Amount of "Unknown" records is decreasing

If draft mode were implemented, I wonder if instead of locking out new submissions it could hold them all in draft mode for 24 hours (or less). Of course, that just results in a flood when the event is over, and again, could discourage users hoping for a rapid ID (plus, how do you distinguish between draft mode for the event and someone who was actively making a choice to use draft mode?), so it isn’t really an improvement.

Again, just spitballing on how it could be done, not whether or not it should be done.

Try using the Identify rather than the Explore page. Depends on which you like, of course, but I find the work goes faster on Identify.

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Thanks.

If you want to see why I use Explore, you can read this relatively short thread for my experiences with both Explore and Identify. Explore gives me better suggestions and is faster for me.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/add-a-suggestion-id-field-in-the-explore-grid-view/16361/3

But what’s the point of using that suggestions page? For me it was always something people rarely use and for cases that need more info than iNat provides anyway, and more of a feature for observers, not iders, you should id what you know, not what suggestions show.

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Right, if you’re doing unknowns, don’t worry if all you know is it’s in “Plantae,” because that’s still moving it farther toward the person who will recognize what kind of plant it is.

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Yeah, the one that threw me off my game last year was Staghorn Sumac, Rhus typhina. I grew up with it, made little hiding places in amongst the stems, places where I could read my book and eat my sandwich away from the siblings. I should be able to ID it, right? So I merrily proceeded, until I discovered that there’s also something called Smooth Sumac, which looks very similar except it’s not hairy. It was a great learning experience but it also had me rethinking all my IDs. Now with these Unknowns, I can ID down as far as I feel comfortable while also being able to use something basic like “Plant” when I’m not comfortable with anything more specific.

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Ian, I’ve been trying for two days to think of a way where I can help you to try to return the abundant help that you’ve given me over the summer. I’m just so new to moths that I think I’d be more of a hindrance than a help. If you have any ideas let me know. I’d be happy to help

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Thanks, but you have way more observations and species than me. Just keep up what you are doing! It’s my choice to focus on identification, so I’ll just slog on. I’m sure the numbers will go down over the winter.

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You’re doing good work. :grin:

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When I first started doing IDs I had quite a few similar experiences with taxa I thought I knew. You just don’t know what you don’t know! But I’ve found this one of the best things about iNaturalist - you get corrected eventually, and your knowledge grows, and you notice differences you didn’t before. You just have to keep an eye on your dashboard and follow things up.

I rarely hit the ‘agree’ button now, but I’m happy to go through ‘unknowns’ or broader groups and ID things to genus if I’m reasonably sure. It’s nice when you see someone come along and put a species label on it :)

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FYI, everybody, if you want to watch some page numbers go down as you ID, try adding IDs to the Unknowns with audio.

There’s fewer of them (currently just 33 pages, as opposed to +14K overall), so even just a few coarse IDs (Is that sound made by a bird, insect, canine, frog/toad, human, etc?) will show progress.

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Also, global unknowns for January are fewer than 3000 - they’ll tick down quickly, especially if people who know their plant galls, plant diseases and random fungi/ slime moulds, algae etc have a wee look.

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But what really annoys me is when the observer states in the notes which organism they want ID’ed, and people start ID-ing the other one. I recently saw one of a heron eating an eel, the observer stated in the notes that they wanted the eel identified, and then there were three IDs of the heron. So it was research grade heron, and would not come up for someone looking for fishes and might have been able to ID the eel.

Melodi_96 said, “(I mean humiliating iders, not uploading unknowns).” Well, if the above observation had been mine, I definitely would have had some things to say to the iders who id’ed the heron!

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I do say some things to iders who doesn’t read nor description, nor comments.)

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I often review observations that are exactly at the rank Plantae (but excluding Hong Kong, representing 8.7% of all these Plantae observations, because I got saturated with so many observations of the same specimen). I start at page 300 in order to focus on those that other identifiers missed to identify during the previous days.

I think I will also review the Unknown, but I will likely focus on those I can identify directly at a low rank (tribe or lower). I will start at some page>1, to avoid having several persons spending time on the same Unknown observation that has just been submitted.

Concerning my favorite taxa, I review all Senna observations, but I stopped to review other observations already identified at a low rank, and I cancelled my subscriptions to all taxa (but I have subscribed to La Réunion and Mauritius). I review all observations that are exactly at the rank SubFamily Caesalpinioideae and some of the many observations that are exactly at the rank Family Fabaceae.

I feel thankful to people who identify many observations as “Plantae”, but I don’t do it.

I never advise other people to “mark as cultivated” (and I think a new feature is needed to detect this issue that happens so often and to advise the beginners automatically). I often paste these comments:

  • Please move all pictures of the same individual to the same observation, and delete the other one.
  • Please move different species to different observations.
  • Could you please fix the location manually on the map [and the observation date]? It would make the observation more valuable[, and would help identifying/confirming the species].
  • A picture of the whole plant, and a closeup picture of an entire leaf would help identifying. Please don’t take only pictures of flowers. (General remark for all plants).
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For these reasons, I usually sort by Random whenever doing coarse IDs. This also means that I never have to see 10 of the same thing in a row.

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My take is the person who wanted the ID to be an eel, could have at least started the ID as a Ray Finned Fish. I do not fault the IDer’s at all. Well, I suppose if they overwrote the Ray Finned Fish ID; but I don’t gather that’s what happened in this case.

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Recently uploaded observations of parasites and infection on Chaffinches’ legs, added my genus-level id and added a link, still two different iders on 2 occasions didn’t care at all and reided the bird and even added a comment about how it is a Chaffinch.

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Shall we request a new feature for selecting several observations in the Identify page and ID them all as “Plantae” in one operation?

That would speed up the decrease of “Unknown”.

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There’s already a Feature Request for bulk IDs I think

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