“identifications needed” is hard to define precisely. theoretically, if folks were to apply the “as good as it can be” option very liberally, then you could separate all non-spam/flagged observations into either research grade or casual. in that case, the “needed” would probably be IDs by others to achieve RG (not including subsequent IDs, unless a taxon correction occurs after RG) + IDs to set to casual (although setting to casual doesn’t always coincide with an ID in the system).
but then in practice, even if you set aside the fact that it takes some unknown amount of time for needs ID observation to become RG, we as a community don’t tend to apply the “as good as it can be” flag very liberally. so then we have a bunch of “needs ID” observations that theoretically will never get an ID and in practice don’t actually need an ID. but the size of this set of observations is unknown.
and then there’s the impact of taxon changes that come along and create change…
probably the easiest way to estimate whether we have “enough” identifications is to compare the RG to verifiable ratio at the end of the year to the ratio at the beginning of the year, and if the RG to V ratio goes down, then we don’t have “enough”.
but if we have the same RG to V ratio at the end of the year vs the beginning of the year, then i think it’s reasonable to say we have “enough”, and then i think we could have a reasonable estimate for “needed identifications” (per observation) by taking the number of identifications by others made that year and divide that by all the observations submitted (including casuals).
i don’t know if anyone made a particular effort to capture RG to V ratio at the beginning of the year and again at the end of the year. i have some snapshots of this at random times in the forum though. i have enough snapshots out there that maybe you could see a trend in the numbers. last i checked, the number holding steady. so if you assume that it continues to hold steady, then you could probably just guess that, for a given period, “needed identifications” (per observation) = identifications by others / all observations submitted.
right now:
- identifications by others in 2023 = 60,726,399
- observations submitted in 2023 = 48,616,471
so then that’s a ratio of 1.24.