I generally primarily see myself as the identifier, then observer, which matches up with my ids. I wonder what you guys think about your role. Also do you have more ids or more obs? Does it contradict with what you think of yourself as? What is your obs to ids ratio? mine is 22.65:1 (ids:obs)
at ~2.8k obs and ~26k IDs it seems i am an IDer. i like the 10:1 id:obs ratio, so i’ve been slacking on IDs lately!
I’m primarily an observer. Meeting cool new critters and learning more about them scratches my brain just right (˶>⩊<˶)
I was mostly observing insects back when I first got into nature photography years ago, then started noticing cool plants around me… then inevitably noticed that birds are neat little pixels in the distance… then I was sitting by a pond one day and noticed some tiny translucent things playing in the water and got immediately excited to figure out what those are… It’s been quite a slippery slope of a hobby, and I’m now sitting at almost 2800 observations of more than 1000 different species of lifers (ᵕ—ᴗ—)
I do my best to identify and annotate things as well, mostly as a means to give something back to the community. When I have free time, I usually scour through Unknown debris and sort things into neat little piles so that people with more specific experience could grab and identify them further.
Looking at my account data, I’m currently at around 48% obs to 52% ids, which isn’t much, but it’s honest work, I guess?
I see myself as primarily an observer, though the numbers are different because I don’t travel to different pieces of land to identify. It is pretty fun to just ID some 100 observations in a sitting before bed or before I muster the strength to get out of bed in the morning, but I do see my primary reason for being here to share my experiences in the form of observations.
Categories 3 and 3B: student and researcher.
A student, for example, performs a taxon sweep to learn to identify the taxon.
A researcher performs the same taxon sweep to review the global and regional variation in a taxon, and the distribution. (I’ve just convinced POWO to add a region to the distribution of a species on the basis of a paper in Willdenowia and 4 iNat records. I’m in the process of revising my web page on the genus - I’ll need to do another sweep to look at the variation in the species.)
I was acting both as a student and a researcher with that taxon - when I last reviewed the genus in 2008 or thereabouts much less information was available online, and I didn’t learn to recognise that particular species.
I like to think of my self as more of a observer just because a lot of time I don’t have time for ID’ing but I do want to get round to it
This is always a valuable question to ask! It has generated some great discussions in the past, with both threads receiving over 100 replies:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/poll-are-you-primarily-an-inat-observer-or-identifier/
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/do-you-make-more-observations-on-inat-or-identifications/
That being said, our forum community is always growing, and if revisiting this inspires even one more person to try adding IDs and Annotations, then it’s worth it!
had no idea people talked about and surveyed it before!
I think that I should catch up with my backlog of observations to upload, my ratio is too extreme!
(I were thinking or @ borisb. 0 obs but numerous ids. undefined:infinity?)
yes it is, one example where:
You see yourself as observer but the stats slightly tilt to saying otherwise ; )
I am definitely more observer than ider. I like being out and about and observing nature in real life. I also enjoy uploading my photos and researching what I have observed. iNaturalist has made that part much easier.
I have over 14000 observations recorded here iNaturalist. I only have 2552 identifications.
So do I, but I spend so much time identifying other people’s observations, I generally don’t have time to upload my own. Anyone looking at iNat would think I never leave the house.
I primarily see myself as an observer, but I try to keep my ID’s to observations ratio at 2 to 1. My reason for IDing is twofold: First, I think it is right to give back and I am thankful for all the ID’s people give to my observations, and secondly, I learn so SO much by identifying. I started with very common local species, but over time I have developed the ability to ID more things, sometimes generally (moving things out of unknowns) and sometimes more specifically (e.g. a generous expert explained how to tell apart confusing local zelus species and now I can ID them to species if the correct traits are shown). I like to merge my observing and IDing when possible. Yesterday in my garden I observed a new-to-me wasp. I am looking forward to researching it and hopefully getting it to species, and maybe I can help ID those for others if it has distinctive enough traits.
I think I am an Ider see as I have 4k ids and only 230 observations
My ratio is around 5.57 to 5.58 IDs per ob. I think I’m both; I’m not a taxon specialist in either. There are a few species I know to identify, scattered across taxonomy (fan clubmoss, coquí (by sound), woolly bear, etc.) and others get coarse IDs if they had none.
I wish I could be an identifier, but the only taxon I’m even close to good at is birds, and birds are by far the most ID’ed thing on iNat. My professor jokingly told me to become an expert in craneflies to better fill a niche lolll
then you can probably id unknowns
i have 11k+ observations and 15k+ IDs. i try to always have at least as many IDs as observations, as a way of giving back to the community that helps identify my own observations. i mostly identify observations from my own country, especially from the areas where i spend time, and i also enjoy adding life stage annotations to insect observations from all over the world, i’ve added 71k+ annotations . that said, my main pleasure on inat is still making my own observations :)
More of an observer, but one who keeps forgetting to actually put the observations on iNat. I have such a big backlog to search through for decent photos…
I’m trying to get a little bit more into identifying and annotating, to give back to the community where I can, and also because I’m a bit too impatient to wait for the bug specialists to find my bug observations lol. But it’s hard to shake off the fear of making mistakes.
Everyone makes a mistake from time to time. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. The world’s museums and herbaria are loaded with misidentified specimens.