[Taxacom] A question for GBIF regarding data harvests from iNaturalist

Fri Dec 24 15:35:23 CST 2021

 It is worth noting what is currently happening on iNat. I am still indefinitely suspended, for relatively minor (hardly the "heinous abuse of power" alleged by Charlie Hohn!) downstream reasons arising from my trying to stop a counterproductive ID assault on Balta bicolor by Danilo Hegg. Hegg (and Charlie) still have impunity. Given that I have been given little reason to think that my suspension will ever be lifted, I am using sock accounts, just to make and correct identifications, so as to try to prevent a backlog building up, particularly of misidentifications. I am not using my sock accounts for any other purpose. I am not making any comments directed to anyone on iNat, using sock accounts. Nevertheless, iNat (or at least some users with curator powers) are putting a great deal of effort into hunting down and suspending my sock accounts. However, it is trivially easy for me to come back under another alias, so that is what I am now, regrettably, reduced to doing. So iNat is actively trying to stop me from making identifications or correcting misidentifications. This seems to be their number one priority now! They want to stop a positive contribution to the site, in order to continue a suspension on the contributor which was unfairly applied in the first place! All I want for Xmas is some justice!Stephen
    On Saturday, 25 December 2021, 08:53:56 am NZDT, Stephen Thorpe via Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:  

  Which unfortunately suggests that data can be removed from GBIF by the actions of single users on iNat, in cases comparable to Balta bicolor
    On Saturday, 25 December 2021, 06:18:03 am NZDT, Alec McClay via Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> wrote:  

 According to this discussion on the iNaturalist forum 
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/observations-of-cultivated-plants-on-gbif/5296/4 
(from someone who works for GBIF) "For the record, the good iNat folks 
control what goes in the dataset that we ingest. If they 
add/update/delete a record, we do the same when ingesting".

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Alec.

On 2021-12-23 1:00 p.m., taxacom-request at mailman.nhm.ku.edu wrote:
> Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2021 20:35:02 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Stephen Thorpe<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
> To:"jmiller at gbif.org"  <jmiller at gbif.org>,  Taxacom
>     <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> Subject: [Taxacom] A question for GBIF regarding data harvests from
>     iNaturalist
> Message-ID:<1223057220.1448512.1640205302753 at mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Hi Joe,
> As you know, GBIF periodically harvests Research Grade observations from iNaturalist. What isn't quite clear, but which I think would be well worth clarifying, if you could, please, is what happens to observations which drop back out of Research Grade? Do they drop out of GBIF at the next harvest? This is important for the reason that there are two types of cases, and the consequences are very different for observations of each type: (1) observations of well-known species; and (2) observations reliant on expert IDs.
> For type (1) observations, it can be reasonably assumed that dropping back out of RG will rarely happen, and if it does happen for inadequate reasons, then the community ID will be restored fairly quickly, since it involves a well-known species that many iNat users are familiar with.
> For type (2) observations, however, IDs may be based on just a couple of experts. An RG observation of this kind can be dropped out of RG by any iNat user, who chooses to disagree for whatever reason, be it scientific or personal or whatever. The lack of further experts means that RG is likely not to be able to be restored very easily!
> So, my question is, for type (2) observations that were RG long enough to have been harvested by GBIF, if they subsequently drop out of RG on iNat, do they drop out of GBIF at the next data harvest? If so, then data already in GBIF, harvested from iNat, is vulnerable to the whims of single users on iNat, which, to my mind at least, is a concern!
> Cheers, Stephen

-- 
Alec McClay
12 Roseglen Private
Ottawa, ON K1H 1B6
Canada
613-739-8499 (home)
343-988-4077 (mobile)

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