I have just began dipping my toe into the dangerous world of doing ids. Let me say, I do enjoy the dopamine rush when someone makes my observations research grade by adding an identification, and assume that many others feel the same. Rightly or wrongly, to me, it is the whole point of the exercise. So, I thought I too might be able to give a few dopamine rush’s to others by helping with identifications. The problem is I’m not anywhere near being an expert on anything, and so far most of my 70 odd ids could have been done by a five year old, and even then I’ve got a couple wrong and this has been kindly pointed out by ‘proper identifiers’. am wondering if by carrying on the way I am, am I in fact making more work for the experts by making wrong ids, and am I doing a disservice by making observations research grade when they COULD be wrong, and no one catches them. I dont just copy blindly the id the observer makes, and do where appropriate look at similar species and check relevant websites if I can. To be honest, I’m not sure if I know what I’m doing, and if I’m helping or hindering. Even though I now live in New Zealand I suppose that which I know best is UK Lepidoptera, so I’ve mostly been looking at that. So, do you think I should stop, or carry on. I do enjoy doing it but that’s not really to point of the exercise is it.
I vote for “carry on”. ;)
By the time you will learn more and the IDs will become easier, and you will have perhaps a look to new to you species groups too.
My recommendation: Start with little steps and do what is making fun to you. Don’t put any pressure in the learning process. Nearly every expert has started with common species and simple IDs. ;)
Please keep going :) I suggest ID to the level you’re certain of, even if it only changes it from "plant’ to "dicot’ it still helps other identifiers find that observation or even exclude it from what they are trying to find
It’s so much easier to find plants I know when they’re not listed as “plant” because I don’t need to scroll through pages and pages of mosses and liverworts and other things
Please don’t stop! We all make mistakes, and although it is discouraging it usually helps you to not make the same mistake in future. (Having said that, there are some species I just don’t ID at all because I got a few wrong when I started out.) But there is always a huge pile of things that need IDs, so any contribution you can make is valuable.
Also, if you are IDing Lepidoptera, adding a life stage annotation at the same time is really useful, if it hasn’t already been added.
Actually, I think it kind of is. Sure, if you happen to enjoy causing trouble for others, it’s not at all! But I assume you enjoy helping, and I think you can do that by making IDs.
I’d say the only way you can really make experts’ work harder is if you leave wrong IDs there after they’re pointed out (in which case more experts are needed to overcome that) - if you just withdraw, and learn in the process, you’re developing into an expert yourself and can become increasingly helpful to other experts.
*Note: I’m not saying you should blindly withdraw - if no explanation is provided and the ID is unconvincing, by all means ask for more details, and maintain the disagreement if you still think they’re wrong.
Basically, it’s all a process, no one starts off good at things, and there are definitely ways you can help by identifying, whether by moving IDs in the right direction or becoming an expert in a particular field and providing fine IDs for observations in it - or anything in between, or a mix. Do what you enjoy, try to learn along the way and be open to admitting and fixing mistakes, and you’ll be helpful to both the community and yourself!
Don’t stop! Every identification is another one made. If you get it wrong, it’s an opportunity to learn something for yourself too, which I see as a positive thing.
We need people making identifications at all levels. There is often a backlog of “easy” IDs of common species because these are less exciting for IDers or because they get tired of adding IDs to hundreds of lawn daisies and firebugs. Just because these do not seem to you to require particular skill does not mean the IDs are worthless (nor does it mean you are not a “proper identifier”).
You probably know more than you think – and for each species that you know and think is easy or obvious or self-evident, there is someone on iNaturalist for whom it is not. I started IDing on iNaturalist because around the time I joined there was a school project that was resulting in lots of daffodils misidentified as primroses and similar mixups, and I realized that I recognized some common species and could help at least in a broad sense with others.
It sounds like you are making thoughtful IDs and are wise enough to recognize your strengths – areas where you have some familiarity – and build on that. Every single one of us makes mistakes, sometimes quite stupid ones, whether we are beginners or trained experts with thousands of thousands of IDs. The crucial thing is to learn from the mistakes so that we can continue more wisely (or at least more carefully) than before.
It could help to focus on a small group first. “UK Lepidoptera” is a good start, but that’s already a huge group with thousands of species. You could focus on one or several families that you know well, with species that can be easily identified and not be confused with similar looking species. And as you’re getting better, you could start expanding to more difficult species/families.
If you’re not sure about the species, it’s always better to leave an ID for the genus or the family than to agree with a given species or suggest a species just for the sake of getting the observation to research grade.
I personally really don’t like it when I have uploaded a bunch of photos of all kinds of organisms and suggested species to the best of my knowledge, and someone comes and agrees with everything, apparently just for the sake of getting my observations to RG. That means actual experts are less likely to see my observations and I may never get the correct ID.
I prefer an ID for family or genus over a false feeling of having correctly identified an organism to species level. For that reason, I hardly ever ‘agree’ when someone identifies my observation to species level. I prefer another expert takes a look at it.
carry on!
the fact that you’re seeing the comments from people correcting your IDs is good!
i’d say most of my IDs don’t bring an observation to research grade - i don’t know the species, but i know the family or genus.
you may get a similar dopamine hit from being a link in a chain, though that is more of a delayed gratification thing. when that [Arthropoda] that you put into [Lepidoptera] gets a species ID, it’s likely you sped the process up because the lep specialist wouldn’t have seen the observation at [Arthropoda]
Just now I requested 2 members of iNaturalist to no longer ID my obs. Who are they?
