This is a good idea. I got into annotations before identifications, mostly due to this webinar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57teTK5V5t0), which I can’t find on the site (and there isn’t a quick YT link on the site footer either….it was difficult for me to go back to and find this resource!)
I found annotations to be more approachable than jumping into IDs, although the high-level topics in the ID-a-thon I think worked very well for new IDers.
Interesting that when asked when they joined iNaturalist, there’s a definite drop off in new identifiers in the last two years. An average of about 230 per year joined between 2020-2023, then 150 in 2024, then 75 in 2025. Maybe that’s a function of how long it takes to get to more than 2,000 identifications, but it does suggest that iNat is not attracting and retaining identifiers as fast as they are attracting new observers.
I took it to be an indication that it takes time after joining the platform to start (seriously) identifying. Which may or may not be true, but does potentially make sense. (If so, I was weird - I jumped in basically straight away, helped by the fact that I’d been doing the same thing with my own photos for a while.)
Nobody answered me, so I used ai to read (hopefully) all the iNat blog posts.
I’ll try to answer my question here, in case any lurkers were also wondering about this.
As far as I can tell, the cutoff for participation depends on what staff are surveying.
That 25,000 ID cutoff only applied once.
With any survey, there is a tension between getting enough survey responses, and having too many responses, where you’re not getting new information, but you’re massively increasing the workload required to process the responses.
So the cutoff always depends on what staff want to test or investigate, and what the ideal number of responses would be.
I also think iNat actively recruits new observers, but not identifiers. (It’s more like, “Join iNat! Observe cool stuff! You could also ID things if you wanted…”)
Here’s the product roadmap referred to in the blog post: https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/123394-our-product-goals-for-january-june-2026
that is not going to be reliable, unless you check the source material
As a plant IDer, this post—especially the last paragraph—nicely articulates my main gripes about the (overall very enjoyable) identification process. If there’s a next iteration of this survey, it’d be great to see, for the question “What parts of the identification process do you find difficult?,” an option like “Too many unmarked captive/cultivated observations.”
With some taxa, it can feel like most of my mental energy is used not on actually identifying the observation, but on assessing whether it’s cultivated or not. For the really unclear cases (esp. location-obscured close-ups), I just won’t ID something I’m able to ID because I neither want to make cultivated observations RG nor consign someone’s wild observation to casual. It’s probably the #1 thing that makes me say, “okay, that’s enough IDing for today” (admittedly not always a bad thing!).
When I first started doing Unknowns, that was the biggest aggravation (cultivated plants not marked correctly). At this point, it’s a combo between landscape photos and observers who are still active on this platform, but never respond to identifier comments or questions and yet also don’t identify their own observations either.
I reglulary use the coments to say something like: I tend to.. or I think it is, dependending how certain I am.
That is certainly helpful to people. The only disadvantage is that it cannot be searched.
Oh right, one thing that makes identifying annoying for me is the app not behaving - this is half a bug report but i generally identify on my phone (android) and after a while the app gets stuck in a loop between adding an identification and the list of species suggestions. Using the web page isn’t really an option as zooming photos on it doesn’t work very well on mobile, or at least on android firefox.
I’m a software developer. There were a couple of the comments regarding the app in the survey results.
Quite a few people would like a better identifying experience in the mobile app, so they can do it when commuting, waiting in line, etc.
Many people wanted the app to work better for identifying: “I’d also like it if there would be a way to easily identify observations on the app. I find the mobile app pretty cumbersome for everything that is not observing.”
When identifiers say they want better identifying experience on mobile devices, do they mean: 1) improving the iOS or Android app they downloaded from the app store, 2) improving the website, or 3) improve iOS app, Android app, and website.
If the website identify page looks and works well on mobile devices, would people use the website for making identifications on mobile devices?
I would use the website on my phone if it would provide a decent experience.
Even 2026 in many places
Not here. Still 2025!
There used to be a diptera party once a month or so. I get this experience sometimes by luck.