I’m doing my best to beaver my way through unconfirmed Canadian Nocuidae. There are 411 pages of unconfirmed observations. I have not even looked at unknowns. Some of these observations are two or three years old, and deserve to be confirmed or changed. It’s slow work (for me), especially with difficult Genera and Species, but I hope it makes a difference.
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In addition to the problems @jnstuart mentioned, keep in mind that for many taxa it’s often difficult or impossible to identify things to species using just photos as evidence. Sometimes excruciatingly tiny details need to be photographed, and often one needs a microscope, or one needs to use a chemical stain, etc.
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I’ve noticed that too. I and others have been working on the Australian unknowns the last few months, and we’re currently at about 2,400 compared to closer to 6,000 earlier this year.
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I’ve also been working on ‘unknowns’, mostly in the Oceania region. When I started paying attention to the numbers a few weeks ago, the number of ‘unknowns’ for the region was around 12,000, and now there are around 9,000. The number would keep going down even when I wasn’t online, so I knew at least one other person was busy somewhere too. It’s nice knowing there are a team of us!
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While I procrastinate uploading my Peru observations I’ve been addressing the Wisconsin unknowns, something I used to do fairly regularly. I know that I could clear the backlog in a day or two with concerted effort, but after a string of frustrating multi-species submissions or ones from someone who only used the app a few times over a year ago to take images of their perennial garden I either give up, or worse, mark them as reviewed anyway and go read the forum or look at pretty mushroom pictures. 
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LOL I think we are all guilty of sometimes marking an annoying Observation as reviewed rather than dealing with it
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This is my method with placeholders too, but if it’s a placeholder that looks like it should be a species name, I’ve recently started to do a little research to see if there’s a spelling error that prevented it from ending up in the database. I’ve only run into a couple of these recently, because I’m working through everything UK I can help with, from unknowns to making vague identifications more precise and marking duplicates.
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Highlighting and right click “search google for [thing]” often works pretty well for me with those, given the way it searches “fuzzily”. (By now google’s all-seeing tracker eye probably wonders about my regular interest in random species on other parts of the planet.)
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As a total newbie*, I’m having trouble with my first ID. I add a suggestion with reasons, click done and nothing happens. It sits and sits. It might be the internet connection, it might not like me. I don’t know.
*I’m a Biology and Forestry major and only will be working on my new properties area In Washington.
this will be fun once it works for me.
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People will be able to help more if you say what tool you are using, the web client or the mobile app (and if so which Android or iOs)
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Since I’m here, how far do you go back? 15 years is one of the oldest I’ve seen. Do you check to see if the poster is an active user? I’m not sure where to start.
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Currently, I am on a MacBook Pro. I haven’t downloaded the iOs apps yet. iPad and iPhone.
Thank you.
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It would be best to file a Bug Report with as many specific details (screenshots, browser name and version, etc etc) as possible.
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Thats true with a few taxa, but I believe in the majority of cases a species level ID is possible, provided that there is a sufficient number and quality of photos accompanying the observation
For instance, when I photograph plants, I try to get ATLEAST 1 photo for each of the following:
- The corrola
- The calyx
- The floral arrangement
- The leaf
- The leaf arrangement
- Petiolar/ pedicel scars and bracts
- The whole plant
Thats about 6 or 7 photos for 1 observation. Sometimes its less, sometimes its more, depending on the Genus or Family of plant I’m photographing (some require photos of the bulbs/ corms)
Hence, in my opinion, just 1 or 2 photos of a plant is simply not good enough by any standard, and believe me when I say I see alot of these kind of observations, even from well-respected and long time users of iNat.
I’ve learned over the years that it is best practice to take many photos, and that it results in the highest chance of the observation being ID’d. However, I strongly feel that the onus for promoting and encouraging such practice amongst other users lies squarely with iNat (if getting as many species level/ Research grade observations as possible is the ultimate aim of course)
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Wow, thanks for being willing to step into the weird mix! Different people can approach it in their own way- some avoid the very recent entries since the uploader may still be working on the record. But if you go the other direction, to the very oldest, sometimes those are the “leftovers” of whatever a lot of people already couldn’t identify, so they may be harder to figure out.
Maybe somewhere in the middle of the pile to start, like in year 2018 entries, will give a nice mix of easy/interesting records. Your looking at those might be one of the first times someone beyond the observer has really examined the record.
Besides time-wise, another way to look at it, I gather from prior responses, is to start locally, with Unknowns from your geographic area. You probably have a feel for what is around you. You bring the “expertise” of maybe living in/nearby the actual environment of the observation. It’s so cool that many places around the planet have their own data-watchers here. :)
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Heh, I remember crouching and photographing this young rattlesnake in the desert a few years ago and then realizing I probably needed a top-down shot of the intraocular scales to get to species, so I stood up quickly and nearly got bitten. I wouldn’t advise always trying to get a full set of diagnostic shots for every taxon. ;-) But yes, I agree iNat could do better about encouraging observers to take more and better photos.
Getting as many RG observations as possible is an aim, but not the primary aim of iNat. Working on better onboarding is on the agenda, but much of our designer’s time is currently being taken up with the notifications revamp. One possibility is (eventually) using the computer vision suggestions to trigger advice, like “looks like you’re photographing a flower. try to get photos of the leaves and stems as well,” which would be pretty cool.
But I also think that, realistically, the majority of people aren’t going to be taking 6-7 photos of a plant. I’ve been using iNat for nearly 12 years now and I personally don’t have that kind of patience, it would make each hike feel like a homework assignment. And for many people, just learning that the plant they came across is in the legume family, or that the spider they found is not a brown recluse is educational and helpful.
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I sometimes find that the more I know about a species and its relatives, the fewer photographs I take, since I know what exactly is needed for its ID.
For a plant I don’t know much about, I’ll usually take 4 to 6 photos of key features.
But if I know, for instance, that for the 6-ish (only 2 of which are at all common in my region) species of Senecio in my country, you only need 1 or 2 photos for species ID… I’m not taking more. I’d rather spend that time recording additional plants.
Anyway, I feel this is wandering off-topic. Might be worth moving it (@tiwane).
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I’m currently working my way “back in time”, as it were, for my country and a few nearby. I’ve done everything I can for the little islands, and for the two big ones, I’m currently in May 2019. I can guess whether a user is active or not by the number of posts - mostly, they’re not. If I can’t put in any kind of identification, and there’s nothing within Frequently Used Responses that would be relevant, I just mark as reviewed and move on. If a user isn’t active, they may never see me asking “which of these organisms do you want”, or “please delete this duplicate”, but the next unknown-hunter who comes along will see that the user has had that comment, and nothing has happened in the intervening time, so can just scroll on.
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Good thoughts. I just started and saw a pic with two possibilities, cattails and bulrushes. I answered for the cattails explaining that since there were a couple more of these in the pic, that’s what they wanted.
I also check to see if they are active.
I like your thinking that an answer will save time for another person doing the same. :)
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This is the first time I’ve seen that frequently used responses page, and I’m approaching 10K IDs. Just goes to show how long it can take to learn everything about this amazingly complex site.
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