IDs based on comments

1. It looks like we are OK with some intermediate categories as long as they are not called “No Taxon”. We need a word such as “Group” or “Other”. Personally, I like “Other”. It could refer to a group of species or genera or a “subtribe” or “Ichneumons grouped by color" or a glossary term, etc.
I will mention that we have had such pages almost from the beginning; the “Phsyoconops/Physocephala” page was created in 2004 and most images of those two genera of flies stayed there until we got a little better at telling them apart and moved many of them to the respective genus. So, it was never a trash can, it was a useful page and still is.
2. Somebody said that mistakes are usually caught fairly quickly, but I disagree. For instance, Tony moved a number of flies recently from Pollenia rudis to Pollenia for good reasons. Some had been there since 2004.
Also, what do you think of all these ladybug larvae? here and here? They have been on those pages since 2006 and 2007 although there is no sign of agreement about their IDs.
There are also a few more ladybugs in this forum; scroll down to the ones with question marks. I wasn’t even looking for mistakes or dubious placements; I was just having fun with the many ladybug larvae.
My feeling is that many mistakes are not caught soon enough and that they have time to mislead lots of people.

The Balaban's explanations have clarified things for me, and I offer my apologies for misconstruing their comments - it seems we're on the same page.

I took a look at the temporary "No Taxon femorata species-group". I like the concept, but to move pages of included species under it does add another level in the heirarchy - seems to run counter to what most folks here want. I simply envisioned it as a holding area for photos assignable to that group but unable to be specifically placed, while the included species retain their own place under genus.

Whatever is decided, however, I gotta side with Tony on the whole "No Taxon" verbage issue - it's nonsensical, and obviously if it can create the kind of confusion it did with Tony and myself I think it will be a source of great confusion to the general audience. I don't understand the technical issues with changing the wording, but it's gonna be hard for me to ever get my head around any use of "No Taxon".

By the way, I don't consider Beatriz's comments without merit - I just went through a bunch more photos, and in some cases explicitly stated "Not an ID..." where I offered a possible species name but don't wish the photo to actually be moved to that species. This might be a good practice for all to follow.

Beatriz suggested two important trends: 1) ambiguous or incomplete language when commenting on submission identifications & 2) moving of specimens to unconfirmed/uncertain taxa (species?).

She then recommended a remedy: move those specimens to more certain taxa (and use clearer language).

Exceedingly cogent, relevant, experienced, valuable points and other remedies were put forward.

However, what started as a consideration of the accuracy and integrity of BugGuide seemed to shift partly to a discussion of the very old saw of the convenience of BugGuide with phrases such as “cluttering the genus page” and “remove clutter from the family page.” (“Clutter”, that’s a funny word.) Do you see the difference?

We absolutely want to make BugGuide inviting and easy to use for experts lending their time and attention and to everyone else. We strive to do that here in the forums. Correct me if I’m wrong, and it has been written here before, but the nature of volunteer entomology and photography, and the limited participation of experts indicates that most specimens will reside somewhere between family and genus, inclusive. I’m more willing to live with that than with misidentifying and misleading. BugGuide can be on the edge of rolling back those limitations but because of the vast yet detailed nature of this venture, ease of use will have its own limitations.

I appreciate the level of this discussion. Ted’s 8:15 comment seems to best represent my point of view along with Beatriz's original post.

“No Taxa” ranks have been and are very useful but their proliferation may be more clutter than what we have now. How much clutter are they expected to relieve? "Similar Species" information can already reside on Info pages, specimen pages, articles....

I have no problem with expert statistical identifications; I do it every time I hear a chickadee here in central Arizona.

I see some images that get IDs that appear to be swayed by statistics. "Most likely the more common", "Common in your region", "More frequently encountered" , etc. If there are 2 or more species that look similar but we give out the "Most common" ID 100% of the time is that a problem?

If the ratio is 10 to 1, on the 11th ID should we call it one of the other species? :-) Where does the statistical ID become OK, 100 to 1, more?

