worse precedent than providing educational guidance in a taxa name. Indeed, as scientists, one of our functions in dealing with the public is an educator.

Stacey

[bouteloua]

I agree that names shouldn't have extraneous information and I think being more explicit about naming rules in the Curator Guide is fine and (hopefully) helps prevent arguments. Additional cases include using already-established common names and how and/or when to set the default order or Place priority for names.

I don't know if we're at the point yet where only curators should be allowed to touch common names. Can we have a space on the website that shows all the recent name changes, similar to taxon changes? Right now there is no easy way to keep track that I know of.

I also agree that it would be great if Homo sapiens defaulted to the top of the list when someone types "Homo." I don't know that Scott necessarily "denied" the request, but it would be nice if people didn't have to waste their time reclassifying these types of IDs and could focus their valuable crowdsourcing efforts on something else. [Counterpoint, it is an opportunity to gently guide someone toward proper use of the website...]

cassi

[bouteloua]

p.s. Cullen I think the Bug Guide-esque "wiki space for id guidance" merits its own thread/email and would personally love to have and contribute to something like this, whether an effort to beef out wikipedia itself or to have it directly on the site somewhere

[Charlie Hohn]

I agree that names shouldn't have extraneous info but i have done something in a milder sense. Some suspecies get the same common name as the regular species, which causes people to classify to subspecies without meaning to... for instance if a subspecies of mule fat is also being called mule fat i change that to 'nominate mule fat'. We should either enshrine it as how we do things or I should stop doing it and we should come up with another solution :)

In terms of the specific fossils only comment, it isn't really an appropriate way to use common names, and in this case it is one person doing it while everyone else weighing in here doesn't think they should. So that to me is an etiquette issue. To be honest, in terms of common names issues the only problems I've seen come up were with people who WERE curators. So maybe clear guidance and rules as to how to use common names, linked to the curator guide or some other part of the site, would work better than limiting it to curators.

Also we have way too many curators but that's a whole other issue.

[Mirko Schoenitz]

I have in the past used the genus as a humorous reply to what to my mind clearly were joke, test, or otherwise frivolous observations.

Perhaps, rather than inserting instructions to the observer in the genus name, there should be a note of caution to potential researchers who try using inaturalist data to study the geographic distribution of homo sapiens.

[Charlie Hohn]

I'd love to have more access to the internal wiki for things like this, which i've asked for before, but others seem to disagree. But in all honesty I'm not going to becoe a wikipedia curator. I've already got too much on my plate

On Friday, September 1, 2017 at 7:34:18 AM UTC-4, bouteloua wrote:

[Charlie Hohn]

aside from that one case where aquatic drones were used, ALL inaturalst observations are also homo sapiens observations.

[Carrie Seltzer]

I agree that common names should ideally not contain such instructions, and it would make sense to clarify that in the curator's guide (and rather than changing it to support your particular opinion, Ken-ichi, I think this thread demonstrates now that there is broader support for that clarification). 

I also agree that it would be helpful to re-rank Homo sapiens to appear above Homo in the search. Can one of the devs explain how search results are currently ranked? That might help us users understand what may be possible in terms of re-ranking to minimize issues like this. 

I would argue against restricting common name edits/additions to curators because I think that places an unnecessary barrier to adding common names. It's already a little harder to find manage the names on the new species pages (though I don't have any suggestions for how to improve it) and I think it's important as iNat use continues to expand that common names can be added without going through the step to become a curator.

Carrie

[Ken-ichi]

I suspect most people choose the genus Homo for identifications not
because they are being disingenuous but just ignorant. They probably
don't know what a genus is, or they don't know that genus Homo is
monotypic. iNat also often presents a genus as a conservative
suggestion when you add an ID in the mobile apps. The result is a lot
of perfectly accurate but imprecise identifications, and I'm not sure
why you or anyone else has a problem with that. If you don't like
repeatedly IDing humans to species, then don't. You can ignore them by
using the default settings on most observation search pages, which
exclude "Casual" observations, and all observations of genus Homo and
species Homo sapiens are "Casual" by default (another point of
controversy).

On the subject of changing rules, the only reason to make and change
rules is so everyone can later quote them without repeating the
reasons for their formation. I think it would be a bad precedent to
make a potentially controversial change to the rules without
discussing that change first, but the whole point of rules is to guide
behavior, and since behavior is always changing, the rules have to
change sometimes too.

Still hoping for more input from others, so please chime in if you
haven't and you have an opinion one way or the other.

