Some people behave weirdly for getting high-ranked id, leaving aggressive comments for someone who added a first id to their unknown observation, not motivational at all for iders. So there’s a question why people care about species so much and not about other humans.
And as already was said common doesn’t mean easy, you can easily id Carabidae from any blurry photo, but without being an expert (and we only have like 2 people checking them in Europe) you won’t id most of species in the family. I don’t see how using from unknown, insects or beetles to Carabidae (as an example) is obsolete, as well as cases where you can see it’s a Fringillidae bird, but you can’t be sure of species.
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I almost always have a location set when I’m identifying since I’m unlikely to be able to identify many species outside my home country. Even if it looks like something I recognise there may be other similar species I don’t know about in other countries. I would guess most people do the same.
Agreed. I don’t think the number of needs ID observations went down in the UK over winter, if it did go down it wasn’t by much. I suspect the numbers just don’t go up so fast in winter. Maybe in the past they went down in winter, or maybe they do in other countries? I’m fairly sure needs ID in the UK was never above 200k before this year and now it’s 450k. I don’t expect it to go down in winter.
Isn’t it better to mark as “can’t be IDd further” to remove them for everyone? Sometimes it’s difficult to be certain that someone couldn’t improve the ID but I’ve seen plenty where I’m fairly confident that no one will be able to ID. I doubt many expert are going to want to bother going through hundreds of blurred photos.
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I don’t know if anyone else is finding this, but for a good few months, after 6pm UK time the identify mode is just too slow to be worth using. It takes so long to acknowledge my identification or mark as reviewed, I could do five earlier in the day in the same time, so I’m finding other things to do in the evenings.
I know that there were 3x as many observations in the UK in 2019 than 2018. The overall trend on the site is only doubling per year, so the UK may be a particularly busy pile to deal with.
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I cant think of a technical reason why adding an ID for a record in one nation would take longer than for another. It is all the same database and infrastructure it is writing to unless the database is somehow geography sharded.
I’ve noted that saving an ID seems much slower now than in the past. My work schedule means I do most of my stuff between about 9am and 2pm Toronto time.
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I notice that in Identify mode when I add an ID there is a lag time between pressing Enter and the ID showing up. A loading wheel appears. But I found that if you just skip to the next observation while the wheel is running, your ID will still ‘stick’ or appear when you go back to that original observation.
You don’t have to wait for your ID to show up on the page.
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I don’t think that other places are getting a better service than the UK - it’s just that’s the time zone I’m in. I suspect that the slowdown is due to demand during daytime in the Americas, as that’s the area with the most users.
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My guess, although site staff would have to confirm it is that the site is at its most busy in the hours of about 7pm to midnight on the east coast of North America as that would pick up people home from work on both coasts.
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I must say the website became overall slow to me in the last month, clicking on “as good as can be” on the observation page takes 30 secs to finally add it, it’s not too slow, but it definitely prevents faster work.
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I’m mainly an identifier of Canadian Noctuid moths (with even further refinements at the tribe level). I spent an hour this morning on one moth, and I could not confirm it’s species. Then I searched a species I do know, and got bogged down with misidentified species. My main dilemma is this - I can identify the moth species without clarification, but that often eliminates any teaching that should happen.The more knowledgeable folks are, the less incorrect identifications there should be. l also try to incorporate a database (if there is not one) and try to fill in some annotations. Doing all that slows me down, but should improve the data. To just add a name is faster, but little teaching occurs.
So which approach is recommended to deal with stored observations?
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It’s interesting, I’m listening to my wife right now in the other room trying to teach her biology students via Zoom. Some of the kids pay attention to the guidance she provides them with videos and reading assignments and others seem to want the information handed to them personally and have not done the assigned work. I don’t have an answer to what iNat users want or need – it varies depending on the motivation of the individual to do some homework on their own. Personally, I’m satisfied when a more knowledgeable iNatter can give me an ID (at whatever taxonomic level they can) for some organism I know nothing about and feel it’s then up to me to do the “homework” to understand why it is that. Others might expect a lesson in why it is that species but I can understand why an identifier might feel they don’t have the time for that.
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Probably if you want to faster things you can copy-paste comment with something like “if you want more details feel free to tag&ask me”. But otherwise you can do stuff the way you want to.
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that I will not do. I frequently see pictures which I, dismiss as a blur, getting an ID. Maybe all the way to subspecies.
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So when you make a correction, you just give the name, and if they want, they can find more info? I’m starting to feel that is this is the best approach.
