common vs scientific names

[Juraj Paule]

Dear iNaturalists,

although common names are important for the community, I would prefer the scientific names in the first place (or even scientific names only). I think this view might be shared by several users dealing with species identification professionally.

Would it be possible to include it as an option in "Edit Your Account & Profile"? Or is there already a way to do it by choosing some specific "Place" setting?

Cheers,
Juraj

[Scott Loarie]

This has been discussed in the past. But I can't remember what the
general consensus was. Would anyone else find this useful? Would be
kind of a pain to build.

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[Charlie Hohn]

i suppose you could set your language preference to Latin. Though then the whole site might be in Latin? :)

[James Bailey]

Scott, how easy would it be to just switch the names based on a profile setting? (For instance, if users prefer scientific names, the scientific name is shown in the place that the common name is shown, and vice-versa).

For instance right now the observation page shows

Honey Bee Apis mellifera 

with the setting it would display

Apis mellifera Honey Bee

I'm against completely removing common names from the page because we live in a world where many people use them. Similar to how in California, Spanish is taught in many schools so you are at least aware of it and can communicate with people who prefer this way. I don't expect anyone to learn common names, but having them nearby is a useful reference tool.

[Charlie Hohn]

i switch between scientific and common names kind of randomly, as a bilingual person might with two languages, so i don't care which is first. 

[bouteloua]

There have been several requests for this and I would personally very much prefer an option like James has depicted.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/inaturalist/hGUoIxllQ4M/lqxLHSHZEwAJ

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/inaturalist/M0hZcoChaBg/0IdoY3NqMoEJ

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/inaturalist/7CZgNP6t7YU/Mz7juXcFAwAJ

[Scott Loarie]

not looking into this too deeply, my sense is having a locale option
like 'latin' which means no common names show up probably wouldn't be
too hard

switching the common and scientific names like james mentioned
throughout the site would be a huge job

[wouter teunissen]

Maybe a stupid question but how do you change language of the website?



Op dinsdag 11 juli 2017 21:45:26 UTC+2 schreef Charlie Hohn:

[cassi saari]

Should probably start a new thread for new questions ; ) but here's how you change the language:

--Go to your profile page (top right, dropdown, Profile) or http://www.inaturalist.org/people/wouterteunissen/

--Click the big blue "Edit Account Settings & Profile" button

--Under "Locale: locale sets your language and date formatting preferences".choose your language preference. 

--Scroll to bottom and click "Save"

Don't see the language you want? Read more here https://groups.google.com/d/msg/inaturalist/4qN3Nk2ae-U/EMAH3h0ls0AJ

cassi

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[wouter teunissen]

thanks
(no interesting other languages for me... Checked the translation link, but that was too much a hassle... )

Op woensdag 12 juli 2017 14:25:59 UTC+2 schreef bouteloua:

cassi

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[Janel Johnson]

I really don't care about the names on the other pages but I would really like the option to default to scientific names in the lookup fields on the Identify and Add Observations pages.

[ellen hildebrandt]

I'm in  with scientific names too. Because the common names change and change again. 

[James Bailey]

Scientific names change again and again too...the only benefit of scientific names is that they are kept more consistent, and there are no duplicate names. Otherwise, common and scientific names serve the same purpose really.

[Juraj Paule]

Biggest advantage of the scientific names is that they are standardized and interantional. Yes, scientific names change - but there are rules (nomenclature codes) for the changes and the changes can be tracked.
I think national/local common names can not really serve the same purpose.

[Charlie Hohn]

the rules are pretty loose, there isn't one standard used by everyone, and short-sighed individuals adding textual garbage to taxonomy such as 'Chamaepericlymenum ' . Scientific names are crucial but they need work.

[Juraj Paule]

Irrespective of the personal opinion about scientific names - it would be really nice to have scientific names as a "priority" option on the webpage as well as in the app.
I would be really happy if you could add the "latin" locale option.

[Marco Schmidt]

I would also prefer a scientific names option - I am most familiar with them and they are +/- globally used - for the english common names I have the impression that they are in many cases just from a particular part of the english-speaking world...

[GanCW]

The problem with the current design is the inconsistency when there is no common name,  and there are many Taxas where species do not have a common name. As a result, you have a jumbled display like this 

which is very distracting. I much prefer to have scientific name displayed first followed by Common Name if there is one.

[Jason Crockwell]

I agree with this and for the same reason. Is there at least a way to have the scientific name first in the taxonomic tree?

Sent from my iPhone

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[paloma]

I agree with what James said here. I wasn't minding the common names that much, but now that they're changing a lot I find I'm wasting time trying to figure out how a Spear Thistle is different from a Bull Thistle (same species) and how a Ribwort Plantain is different from an English Plantain (same species), because the common names are too prominent and there is no warning that the common name is going to be or has changed.