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[Ken-ichi]

Ah, lordy, missed all the subsequent messages! Apologies. More input
always appreciated, though.

[Cullen Hanks]

I still think it is a good idea to clarify that rule, and it is inappropriate to editorialize in the name.  

Regarding the ranking of names, it makes sense to rank the species option higher when you have a monotypic genus.  However, I don't think classification of human obs should drive the process.  

-Cullen

[Charlie Hohn]

yeah one other item of note, for non-Homo genuses, it is really important to me that when i put in the genus name the genus comes up before different species. otherwise I can't add 'Carex sp.' etc with the app at all.

[Tim. Reichard]

I think #1 is sensible.

What are your thoughts on distinguishing unrelated groups with the same name by appending an annotation to the common name? Two example cases in use:
1a. "Skimmers (Birds)" vs. "Skimmers (Dragonflies)" - different scientific names with same English common name.  These have a parenthetical annotation (Birds and Dragonflies) to reduce misIDs, but create common names with extra text that isn't really a part of a common name. IMHO the annotation helps because in many cases the taxon photo is too small to know which it is or there isn't a taxon photo, and I saw misidentifications made between these taxa when they were both just "Skimmers".
1b. Scoparia Moths vs. licorice weeds, broomworts, and allies, both Genus Scoparia but in different kingdoms.  Scoparia Moths is an abomination as an English scientific name (Scoparia isn't an English word) but I think it goes a long way toward avoiding midIDs in the wrong kingdom.  Plus, if a Scoparia moth is photographed on a flower, the moth observation might be turned into a plant observation if the midID isn't caught by the plant identifier, who might not realize that the moth is the thing thought to be in a Genus Scoparia, not the plant.
These might both be deemed to violate #1.  Neither of these annotated common name solutions is satisfying, but what is the better way?

For #2, I wouldn't complain if it were implemented but am not sure it is so useful.  Most of the annoyances I've seen in English common names come from only very few curators, those who delete sensible common names they just don't like. Monitor the unstable English names for Family Noctuidae, for example, a group without any satisfying English name, leaving only the unsatisfying "Noctuid Moths" or some long list of noctuid groups no one can agree on but keep changing, appended with "and Allies". 

Tim

[Jon Sullivan]

Clarifying the rules seems sensible.

Tim and Charlie make a good point that common names are already being tweaked to better clarify the meaning of scientific names to reduce mis-identifications. A few other examples spring to mind. We are calling Fringilla coelebs ssp. gengleri the "British chaffinch", Fringilla coelebs ssp. coelebs the "Eurasian chaffinch", etc.,  to separate them from Fringilla coelebs, the "common chaffinch", even though people in Britain (and New Zealand where it's naturalised) call the British chaffinch just the chaffinch. If they were all just "chaffinch", we'd get confusion and mis-identifications. Similarly, we're calling Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae ssp. novaeseelandiae the "mainland tui" and Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae ssp. chathamensis the "Chatham Island tui" even though people in both places just call it a tui. Before that, we were getting mis-identifications.

In lieu of a better solution, we wouldn't want these kinds of tweaks to run afoul of a new rule.

On your second option, I'd prefer to continue to allow everyone to add/modify common names. Could we instead block users from this level of curation only if they break the rules, rather than have to outright suspend them? Is such a "soft-suspend" option possible?

Also, as has been said above, it is helpful for genus to always be at/near the top of the options when making an ID, so it can be selected when we're not sure what species we've got. The suggestion of removing the genus from the drop-down list for monotypic genera sounds helpful in concept. However, that sounds like an insanely complicated thing to try and maintain in a world of churning taxonomy. Just because iNat has only one species in a genus doesn't mean that there aren't more out there described but not yet added to iNat. It sounds a lot easier to manually fix up a few "Homo" IDs afterwards.

Cheers,

Jon

[Charlie Hohn]

Couldn't we just create a simple iNat bot that goes through and ids all Homo genus observations as Homo sapiens? I can't say I've ever seen any Homo erectus observed here and can't imagine we ever will (if it's a fossil it should be flagged as such anyway). The bot could be useful for other things sometimes too.

[Stacey Greenstein]

I don't think I suggested removing the genus for monotypics entirely, just tweaking the algorithm that sorts the taxa in the drop down list so that the monotypics (at least Homo) ends up further down the list. Perhaps someone else suggested what you argue against, and I stand with you on not removing it.

I'm glad a few folks have piped up defending the need for some small degree of parentheticals on some taxa names. It's going to break some existing standards to have a wholesale "no parentheticals" rule, making some IDs harder to manage.

