Welcome owllover! Great question. I’m glad you asked, because now that @cmcheatle has provided the answer, I’m going to check all of mine! :-)
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The type of tool I’m mentioning is specific to a particular user, installed either on your computer or within your browser. I don’t think it would make sense for iNat to give users boilerplate text to automatically add (if that’s what you were thinking).
However, I do think there’s a lot of scope for an “iNat bot” to comb through observations and add comments or send notifications based on certain conditions. “Try adding a high-level ID…” “It looks like your photo didn’t upload…” “Your image is the same as in this other observation. Here’s what you may want to do…”
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No, I knew you were talking about a locally installed program.
I meant it would be nice if there were the ability to go to you account settings and map your own keyboard shortcuts that would serve as text macros, but that’s a big ask.
I have noticed that the app now gives a heads up when you try to add multiple photos that they need to be of the same organism. It doesn’t yet have those other options (location, missing species guess, etc) though, which would be nice.
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Thanks for the tip on that tool btw, I am now doing a trial of it.
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How long can you spend on unknowns without going loopy? I’ve spend several mind-numbing hours this weekend on a work-avoidance trek through Malaysian unknowns, and have managed to get them down to under 780 pages. Uh. It’s like “Groundhog Day” - type in any random page number and it’s always April 28th or 29th, even though the year may change! I’ve gone into auto-mode typing “plant” and finally threw in the towel when I looked at the profile page of the user whose unidentified observations I was struggling through, to find a message saying they were no longer active - essentially “So long and thanks for all the fish” - and a search result of their observations showing 14 more pages of unidentifieds, almost entirely cultivated, duplicates, or cultivated-duplicates. Then I continually feel guilty, and/or passively-misused, for identifying something which I highly suspect but can’t say for certain is cultivated, and leaving it still in the “needs ID” pool. Aaaaaaargggghhhh! I’m quitting nature for the night and watching a mindless action movie instead.
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Yeah unfortunately some of the bioblitzes/challenges can generate some less than desirable observations by people who are more interested in the “racking up numbers” part than the “learning about nature” part. Event organizers can only do so much training and guidance for their potential participants, and even when the vast majority of people are participating in good faith, just a handful of people can make it really frustrating to manage from the identification and data quality perspective.
I remember one participant who seemed to have added separate observations of every ant they saw. It can definitely be demoralizing and I 100% understand how you feel. I also don’t last very long without going loopy. It’s best in small doses for me. :) There’s little harm for observations to be sitting unknown or Needs ID–especially so if the user is no longer active. I like to volunteer my time helping in this way, but I definitely shift focus to something else more fun if it starts to grate.
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Is there a way to filter for “no longer active”? The Identify mode doesn’t seem to provide that information.
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No, there isn’t.
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In that scenario, I’d recommend taking a break from unknowns for a while. :)
There was a time earlier this year when the Unknowns was down to below 7,700 but then it suddenly jumped to 12,000. It had been so encouraging to jump in each day and see that total number steadily decreasing by a few hundred (8k, 7.95k, 7.9k, 7.85k, etc…obviously from the work of others too; I’m not that proficient) and them BAM! Overnight it was higher than it had been in weeks!
So…I took a break from IDing (a few weeks, I think?), and then only jumped back in when I was in a headspace where could look at the total and think, “meh, it is what it is, and ultimately doesn’t affect me. I can do coarse IDs regardless of the total unknowns.”
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I do the Unknowns daily for Cape Town. The ones I can work with, I open in a new tab. For the rest … mark all as reviewed.
Next page of 30 please?
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It is always satisfying when you get to “your pile” in the morning, whatever you’ve been working through, and see that it’s smaller than when you left it.
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You can filter for people who only joined within the last week. Go to ‘More Filters’ at the bottom of the Filters box, and you can see that option.
At least that way you know that 1- there is a good chance they are still interested, and 2- they are newbies who will probably appreciate the advice/help.
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This is why I think it is a fair thing to ask for a bulk-edit, as long as it is limited to only ‘Unknown’ records, and you are only putting a broad ID on it (nothing lower than Order, for example).
I’ve been harping on about this lately, but I honestly think it would be relatively easy to implement, it would get people a proper ID so much quicker, and it would take a huge load off those few who are diligently trying to help. You can vote for it on this Feature Request thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/bulk-identification-tool/5029/30
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Harris and Harris’s book Plant Identification Terminology isn’t just for students! It’s wonderful All the terms illustrated. I tell students and others that every botanist needs a copy on his/her shelf. I’ve got two on mine. (I loose things.)
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Thanks! Hispaniola is my specialty.
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Is there a way to set a user’s observations to ignore? I’m trying to categorize African ‘Unknown’ observations and they are dominated by a single power user (with 100K+ observations) who is bizarrely upset and insulting about my IDing his thousands of unknown observations as things like Flowering Plants.
“[your IDs are] self fulfulfilling and meaningless”
“[you posted] a slew of meaningless IDs”
“[You’re making my observations get] lost within the rubbish that cannot be identified to family level”
‘I post lots of observations without any IDs and within minutes most are identified. Then after a few months someone makes a meaningless ID like plants, and I add a family or generic ID as close as I can get, because I know that once in the trashcan of “plants” it is lost.’
So this power user dominates Africa’s unknown observations and I like to be able to filter him out so I can help people who actually want it.
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If it is who I think, this was discussed upthread. I’ll find the link [addendum: never mind, bouteloua posted the method]
Basically, yes, you can exclude a user from your searches.
If it helps any, it isn’t personal; that user is rather brusque with everyone. Also, you can sometimes ignore unknowns from users with older accounts and thousands of observations (at least for a few hours or days), as these users often have a process that means those observations won’t remain as unknowns: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-do-some-serious-power-users-add-so-many-unknown-observations/282
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Sorry that’s happening to you, those are certainly not very good faith or kind comments you’re receiving.
One thing you can do is increase the “per_page” and mark all as reviewed: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=unknown&user_id=tonyrebelo&per_page=200 You’ll have to wait a few moments (until the blue spinner stops spinning) until they’re actually marked as reviewed, then refresh the page and repeat.
And thanks @star3 for the reminder - you can also use the ¬_user_id= feature, which requires a number rather than the username, so this URL for African Unknowns sans that user: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=unknown¬_user_id=383144&place_id=97392
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thank you, that’s exactly what I wanted, I did not know you could increase the per_page count.
Edit- even better with the not_user_Id filter!
Thanks
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My general method is to filter them by observations that were added 3 months ago going back to 2000 so I’m only looking at things that have gone a while without the locals IDing them. All the IDs I gave him were from March or earlier.
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