[Charlie Hohn]

the name changes were because one or two new curators went through and changed a ton of names to what they deemed the 'real' common names (of course there is no such thing). It happens in botanical manuals too, a couple years back a prominent botanist (who is otherwise great) decided to make all the common names of New England plants match Linnean taxonomy (totally missing the point )  and the bad names made their way int a bunch of flora manuals and stuff.

Common names are neat cultural tags different groups attach to species. I think they're neat. But i think we may need a more clarified curator policy that minimizes people editorializing them, especially if they don't use the locational filters. Those people have stopped but there's only a matter of time before someone else comes and does the same thing.

Maybe I'm in the minority here but i don't care if the common name or scientific name displays first. I just want to see both.

[paloma]

Thanks for your response, Charlie. It seemed like this was still happening recently (I just started noticing it).

[Colin Purrington]

I have huge preference for Latin names. Aside from personal ease with inputing observations, using scientific names helps set tone that common names are misleading. The latter is especially important when nonscientists are using platform. That's my 2 cents.

[paloma]

Just to add an additional reason why I like James' idea of making the scientific name prominent, but keeping the common name as well:

When I first started learning plants, I bought all the local guidebooks, and of course they had different common names in them. I think it would have been extremely helpful to have a platform like iNaturalist where one could still input the common name, but then be able to all see the scientific name and begin learning it by osmosis, as well as be able to see what some different common names are. For example, I first learned one of my local plants as Fairy Lantern, and I think it would have been wonderful to have been able to post a photo under the name Fairy Lantern but then see the label on it change to Calochortus albus (Fairy Lantern, White Globe Lily). I can actually live with however this ends up, but James' idea seems to me to have the beauty of making the scientific name prominent to those who prefer them, while actually helping beginners gently learn about scientific names and the alternate common names they might encounter.

[stanw...@gmail.com]

I very much like the idea of scientific names showing first and then the "common" common names.  For example a tree around here that is most interesting that we call in Bexar County, Texas the Toothache Tree would show up as Zanthoxylum hirsutum (Toothache Tree, Tickle-Tongue, Lime Prickly Ash, Hercules Club).  That is prominence would be given to the scientific species name but the most frequent common names would also be listed.  

A side issue that brings up is what would be the source of common names.  Plant List is our source of scientific Plant names and it seems iNaturalist has different reference sources for birds, fungi, etc.  but how to put some boundaries on common names could be a problem.  Or maybe not, maybe it is a good idea to have a whole bunch of common names applied to the species in different geographical areas.

Even a simple, on the surface issue, gets complex.

[GanCW]

I agree we need a more clarified curator policy on Common Names and when to use 'Places' attached to common name to achieve the effect without disrupting established common names and causing confusion.

[Kate Kho]

Hi! 

My 2 cents in favor of scientific names in the beginning:

the usual algorithm for searching by the human eye in a list ordered alphabetically: the view goes vertically downward and is slightly shifted to the right when the desired occurrence is found. Reproduce the trajectory of your gaze on the picture given by GanCW and you will understand that this is an unnatural and irritating movement.

This question also excited me from the beginning of the work with the iNaturalist site, and it's good that he was asked and discussed, i thought that the authors of the iNaturalist team have some special reasons to create this kind of list, but every time you look in it, a feeling of unnaturalness arises. The unnecessarily wasted seconds of such an uncomfortable search, especially if the list is long, add up in minutes and fatigue.

Katya

On Tuesday, July 11, 2017 at 10:14:13 PM UTC+3, Juraj Paule wrote:

Dear iNaturalists,

although common names are important for the community, I would prefer the scientific names in the first place (or even scientific names only). I think this view might be shared by several users dealing with species identification professionally.

Would it be possible to include it as an option in "Edit Your Account & Profile"? Or is there already a way to do it by choosing some specific "Place" setting?

Cheers,
Juraj

[Zanskar]

Hi there :)

I, too, would like to see the scientific name first, and then the common name, it's much more useful for me. 

Thanks :)

[Pam Piombino]

 I agree that the generic names should be front and center.  I would hope that more citizen scientists and amateur naturalists would come to understand how the Latin names are often descriptive or can refer to some historical or current researcher and also to begin to understand the relationships between the different Genera and species.  Pam Piombino 

[ja_c...@hotmail.com]

I'll add my support for the use and placement of common names to be user-configurable, at least. As a mycologist our common names for species are rarely standardised even nationally. Guide book author invent their own names. For higher taxa they are usually misleading because gross morphological similarity does not correlate (completely) with phylogeny. For example 'Gilled mushrooms (order Agaricales)' contains fungi without gills, 'Shelf Fungi (order Polyporales)' contains fungi with no resemblance to a shelf, 'Antler and Spindle Fungi (Family Clavaraceaea)'  contains only some of the fungi shaped this way and includes mushroom-like fungi (Hodophilus), and and so on. The use of common names for fungi, for all but a few common taxa at species level, is misleading and an educational disservice.