Stacey

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a guy named Stacey

[Stacey Greenstein]

Would a bot be easier or harder than tweaking the algorithm that sorts the suggested IDs?

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[James Bailey]

I see more benefit in 2 because letting anyone edit common names opens a lot of issues, such as but not limited to:

-arguments over the "prominent" common name

-misleading, wrong, or false names

-excessively long names (someone renamed Noctuidae to "cutworms, darts, quakers, sallows, underwings & allies" or something recently, and we really don't need names that long)

Having said that, curators may also be responsible for the above, but I feel like curators are more likely to be responsible. If that makes sense.

The one issue though is for regional names. For instance, if someone from France wants to add French names, and they are not a curator and/or there is no curator representing that region. We should not block them from using this functionality. We could say to limit this so curators can only edit English names, but then for regions like NZ, US and EU that still has the same problem.

Something to think about...

[Zanskar]

Hi there ! 

I totally agree with the previous message : I'm not a curator, but I add hundred and hundred common names in french, especially for birds and mammals, because they are well established. Not for invertebrates, we haven't got a lot of common names when you compare with english language. I would be very worry if you choose solution number 2, because there's a huge work to do with the names in french. For english names, it's another problem, i agree, i often see several names for the same species, it's quite a mess sometimes.

Thanks.

[Ken-ichi]

Sorry for letting this lie for so long. It sounds like most people
here agree that we shouldn't put extra stuff in common names, so I
will update the Curator's Guide, FAQ, and the little box on the taxon
name page to reflect this.

> What are your thoughts on distinguishing unrelated groups with the same name by appending an annotation to the common name?

Tony, I think this is a minor problem at best. Take "skimmers" for
example: there are 0 withdrawn identifications of Libellulidae
associated with observations that are now of birds, and there is only
1 withdrawn identification of Rhyncops associated with an observation
that is now of an insect
(http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5671626), so in that case,
this mistake barely ever happens at all. Maybe people are insanely
rigorous about deleting mistaken IDs, but I doubt it. If I'm wrong,
I'd rather solve it like we do elsewhere on the website by showing
some unique ancestor and not by editing the name. That said, I do
agree that disambiguation to avoid inaccurate identifications has
merit, unlike disambiguation to prevent imprecise identification.

Sounds like most here are against restricting common name addition to
site curators, so I won't do that.

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[Stacey Greenstein]

In that case, can we get some modification of the ordering of the
resented taxa so that Homo does not come up near the top of the list
but Homo sapiens does? I was adding the parenthetical because there
was no traction on this.

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[Tim. Reichard]

I agree that disambiguating same-named groups outside of the common names would better.  Showing an ancestor in the species search drop-down list might indeed solve it.

I can think of a handful of taxon pairs that I gave disambiguating English common names to months or even years ago, and I'll fix those to deannotate them. E.g., Melanotus Click Beetles vs. Melanotus gilled mushrooms, Aristotelia wineberries vs. Aristotelia Twirler Moths, etc.

Tim

[Ken-ichi]

Exact matches for genera will remain at the top of autocomplete results for the reasons stated earlier in this thread. To reiterate, people choosing accurate but imprecise taxa like the genus Homo in identifications is not a problem. People choosing inaccurate homonyms like Iris the plant and Iris the mantis is, but the solution there is tbd. Not yet clear what solution will actually be performative.

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[James Bailey]

I think IDs should be catered to the observation type.

For instance, if an observation is identified as a beetle or insect, the "Hippodamia" relating to the beetle genus should appear first, while the other Hippodamia (whatever group it may be, plants, or whatever), should show later or not at all.

OR there could be a confirmation message that detects there are two genera with identical names, and to make sure you picked the right one. If you pick the plant Hippodamia on an insect observation, it could warn you.

[Stacey Greenstein]

I believe my comment on the original thread had something similar,
where if "Homo" was selected, it would display a warning that only
fossils should be ID'd as such, and that all living humans should be
ID'd as "Homo sapiens", or something along those lines in a more
general sense.

I like the proposition to have the current ID of the observation drive
(or be a factor in) the ordering of the selectable IDs, too.

Let me attempt to reframe the issue.

As a science-based social site, we should want to make things easier
for the user to make scientifically correct and precise decisions, and
harder for them to make incorrect and imprecise decisions. In
addition, we should also have some degree of education in mind.

Sorting the taxa selection can help with the correct & precise aspect.
Having a pop-up confirmation/warning message can also aid in this
aspect, as well as provide some education.

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