I’m one of those stuck at home (mostly), so I am uploading photos from past nature walks and general observations. I tried some IDing, although I’m kind of a novice. I was able to ID a few common organisms in my area.
But I am wondering if others have the same problem I did: some photos are just too far away, blurry, or otherwise indistinct to know what the organism is–or even, sometimes, if they meant the tree or something in the tree, for example.
I usually just skip those.
If the user only has a few observations, you can assume they don’t really know how the platform works and leave them a comment to… “educate” them. I usually take mine from here. If they’re an experienced user, I tend to just skip the observation as well.
If you want to improve your IDing skills, I suggest filtering for unknowns, giving broad IDs (obviously still try to be as specific as you can) and when/if someone else refines the ID you can use that as a chance to learn.
We could (future tense because for me those restrictions have not yet been enacted where I live in Australia but will be shortly) make an effort to record so many of the usually unseen/unobserved critters that go unnoticed in our houses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dunn_(biologist)
Great idea! If you do, you can add your observations to this project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/never-home-alone-the-wild-life-of-homes
Sometimes - what are we looking at? Is that dirt on your lens, or a passing bird?
Is the reason why it languishes waiting for ID.
I am ploughing back thru obs for Cape Town. The low hanging fruit goes first. Now I often mark a whole batch off as reviewed. Next …
I’m in the same boat. We’re asked to stay home unless absolutely necessary. I’ve been identifying observations as a way to learn. My method is to filter for unknown observations added to the site in 2018 and add coarse IDs (plant, flowering plant, insect, etc.) wherever possible. I figure the original poster is not going to be adding an ID for anything that has been in that long with no ID, so I won’t be stepping on toes for someone who just hasn’t gotten around to adding their own ID.
I add a comment that I’m adding the coarse ID to move the observation out of unknown and possibly help in further identifying. I’ve been surprised by the number that have subsequently been identified and this helps me learn something new while adding to the community
I skip over anything that has a blurry picture but mark them reviewed.
I add a comment to any observation that has multiple pictures but they show different species, to let them know to split them into separate observations.
The only thing I wish were different is that I get “credit” for identifying something when often all I’m actually doing is adding a VERY coarse ID. I don’t think those should count.
They absolutely should count. I’m not into leaderboards or anything like that, but your “counts” give an indication of your activity in iNat, and at the very least show an indication of how many observations you have peeked over the shoulder of… I use my own ID vs observation counts to gauge “how much I need to get outdoors more”, although covid has kinda munted the applicability of that metric!
Even if it is “just” putting high level taxa, that “work” is valuable and appreciated. If you are concerned that it might be giving a false impression of your ID skills, you can add a comment in your profile to say that you are active in working on the “unknowns”, which will add context to your stats for those that scrutinise them.
That’s a perfect solution! I felt a little weird about have a high number of IDs but in my head not “true” IDs. I’ll add that in now.
yeah… think of it as a “passion for iNat” count :)
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