This evening @tiwane posted a link to all the Observation Fields, which loaded in order of most recently created, but I hit the little arrow to reverse that. It is a wonderful foray into early iNaturalist!
In doing so I found this little gem, one of the oldest but still in use. I rather like it as a way to express surety if one perhaps has not captured all required identification aspects in the photo(s) but knows what one saw.
How do others feel about it? Would you ever use it?
<3 sure
When I am not sure I try to say in comments that I have high/moderate/low confidence in my ID.
The problem, of course, is knowing what you donāt know. I recently confidently identified an observation as ivy (Hedera helix), but it turns out ivy has recently been split into a large number of partly sympatric micro-species which cannot be told apart in photos.
So the more you know about a group, the more likely you are to rate your ID as low confidence. For instance, I see a lot of people confidently IDāing water frogs (Pelophylax) and sand racers (Psammodromus), but the only way to confidently identify species in those groups is with DNA analysis or by assuming we already know exactly which species occurs exactly where, and that people never move them around.
The result is that while a confidence field tells other users how sure you were that your ID was correct, it doesnāt actually say anything at all about how correct the ID is.
And Iām guessing thatās why the field was removed.
Yes and no. I love the idea of some sort of certainty indicator, but for it to have any sort of value other than purely personal, it would have to be immediately obvious to the observer and any subsequent IDers, and I donāt believe this would be the case with an observation field.
There are some really interesting, useful and informative observation fields, but for me the problem lies in the sheer number (596 pages, which by my calculation amounts to about 17880 fields). As anyone can add a field with no form of standardisation, there are often dozens of fields (or more) performing more or less the same function, making it hard to decide which to use for oneās one observations, but also which to search for to find other observations with a specific interest. For example, if I wanted to use the field to indicate āhost plantā, there are a full 150 fields with the word āhostā, many of which overlap. For my own observations, I can of course choose one and standardise on that, but if my aim is to add information for the iNat community in general, I would be in great difficulty knowing which to use for the common good. Coming back to the topic of this thread, there are at least 12 fields which include the word ācertainā, 10 of which would be applicable, which to use for the best?
What I would love, on the other hand, is a ācfrā button readily available/visible on the observation page, for those cases where the probability is high, but without certainty. Yes I know it is fraught with pitfalls and would be difficult to implement and/or manage, but Iām just sayingā¦ (and PLEASE letās not digress as thereās a serious risk of going off topic, maybe the subject of another thread sometime 
).
To be clear, this field was not removed. It is available for use and still is in use, most recently 18 February 2025.
All of the Observation Fields at this link are still available. The problem @lynkos points out is that there are often multiples for the same purpose, which I would think makes them less useful as tools to compile data since users may not know which to use.
I typed in the name of this one, ācertaintyā, and look how many came up, and I could have scrolled for more.
Nice! Iād use it!
*sigh* oh no
I personally donāt see much use for most cases. I feel like, if a research-grade observation sits at any other level than ācertainā, it is over-identified. It seems to me, certainty is good to add on an identification basis, rather than an observation basis. (Iād always put it in comments, like @mikenoren).
Tentative IDs can be withdrawn and can help in moving an observation to RG, and it is good to mark a tentative ID as such. A ātentative RGā observation would defeat the purpose of tentative and of RG.
However, it may be helpful when dealing with undescribed species where the placement is uncertain. I think those observations are better IDed more precisely (and potentially inaccurately) rather than drowning in a sea of unidentifiable observations never to be seen again.
Get ready for that to happen to every species.
This is why iNat users really need to be aware of best practices. Best practices would include: before creating your own observation fields, check whether there are existing ones that would serve the purpose.
this is not the case
I donāt think āmicrospeciesā (sensu Taraxacum) is an accurate characterisation of Hedera, itās just a group with a lot of hybridisation and often controversial + difficult species delimitation (which happens in a lot of groups). There is no apomixis involved to my knowledge
This isnāt really something recent, half of the species in this group other than helix were described more than 100 years ago.
They can be told apart from photos, you just need good macro shots of the correct characters (as is the case for many, many taxa). There are definitely iNat observations for which species IDs can (and have) confidently be made
I am currently dealing with an undescribed species. I found half a dozen unknown locations for it by doing a search for the genus. For this species, the genus is easy enough to get. Some identifiers had labelled it " An unusual XX". I would not have found these if they were just āClass Magnoliopsidaā.
