Wikidata:Property proposal/iNaturalist observation ID

iNaturalist observation ID edit

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Natural science

Descriptionobservation identifier in iNaturalist
Data typeExternal identifier
Domainliving things
Allowed values[1-9]\d*
Example 1Eutricha capensis (Q12347546) image (P18) value reference → 14692339
Example 2Procavia capensis (Q323847) image (P18) value reference → 14693435
Example 3Maniola jurtina (Q754668) image (P18) value reference → 14349142
SourceiNaturalist.org
Planned useAs reference for Wikidata statements
Formatter URLhttps://www.inaturalist.org/observations/$1
See alsoiNaturalist taxon ID (P3151)

Motivation edit

iNaturalist is a citizen science project that started in 2008. It is a widely used app that comes with a global community. The workflow is simple, observations (images, sounds, etc) are recorded and the community names and discusses the observation leading to research grade annotations. These annotations are valuable references for Wikidata statements. Andrawaag (talk) 03:33, 27 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion edit

Can you elaborate a bit on this? I have been using iNaturalist URLs in the past, so I don't see why it does not fit within the scope of WD. The problem with URLs, is that they are not persistent, which would vouch for a external ID property, which is why I am proposing it. --Andrawaag (talk) 16:49, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Andrawaag:
  1. An observation is a special kind of occurence. GBIF records more than 1 Mrd. occurences! Around 5 Mio. are contributed by iNaturalist through a quality management process. That's what I meant with „I doubt this is within the scope of WD“
  2. All of your picture examples could be used everywhere. Why should we favor the usage by iNaturalist? What about Commons?
--Succu (talk) 20:15, 1 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Succu The purpose of this proposal is to store those pictures on Commons. iNaturalist is here not seen as a repository of images/observations, but as a community of curators. We have created a Wikiproject: Wikidata:WikiProject_iNaturalist to leverage the knowledge in iNaturalist to annotate images on commons. So the use case here is that a picture is uploaded to both commons and iNaturalist. When the observation is annotated on iNaturalist, this annotation is added to its identical picture on commons through Wikidata with the image property. It is here that a iNaturalist observation ID property is needed as a reference. So it is not the observation perse that is of interest, but the metadata of that observation. In the long run, it would be nice, to directly feed iNaturalist from commons. --Andrawaag (talk) 07:53, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
So the use case here is that a picture is uploaded to both commons and iNaturalist. Sorry this is a workflow, not a use case. I think WD should not be misused as a proxy for cleanups like this. --Succu (talk) 20:38, 17 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I agree with you, the images on taxons lack credibility, of the 190k+ images to a taxon only about 1000 contain a reference. Adding pictures annotated by the iNaturalist community add credibility to those pictures, if a picture has a research grade ID on iNaturalist, that image will be of a higher quality than just any image. I don't think this is a cleanup, no it is unreasonable to expect the iNaturalist community to annotate the 190k+ images, but with this proposed property we can start feeding the taxon items in Wikidata with higher quality images (better annotations) than currently is the case. Now we just need to trust the submitter/photographer and as WD is not intended a primary source, we should not. --Andrawaag (talk) 06:07, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  Notified participants of WikiProject iNaturalist

@Jklamo, DarTar, Thierry Caro, YULdigitalpreservation, Andrawaag, Pigsonthewing: @Succu:   Done: iNaturalist observation ID (P5683). − Pintoch (talk) 10:02, 19 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]