Excepting the anomalous 2020, I think 2023 might be the first year in a while that someone other than James Bailey/silversea_starsong may have observed the most identified species. JohnDReynolds currently holds that mark with 6,545 species (made over a site-leading 60k observations). James is close enough with 6,443 species that either of them might hold the top spot after getting through their backlogs, etc. Just incredible feats by all observers up at the top – kudos.
Currently, I’m #442 by observations and #129 by species. I held the top spot back in 2012ish (pre-merger with the iSpot data) when there was a LOT fewer users and observations. I’m guessing that once people upload their 2023 backlog, I’ll be booted out of the top 500 observers, so I’ll appreciate my temporary status!
Yes, I believe the YiR counts 2023 IDs of your 2023 and before observations. My difference is even greater: YiR indicates 1,432 people helped me with 9,231 IDs in 2023. In the explore tab, there are 987 identifiers for my 2023 observations.
The ID need only go to where taxon specialists catch it with their pre-set filter. And they need US working for their filter.
This is a really good point! I’ve been trying (before the holidays at least) to get my identifications up, but the range of taxa where I feel confident going to species level is narrow, and sometimes takes a lot of deliberation, consulting resources, etc… IDing to genus feels helpful, but above that, it can feel like pointless shuffling from one digital box to another.
One thing I’ve been doing is going through all observations of one very distinctive invasive plant with bright red berries. Many of the oldest observations are correct, but were overlooked and never got a second ID, possibly because they are in the plant’s native range in Asia (all the observations in the US get taken care of). The rest are incorrect in an obvious way, probably a result of older CV model suggestions coupled with the example photos of red berries, so they’re easy to bump to a higher level.
My only issue there is that in most cases I can only feel confident bringing it to Magnoliopsida because I don’t know anything about the plants of Asia except when they become a problem in my area. So I fear that’s too high of a classification to ever get a more specific ID.
Does anyone know how to pull up the top 500 species observers in 2023? I assumed that the Explore tab would re-do the list of 500 observers by # of species, but it doesn’t. It’s the same list of observers with 6k+ observations, just re-ordered. Some of the ones near the bottom have observed <500 species in 2023, and there’s a lot of iNat observers who made fewer than 6k 2023 observations of 500+ species.
since the page is broken, i made a page to display the results of the associated API requests in a more human-friendly format. this should allow you to see observers by species count. however, it should be noted that the API won’t return results beyond the top 500 observers.
I have no idea, where you can see how high in the ranking list of observations you are, but congrats anyway…
As for IDing, I had a concept for me, to get me to more ID-ing… - I looked at everybodys observations who IDed my observation, if there was something I could help…
But I must admit, I haven’t done that for quiet a while. - Sometimes I still do, but not as consequent, as I once did…
