On another thread I played around with some numbers from an old thread from 2024 which discussed the number of identifications required per observation:
The cumulative identification deficit of those years would be 30,458,693.
So I’m just playing around with numbers and they seem to fit with identifer frustrations, but I don’t know how useful or realistic they actually are. Does anyone have an idea of how applicable @matthewvosper’s 2.5 value is to iNat observations more broadly? I’d be curious to know if/how that value has changed as the computer vision has changed. I can’t think of any other variables that would affect it (I doubt the average iNat user is going to get significantly more or less conscientious about their initial IDs).
i think the most important number is how research grade vs verifiable has changed (or not) over time. as far as i can tell, it’s holding relatively steady globally.
I think iNaturalist is too diverse to combine the data together, birds, reptiles, plants, bacteria, insects, etc. I think its worth looking at the data broken down into groups. I posted a frog the other day, it already has like 5 confirmations. That is very different from the average fly.
