I’ll probably start using that boilerplate. I couldn’t figure out a nice way of telling people that I’m doing it because they aren’t doing it.
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Oh, can I steal this? 
I didn’t have a standardized text for this type of reply (especially when iNat had Phylum Magnoliophyta, and I got a lot of “it’s not a Magnolia” pushback). Still get that kind of reply occasionally if I post an even-toed ungulates ID.
I’d usually just say something like “[high level taxon ([taxon level])], not species”, because I couldn’t think of a better boilerplate*. Yours is much better.
*The response I posted above, where I quote from and link to the FAQ, is for people who tell me my coarse ID was “useless”, “not helpful”, “obvious”, etc, not people who said “that doesn’t look the same”.
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Steal away! I don’t have a copy and paste for responding to “useless”, it usually involves parts of that and using the word database. My phone’s autocorrect mostly remembers it more than I do, I seem to find it more often when I wake up than when I’m already on the computer.
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I should try that!
Currently, I keep blocks of my canned iNat responses in an unpublished iNat journal entry, so I can access them no matter what device I’m on.
I also have the link to tiwane’s boilerplate on my only public journal entry.
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FWIW, while I was the last person to edit it, @bouteloua, @charlie,@carrieseltzer and others were the main authors. I use this all the time, thank you to those who created it!
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Ah, that explains it. I could have sworn I’d read before that Cassi made it, but when I checked it had your name, because you were the last to edit it.
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Looking into the https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020/journal/33377-city-nature-challenge-frequently-asked-questions I noticed the Unknown pile got a shoutout!
"Can I help identify what people found during the CNC? What if I’m not an expert in anything?
Yes! In the same way that anyone can be an observer, anyone can help identify observations. In iNaturalist, go to your city’s project, click “Observations” and you’ll see an “Identify” button pop up just below it. Clicking this will take you to the iNaturalist Identify page and show you all of your city’s observations that still need to be identified. From this page, you can restrict what it shows you by taxon, which helps if you know how to ID certain groups. If you’re not an expert in any group, you can still help by identifying the “unknowns” - the observations with no IDs at all! Click the “Filters” button and then select the dashed-line leaf with a question mark in it. This will show you all the observations that are currently listed as “unknown.” It’s really helpful to go through these and add high-level IDs like “plants” or “insects” or “birds” or “fungi” - whatever you know about the organism - so people who do know how to ID these groups down to species can find them! Here’s a short video about using the Identify page.
No matter what, please only add an ID of which you can be reasonably sure - it’s fine if you don’t know what something is, and it’s fine to only add a genus or family or even kingdom level ID."
“Join Usssss” - the Unknown Crew ;)
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I have been working on my birthday, starting with last year :) It feels much more achievable and satisfying than just tapping away at the endless ‘unknowns’. After I’ve finished my birthday to the best of my ability, I’m going to start with my kids’ birthdays.
One day at a time, and we’ll nail it team!
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@lisa_bennett, that’s an awesome approach! It seems both achievable and extremely satisfying.
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I had cleared Cape Town. But. Only 162 pages to go, now.
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How frustrating!
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I did a little Cape Town today, hoping I don’t get any complaints that I’m not local.
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from me you will only get thanks!
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Yeah, still working on May! I do some other things too, but If I’m zeroing in on unknowns, then May is my month.
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Amy - honourable mention - thank you for 800 IDs!
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/52132/journal/34751
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Those are some amazing stats, well done!
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I did some of these after the City Nature Challenge (part of a web conference to ID Observations from the project). This weekend I did a lot more and it was very successful. When I checked my Dashboard this morning there were 15 notifications, most about Unknowns I’d promoted, and more have trickled in.
You experience with using “insect” instead of “beetle” and so on is interesting. I haven’t received push back, but I have gotten questions–which is good, if it means users are interested in improving their Observations.
@peakaytea has a nice script for telling users how to separate out multiple organisms in one Observation, and I’ve copied and shared it. There have also been several times I’ve had to ask if the user meant to ID the flower or the insect on the flower.
Yes, it gets boring after a while. I’ll probably take some time off from this particular task for a while. But I hope I’ll circle back to it every now and then. And I don’t feel any obligation to ID every Unknown. Sometimes I’ve IDed something just because I am curious to know what it is and I hope a more expert naturalist will refine it.
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Following reading your post I did the same yesterday, sorting through the unknown bin. I was surprised that just being able to ID to the class or family seems to be helpful. I was quite surprised that sometimes the observers would not try to guess at the kingdom level.
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Many new users don’t understand where to put id and hveother problems, so it seems it’s easy to leave the id blank.
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