@fffffffff I keep forgetting to do that. Thank you for reminding me!
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I am a generalist for a relatively limited region - I look at everything that shows up, and add refining IDs whenever I can, and confirming IDs for species I’m reasonably comfortable with.
There are only a few situations when I leave a comment with an ID:
- There was a question made with the observation (or a prior ID) that I can address
- I was specifically tagged (usually these are for observations outside my normal range, and I can’t really confirm, as my knowledge is geographically restricted)
- I am giving a coarse ID (family or higher, usually), but have a plausible guess for a finer ID
- I know it’s one of a couple of species, but can’t tell which one (especially when not confirming a prior species-level ID)
- I’m disagreeing with an ID that wasn’t from the AI (no little shield icon thing), but don’t have an equally refined ID to offer instead
Beyond that I rarely leave comments about specifics of ID unless there is a follow up comment/question which lets me know at least someone is engaged and likely to see the comment (and hopefully find it helpful).
That said, I rarely (need to) spend much time working on an ID (as I’m focusing on giving names to things I’m already reasonably familiar with, and going through everything in the area). If I do take time working out an identification I am more likely to make a note about it in a comment. Those notes are as much for my benefit as others, as I will sometimes refer back to them if a question comes up in the future about that species (or a related one). I use the ‘favorite’ an observation as a way of bookmarking these (though if they ever make an alternative way to ‘bookmark’ observations, I would probably use that instead).
I don’t know how relevant your notes on a particular observation might be to other ones - but if they are, it might be worth figuring out how to track them in some way for (your) future reference, and just link back to them.
The other thing I want to say is I very much appreciate folks like yourself who choose to focus on a relatively narrow taxonomic group and are willing to dig into identifying things.
I’ve found that many times the first ID is the hardest - that is, once I know what something is called where I live, it’s relatively straightforward to recognize it going forward. The challenge is getting a name in the first place. (The other challenge is a lack of awareness of other similar species which in my ignorance, I might tend to lump together with the one I have heard of). When I’ve tagged you (and others), it has been helpful for me to read what is said about the ID, especially when it helps me know what to look for in the future.
Thanks!
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That’s ironic, at least in botany–only the trained botanists can ID to family level, because the lay people just learn their species on a case-by-case basis and don’t know the family characteristics.
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There’s a term that used to be more common among birdwatchers and other naturalists that has probably fallen out of fashion for reasons we can leave to the imagination – jizz. Basically, it’s IDing some organism based on a range of characteristics and impressions based on the observer’s experience with the species. In the past, it probably involved IDing some animal that is quickly seen but not photographed. Often it’s hard to put into words what subtle characteristics an identifier uses to come up with an ID – sometimes it involves the location, habitat, behavior or posture of an animal, what other similar species can be quickly eliminated based on what can be seen, etc. Sometimes I’m a little bit stumped trying to articulate to another why I came to some ID.
I suspect a lot of the rapid IDers on iNat are using their years of experience with some organism to narrow down to a species, but might not be willing or able to pause and take the time to type out the list of characteristics they used. Flipping through a bunch of photos and putting IDs on them is perhaps somewhat similar to IDing birds on the wing through binocs.
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I think a big part of the problem is because most of the users are young people familiar with smartphone technologies, and most of them are beginners and not yet able to give fiable IDs.
Inversely, most of the experts able to do ID easily and with a good expertise level are older, and then less aware of new technologies…
Personally I find myself at the middle of this caricatural situation : my student do more obs and more easily share them but cannot ID a lot, my older colleagues could be wonderful IDers but are not aware or want not spend time on their computer for doing this.
Maybe a good strategy could be to do lobbying towards senior experts not aware of iNat ?
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That’s a different name for it. I always knew it as GISS (General Impression of Size and Structure)
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mamestraconfigurata, as a user who has benefitted from your detailed feedback I will chime in that I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn from you, the time you have invested in helping me, and the quality of your feedback. As a result I have started working at listing traits that I think I am seeing that support my proposed identification in the comments when I post a moth photo. I have definitely improved my own skills, and I am so glad to have your guidance. I often work several hours on a difficult moth before I post it. I’ll frequently put a tough one aside, and then when I am browsing through a reference like the Moth Photographers Group site I’ll suddenly see a match for one of the moths that had me totally stumped. The “if you would like more details feel free to tag and ask me” sounds like a great idea if you get overwhelmed, or you are uncertain the user is interested.
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Welcome to the forum! I admire your way of proceeding :)
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