Are there too many new observations to identify?

True. And many new users don’t care about genus and species. They want to know Beetle, Aphid, Weevil, Orbweaver, Coral vs King snake, Blue Jay, Coneflower.

I was going through the Casual observations because I’ve noticed that the new users snap whatever they see first: in a schoolyard, out the back yard, on an end table, pets. If they properly use the Casual setting, almost no one looks at them and they go away, presumably disappointed. Or they forget to add the date and/or location (presumably using an older camera?) and it’s marked casual. Also, never to be identified. I can at least tell them it’s a frog, sunflower, spider, daddy longlegs, or squirrel. And if it’s a really cool observation, I tag a leaderboard identifier and ask them to look at it. (Sorry, leaderboard identifiers.)

I posted a plea in Nature Forum last week asking for Casual identifiers, but it didn’t get a lot of traction. There are an enormous number of new observations. By the time I get finished with the unknown observations from my area, there’s a new page or two generated.

9 Likes