I tried two - but - they have opted out of Community ID - so pointless, sadly.
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Wow! This is a very helpful interface, especially for IDing Unknowns. Potentially it could also be used to work through observations already IDed to a high level (e.g. Plantae, Angiospermae). I think all your optimizations make a lot of sense.
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Now that I got a solution to an issue related to my profile settings and the API, the application is able to display also all common names available (in the language selected in my profile):
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/api-v1-taxa-common-name-missing/18654
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Because of an issue occuring when reaching the end of the set of āGenus Ginkgoā observations, I could catch only 4 Ginkgo biloba after you identified all the others at the rank āSpeciesā! (Reaching the end never happened before, when I was working on the infinite set of āUnknownā).
For this āGenus Ginkgoā use case, I planned to use a Custom Taxonomy containing a single entry āGinkgo bilobaā, so that this taxon remains selected always, and to use the āSkip IDs submittedā, so that only one ENTER keystroke is needed to identify an obseration and to move to the next one. Provided I let the application load all observations before starting, it becomes very fast. One round to āSkipā the observations that I cannot identify, then another fast round to identify them all with the ENTER key (and keep the application open as long as the status bar shows that identifications are still on-going).
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Despite some people are really found of web application development, my opinion remains that web development (say, javascript) is the āissueā in the first place (for me, at least, maybe because I never got trained correctly with this technology). Just consider the historical origin of the technology: a script over a static page. A patch is not a good start. Moreover, this technology is also at the origin of security issues. For instance, phishing would not happen in a client/server architecture: you just need to ensure that you got an authentic client application (directly from itās editor), to trust it once for all (except if there are too many updates), and thatās it.
Donāt be surprised that itās possible for one developper to develop such a UI and such features in a few days. The reason is that this is not web development. Another reason is that it is easier to start developping an application from scratch with only a few features, than maintaining a complex existing application with many features. The complexity is not proportional to the number of features, it grows faster, because of the many interactions between features, and the unexpected side effects.
(This is absolutely not a criticism against the iNaturalist web application. I am so impressed by iNaturalist that I still see it as if I were dreaming, but itās real!).
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Iām not a developer, but Iāve seen pros and cons of client/server and web-based applications over the years. Certainly, rapid application development is a lot more feasible with an installed client, but maintenance of dedicated client software for each application can become a huge task (and poses itās own security risks). It would also be a major limitation to public adoption.
Interestingly, mobile app development has largely taken the dedicated app route, facilitated by the app store concept, which has addressed many of the challenges inherent in installing and maintaining a dedicated client.
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For Ginkgo you can take your search all the way up to class Ginkgoopsida since the species is alone in its class.
Thereās plenty of other monotypic genera to work on, like Ricinus which is Ricinus communis, and a nice distinctive plant, easily identified. Or Heteromeles, which is Heteromeles arbutifolia, but you do have to know how to tell it apart from Pyracantha and Cotoneaster.
Or sometimes you can work on something where thereās only one species in a certain range; for example all Larrea in North America are Larrea tridentata.
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Thanks! I did initially start the search all the way up at class level, but I guess I missed a couple. I decided to focus my efforts on Ginkgo biloba, since itās very distinctive.
I know I could try some other genera, but this kind of work is quite tedious, so I might need to take a break before working on it. For the record, after first stumbling upon the Ginkgo observations there were about 27 pages or about 800 observations. Definitely this could be better handled automatically, somehow.
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I was trying to use āidentifyā to look at North America unknowns thinking I could get stuff to kingdom level at least, but there are pages and pages of stuff that actually have some form of ID given by either the observer or someone else; mostly microscopic organisms (Cyanobacteria, viruses, etc). Iāve got filter set to unknown, date set to ascendingā¦why are these showing up? Thereās not really any appreciable number of larger organisms. Thereās also a lot of āstate of matter lifeā observations.
can you share your url and/or screenshot?
Life, bacteria, viruses, they all fall under unknown section in identifying, I think thereās a URL to exclude those.
I think you have a bug report here because when I follow the url I see the obs in descending orderā¦
I use the Identify page, and filter it down as you say, but then I use the keyboard shortcuts to move through quickly.
You can use the arrows to go back and forth through the records, type i to add an identification or c to add a comment, type r to mark it as reviewed. Tab to move to next field, down arrow to go to the suggestion you want in a drop-down.
I canāt remember what the shortcut is to mark it as captive/cultivated, but you get the idea. You can move through records much faster that way than with the mouse.
To exclude those, put &identified=false on the end of your search URL.
You might also want to start at a more recent date, for example, observations about a year old.
On another thread - someone said well meaning volunteers ripped out the only specimen of (that name I forget) thinking it was Ricinus communis.
Ah well it does have a few leaf-lookalikes which people less commonly observe on iNat, like the castor aralia, Kalopanax septemlobus. But the fruits are very distinctive.
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This also works to exclude the known organisms if you add it manually to your identify url:
&without_taxon_id=67333%2C131236%2C151817
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Iām also getting results like this: shows up in unknown, is labled as unknown, but has IDās provided ? Is this a bug or some part of the UI Iām not getting?
Iāve noticed the unknowns are going down in number quite rapidly at the moment - good work team!
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