Say I collect 100 flies from a swarm over a marsh and find that 90 are species A and the rest are something else that looks similar to A. If I use that data to assume a swarm of 10,000 will contain 9000 of species A that may be good. If I individuall say "Most likely A" to all 10,000 that seems less good. I'm sure some images in ID Request would contain enough detail to have a few IDed to something other than A, but still most would skew towards A if any image without sufficient detail is simply called "Most likely A".

such as Ted and Tony and Peter, expect that when they identify a species without absolute certainty, that image will be moved to the corresponding species page with their comments attached (and maybe even added to the INFO page). That has always been our interpretation of the wishes of the experts whenever this question arises. While those of us who spend considerable time on BugGuide pick up who the experts are quickly, as Beatriz has mentioned several times, it is not always possible for a casual visitor to know the identity of the person commenting on their image.

Our feeling has always been that yes, mistakes are sometimes made. Usually those are corrected reasonably quickly. But sometimes they sit in err for a long time before someone stumbles onto them. It seems to be the nature of the website and we have pretty much come to live with that. The alternative seems to be gridlock. Waiting for a recognized expert to give a definitive ID would mean almost nothing would be put away.

For example, we recently moved Jo Ann's spider images from ID Request to Spiders because ID Request is getting out of control, as Lynette pointed out. No expert commented, but we figure we're safe saying they are spiders. Today we moved them to Linyphiinae without an expert commenting because the base spider page is getting out of control. We're certain, for our purposes, that they are Linyphiinae, but we're not expert in anything! Today we also suggested to Jo Ann that they are Neriene radiata. There are lots of Linyphiids that we don't know - hundreds! But all the other images that look exactly like these are on that page. It makes sense to us to move these there, even without expert comment, if only to keep them all together. Someday maybe an expert will pass through and teach us that we have three species on that page and tell us how to separate them and we'll fix it. It seems to us that's how BugGuide works. It's not perfect. We may temporarily mislead someone. But it's the best we can do. That's why there is a Disclaimer at the bottom of this page.

We would side with Beatriz and say let's be as careful as we can be. Let's make our comments as clear as we can. Let's be as certain as we can be when we move images to guide pages. And let's correct any mistakes we see.

One last comment - did you think we would never end? We would like to add to this forum discussion the previously discussed topic of species group guide pages. Those inseparable Sympetrum species come to mind. Or all those lookalike mostly blue Enallagma. Would it be ok to make a No Taxon Page that lists all the species of Sympetrum or Enallagma that we can't tell apart from images and move the unidentifiable images there rather than cluttering the genus page with them? Beatriz's Ophion example would be the same. What are the genera that look like Ophion? Let's make a No Taxon page that identifies all those genera and move all the Ophion like images there, leaving on Ophion only those that someone knows are actually Ophion.

Waiting to hear from others of you...

I use such language precisely so that future users can gauge the level of confidence associated with the ID. Just because I'm not absolutely certain of an ID doesn't mean I think it should remain at the genus level - if that's what I think then I will say so. There are many shades of gray above tentative and below absolutely conclusive - where do you draw the line? Dumping photos into a generic trash can just because they lack an absolutely conclusive ID makes them much less useful than if they are moved to species. It is up to the user to note any caveats in the comments.

Of the examples you cite above, I don't consider any of them strong enough to prevent moving to species except, "Not an ID, but..." As I said, if I don't think it should be moved from genus I will say so.

by moving such an image to a lower taxon (e.g., from sp. to genus) is not the best policy when the image can be ID'd to either 2 or a few species. When an image could represent 2 or more (a few) species then no one can prove or disprove that it is not species A; the image is a true likeness to A, also a true likeness to B and C. Perhaps the best policy is to place the image under all 3 (in this case) species names with an explanatory note under each.
Take my dorsal image of Symmerista canicosta HERE . It could serve as an image for 3 species (leucitys, canicosta, albifrons).
One of the biggest gaffes in Covell's moth book is his image and text of Symmerista albifrons.He makes no mention of the other 2 look-alike spp. and so most people finding a similar moth will identify their moth as albifrons and likely have a 33% probability of being correct and a 66% probability of being wrong. So, give it a specific epithet but comment on the other 2 species.

that the corresponding BugGuide image will show enough detail for distinguishing difficult species. Therefore this dilemma in such cases: Cite the accurate name or move up to genus to prevent future misidentifications based on image? Temporary fix or compromise: Keep the species name but then comment on the other close choices that might exist.