Captive/cultivated vs wild/naturalized, or how about captive/planted

[Tony Wills]

For captive/cultivated information we use the opposite boolean logic in the "new observation" and "search pages" than we use in the right hand "Data Quality Assessment" sidebar.
See discussion on http://naturewatch.org.nz/observations/1093844.
I think it would be useful to have the same piece of information described the same way everywhere.
I also think that the term "cultivated" can confuse some people as they take the question to mean "is it a bred/domesticated species/cultivar".  And "naturalized" is usually applied to a species rather than individual specimens, so sometimes I think the question is answered as though we are asking about the species not the individual organism. I often see observations like: http://inaturalist.org/observations/1722865, http://inaturalist.org/observations/1722892 where some confusion has taken place.

Why not just use the phrase "Is the specimen captive/planted?", everywhere, which removes a few ambiguities ?

[Ken-ichi]

The reason we use "captive/cultivated" on the observation form is
because it should be an exceptional case. If we used
"wild/naturalized" we would default it to being checked, and I think
people are less likely to uncheck something than to check something.

The reason we use "wild/naturalized" in the data quality assessment is
because all those votable metrics are designed so that "no" votes
decrease our assessment of the observation's quality in some
dimension. If we used "captive/cultivated" there it would be only
aspect of the data quality assessment where "no" meant it was of
higher quality.

I don't really see how "captive/planted" is any better than
"captive/cultivated." To me, "cultivated" has the same meaning and
could apply to any relatively sessile organism (fungi, bacteria),
while "planted" applies only to plants.

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[krancmm]

Why not just use the phrase "Is the specimen captive/planted?", everywhere, which removes a few ambiguities ?

For fauna, captive seems straightforward.  Flora has some gray areas.  If a plant appears in my garden without my intervention I consider it "wild", not planted/not cultivated.  However, what would be the appropriate designation for such projects as large-scale wetland or prairie restorations where specimens are raised and planted by humans in "wild natural" areas where that species has been drastically decreased or extirpated?  The specimens/species are purposely planted...but doesn't seem to fit my meaning of planted/cultivated.

I wonder if the cultivated/planted designation might be used for smaller-scale civic pocket-gardens or personal gardens...where the entire site has been designed and planted by humans.  There would eventually be both planted and naturally occurring flora.

Just a few thoughts...
Monica

[Charlie Hohn]

My biggest question about this is whether data quality assessment is the best way to classify it. I think animals and plants are quite different though hard to track differently. Captive animals like domestic dogs are pretty useless in inat except maybe trying to classify tracks. But with planted things there are many reasons to add landscape plants - phenology, pollinator use, and potential invasives in landscaping come to mind. While we want to distinguish them from native or naturalized especially on the maps, I don't think an observation of a planted apple tree covered in bees, a lily blooming at a strange time due to a warm spring, or a planting of tamarisk near a riparian area are poor quality observations. 

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[Charlie Hohn]

Absolutely there are also grey areas with plants. Most weeds in cities would not be there without some human disturbance. For instance weeds in an irrigated lawn in a desert. But I do think they are worth tracking in inat.