Why are they doing this?
These people are experts in ID-giving but have none or very few observations themselves. .
I’m very happy with real experts and their comment or help.
But people who want to reach 500000 or even 1 million ID’s. No thank you. I can live without.
All the best to all people with good intentions.
If I were you, I wouldn’t be too suspicious of these identifiers. In fact, I know some people like that who offer the highest quality IDs I’ve ever seen. There could be numerous reasons for their lack of observations. Maybe they got their knowledge from decades of studying actual individuals (fieldwork or museums). Maybe they have uploaded their observations to other platforms and don’t want to upload everything again on iNat. I’d rather look at the quality of the IDs - are they reliable, or just agreeing with you to get to 1 million?
One’s number of observations isn’t necessarily any indication of one’s level of expertise in an area. I have hundreds of observations of springtails but couldn’t ID a single one past Order. On the other hand, there are plenty of plants I could reliably identify to species that I have zero observations of.
I suggest you don’t assume anyone identifying solely to get to a high number of IDs, unless you see them consistently making lots of mistakes blindly agreeing with others. Even then - it’s an awful lot of effort for very little reward if all you’re aiming for is a high number, so incompetence seems more likely than just leaderboard climbing!!
That doesn’t matter too much. If you know something is a step closer to the final ID, you helped. As it was mentioned in the last two ID webinars, the ID process is like a relay. We do our part and pass it along to someone else to take it further.
As for making mistakes, we all do. We can learn from them and apply to the future. No harm, no foul if an ID is withdrawn after learning it was incorrect. I’ve seen someone ID a butterfly in a photo and it was actually a plastic cup. I’m guessing the person was on a small screen and didn’t increase image size to see what it actually was. Oops, withdraw, learn, and keep going.
Edited to add: If interested, the webinars may be found on their YouTube page → https://www.youtube.com/@inaturalist-org
It’s possible those identifiers can no longer get out in the field themselves because of disability or age, so helping others with IDs is a way the IDers can continue to enjoy the natural world.
It’s possible the IDers live where many other people are already making observations and the IDers don’t feel there’s much of a need for yet another dandelion or Mallard observation there.
It’s possible the IDers simply feel the IDs they make for others are a more important contribution to conservation than any observations they could make.
Who knows? As tiwane has said (I think I remember this correctly), you don’t know what other people are thinking unless you ask them and it’s generally best to assume other people have good intentions. I make both observations and IDs, but I make a LOT more IDs than observations, by 6 or 7 times. (In fact, I am coming up on 500,000 IDs and I’m certainly not a real expert in anything.) Also, if you asked me to stop making IDs, I would stop, but it’s entirely likely I’d forget about your request in a month or two and just not notice that you made a certain observation - sorry about that!
I do not doubt the good intentions of anyone. Only God knows them.
I do question myself why some people put so much effort in ID’s all over the world reaching 1.5 million ID’s?
But OK. This is how I feel about it. Everyone is free to do what he/she wants.
i don’t know, but i appreciate them for it.
As all have said - Please continue and know that your efforts are appreciated. Also know that the more you do, the more you learn, and the more things you can ID whether on a hike, finding ‘things’ in your home, or while ID’ing on iNat.
For things you aren’t sure of at this point, just ID to the level you can - it helps a lot!!!. I like going through ‘unknowns’ and there are plenty of times I can only give an ID at a very basic level (e.g. snake, fungi, butterfly). As others have said - each ID is a link in the chain. One night I could not sleep and was going through many pages of unknowns. I ran across one I could only give a "shark’ ID to (I had absolutely no idea what kind of sharks were found in the location). It literally reached RG 18 minutes later. Would the people who ultimately ID’d it have gone through all the pages of unknowns just to find it?? Often the answer is ‘no’. Whether sifting through unknowns, or doing other IDs - do what you enjoy and know that every ID really does make a difference. Please continue.
For a long time, a prolific identifier of true bugs on iNaturalist was a known world expert on them in real life and he apparently wasn’t interested in making iNaturalist observations. He had none. We have lives outside iNaturalist, which may not be obvious on this platform. There is not a simple correlation between number of identifications and skill.
Please keep identifying, @mracbailey ! Every observation you identify is one I don’t have to, and I appreciate that. As for errors, welcome to the club! Not all of my over 10,000 withdrawn ID’s were errors, but let us just say that we all make mistakes. Sounds like you’re withdrawing or changing erroneous ID’s so you’re probably learning from them. That’s the best we humans can do.
I don’t have many observations, only about 11, whilst I have made many more IDs. In my case, I don’t make observations here because I already send all of my records to the appropriate UK national recording scheme, iNat observations feed into at least some of those, Lepidoptera and Plants for example, and I don’t want to duplicate my records which could cause problems for those recording schemes.
I tned to only upload observations here for species groups I know less about and don’t already have contacts within the national recording schemes.