Jerry

[Alison Sheehey]

I agree on scientific names first but taxonomic use of common names is necessary to keep at least one consistent during this DNA upheaval where taxa can jump families and genera rapidly.
I am confounded by a curator changing names especially in birds. Weird going in and seeing I had a new life bird but not really - someone went outside of the AOU definition and changed Larus canus to Common Gull from Mew Gull. That is unacceptable. AOU and Clement's agree that Mew Gull is the name. Somehow iNat needs to lock widely agreed upon nomenclature from being arbitrarily changed by random curators.

Anyway, that is my opinion. I love iNat most of the time until random arguments crop up on my posts.

Ali Sheehey

[Chris Cheatle]

Ali,

Perhaps try going to your account settings, and under place set it to United States (I'm guessing you are in the US), that should force the common names to use any region or nation specific labels that have been set up. For example for Larus canus - Mew Gull is set up as the name to use in Canada and the US :
http://inaturalist.ca/taxa/4356/names

In far more of the range of L. canus, it is known as Common Gull, it not inappropriate that it be set as the overall default species name across what is a global site. I'm not the one who changed it, but there is a way to get to the view as you want it.

[bouteloua]

I never set a locality because it changes areas of the website that I don't want changed. I would prefer a separate setting that sets the locality for only common names.

[Ben Phalan]

+1 for this

[tony rebelo]

As a newbie from South Africa most of vernacular names are American and totally unfamiliar to me.  Even at the family level the "Common" names are neither common nor recognizable.  Even common species like  Elephant, which I suppose I should now call Savanna Elephant looks weird as African Bush Elephant: it jarrs as foreign.  No one uses "bush" in southern Africa, except for a few Warblers and Shrikes.

At least the Scientific Names are familiar.  I would strongly support them being first.  And I agree it looks neater in cases where there are lists or headings with and without common names to have the scientific name first.

(Our problem in southern Africa is that we are a rainbow nation of tolerance.  So political sensitivities mean that we tend not to promote one common name above another.  Yes there are official common names, but we tend to rejoice in the local differences and the fact that different communities use different common names.  Our approach until now on our larger citizen science portals has been to document names rather than prescribe them.  But there is no scope on iNat to record the common names that one uses as a general user. iNat tells one what to call it rather than asks one what one does call it (although the answer 95% of the time is the common name that the latest field guide uses.))   

Ta

Tony

[bouteloua]

Hi! A "scientific names only" option was introduced recently.

Head to your account settings > Taxonomy Settings > uncheck box that says "Show Common Names" > scroll to bottom and hit Save.

https://www.inaturalist.org/users/edit

(sorry for multiple postings to folks following several of these threads)

cassi

[stan & wendy drezek]

cassi--

Thank you for pointing out that option.

I know this is picky, but the option I would like is Scientific Name first but also show common name below.  I did not see that as a choice.

Thanks again.

stan

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[Calebcam]

That is awesome. I make occasional ID mistakes because I look at the common name but forget to look at the scientific name, so that feature should come in handy.

Caleb

On Wednesday, November 29, 2017 at 4:50:42 PM UTC-7, stan & wendy drezek wrote:

cassi--

Thank you for pointing out that option.

I know this is picky, but the option I would like is Scientific Name first but also show common name below.  I did not see that as a choice.

Thanks again.

stan

On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 3:42 PM, bouteloua <cassi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi! A "scientific names only" option was introduced recently.

Head to your account settings > Taxonomy Settings > uncheck box that says "Show Common Names" > scroll to bottom and hit Save.

https://www.inaturalist.org/users/edit

(sorry for multiple postings to folks following several of these threads)

cassi

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[Janel Johnson]

Yay! This will be so nice when adding IDs.

[tony rebelo]

Can I second that.  Instead of only scientific names, to rather have the option of scientific name first, then common name ...

On Thursday, 30 November 2017 01:50:42 UTC+2, stan & wendy drezek wrote:

cassi--

Thank you for pointing out that option.

I know this is picky, but the option I would like is Scientific Name first but also show common name below.  I did not see that as a choice.

Thanks again.

stan

On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 3:42 PM, bouteloua <cassi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi! A "scientific names only" option was introduced recently.

Head to your account settings > Taxonomy Settings > uncheck box that says "Show Common Names" > scroll to bottom and hit Save.

https://www.inaturalist.org/users/edit

(sorry for multiple postings to folks following several of these threads)

cassi

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