There are lots of options between going straight to a species ID and IDing as something really broad like “insects” or “life”. Why start with a species that you haven’t evaluated? If you are going to do some research later anyway, why not start with a more general ID in the field and then refine it once you are home?
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Someone is wrong on the internet - works.
But it goes against iNat guidelines.
What if you forget to go back and check that one. And someone, agrees with your Let Us Try This One ID. You need a queue of FIVE competent insect identifiers to push it back to right.
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This is also now possible with the new iNat Next app. You can combine photos into the same observation and then select which photo the ID should be based on, so I also now cycle through all of them.
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Better to leave it at genus or family if you have NO clue how to ID a taxon.
Overriding a misidentification suggested by CV can be a problem.
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does not get me any results. i started like this, calling crawlies beetles or hymenoptera because if you do not know them at all, guessing genus is as much guesswork as anything else. but these were left with no id for ages, forcing me to id them as best as i could. perhaps i am wrong, perhaps not, but from time to time someone comes to these and ids them. mostly agreeing, so there is that.
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I have no idea how it works on iOS, but the main android app also currently does this. You can just swipe through the photos and it will give you separate computer suggestions for each one. It’s even easier than using the website, assuming that your photos are already on your device. (Mine usually are not.)
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Ha! I didn’t even realize that CV-selected observations were identified vs hand-typed! Where can one see this? I’ve not noticed any indication of that on iNat.ca.
Happily, the CV is very, very good at some fly species which I routinely identify. I’m content to let it list and then click, rather than type enough letters for the AI to recognize what I want. (I usually move the ‘identify’ obs to new tabs, so that I can hunt for other obs by that person in several taxa, as well as enlarge the shots more if needed.) As I’m usually adding identifying comments and life stage/sex annotations, it should be reasonably obvious that I have actually have looked for identifying characters. I hope.
I do often venture more optimistically on my own stuff than I will for others, when genus or subfamily may be all I’d swear to. I don’t have a mobile phone, so I’m always using an DSLR camera, and a computer with decent screen size. I’ve often spent hours reading the literature to figure out the best ID, but it’s so easy with insects to go down the wrong way in a key, or not have access to the latest revision if it’s behind a paywall. Given that, I’ll state if it’s a somewhat tentative ID (and why), in either case, and often ask for a second or third pair of eyes to up the chances of an error being caught promptly. I’m perfectly happy, in fact I’m grateful, to be corrected if I’ve gone wrong. It usually means I’ll learn something, and that’s always a plus in my day!
That said, I, and many reviewers who identify thousands in their preferred taxa, can often ID something from barely visible cues that don’t seem significant unless you know just what you’re looking at or for. As long as you can explain it when asked, that kind of experience is a bonus to the community.
It always comes back to ‘in good faith’, and the percentage uncertainty with which you’re comfortable. Some IDs are gimmes, e.g. cardinals, monarchs, Canada geese (unless it’s a truly horrible shot), but so many are not. And I’d never heard of, or suspected, identification vandalism. Why is someone even on iNat, if they’ll do that?
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I don’t know about iNat.ca, but on the main site, there is a diffetence in the icons. Here is an observation that I identified by choosing the CV suggestion:
And here is one that I identified by typing in the name:
You will notice that both have the “improving” trophy icon, and both have the number of days since I added the ID. However, the first one also has another icon between these. The tag with sparkles around it indicates that I used the CV.
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the sparkly tag symbol is universal
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