I’ve been on iNaturalist for a while, so I have a lot more identifications than observations. At this point, I’m practically a professional at pointing out the obvious.
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Nice!
Wunderbar!
Well, not entirely what you’re asking about but I know I have a (likely) one-sided “parasocial” relationship with the people that identify my observations, I remember all of their usernames and enjoy seeing them identify things I’ve posted, and have garnered interest in taxa I never would have cared about without them. I’ve started looking for things like plants, fish, benthic invertebrates, and even lichen to post them more often because of identifiers and what they do.
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While less than countries like Costa Rica and Brazil, there is still plenty of undiscovered things that we don’t know about yet in North America! There are hundreds of new undescribed species being documented all across the continent to this date (I’ve even found some myself), and hundreds of thousands of species that have only been documented when they were initially collected and described 100-200 years ago.
Lots to see, and plenty of value to be had exploring over here!
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I’ve done a lot more identifications than observations because observations take longer (photo, select, crop, upload, fix the latitude, longitude, and accuracy circle, add to projects, tag appropriately so I can find it again). An identification can be done in a few seconds, once I know the organism well. (It can be carelessly done wrong in a few seconds, too – I appreciate those who have caught my errors. You’re right, a Canada Goose should not be labeled a Canada Gooseberry.)
The hard thing with identifications is getting past the feeling that one doesn’t know enough. Few people who make observations here lack ID skills. (If you think you lack them, are you comparing yourself to the right people? Do you know more than those middle school students whose observations we see here?) I get very annoyed with those who seem to think that we have to be formally trained to know how to ID things! My own experience and watching people around me make me certain that it’s the learning that’s important, not how we get it. You can learn a lot right here on iNaturalist, just looking at photos of an organism in a location.
Feel unconfident but want to ID something? Help with Project Dandelion. There are over 100,000 dandelion “Needs ID” observations. Dandelions are a taxonomic mess. It is reasonable to agree to Dandelion (Taraxacum) and mark them “No, it can’t be improved.” Zap! They’re out of Needs ID and into RG, where some day a person crazy enough to take on Taraxacum taxonomy can find them.
(We could argue about whether dandlions are identifiable to species or not but, but first we’d have to agree on what dandelion species are. Are there 2 or 3 widespread weedy species or 1000’s? If 1000’s, the differences are certainly subtle. Botanists seriously don’t agree! Do we really care?)
And by the way, we need observers as well as identifiers. Such amazing things you observers find sometimes! Fun to scan through while identifying and of course useful. It’s just that most of us who identify feel like we’re getting buried in observations so we’ll try to lure or guilt you into identifying any way we can. Choosing to spend your time observing is great! (But we could use the help with – er, no, I shouldn’t try harder to guilt you into IDing. But . . . .)
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What search filters are you normally using when you look at observations? I think a lot of people play with different search filters until they find something that works for their particular skills and preferences (e.g. observation date, only observations at a certain taxonomic level or above a certain taxonomic level, etc.).
There are over 3.5 million “needs ID” observations in Texas out of a total of 11 million verifiable observations, which suggests to me that the IDer coverage is probably not as exhaustive as you think. I know nothing about Texas flora and fauna, but a quick browse of observations that were posted about a month ago shows me quite a few that look distinctive enough that I imagine they are identifiable by someone who knows the local species (including at least one bird observation with quite decent photos).
(I often like to go back a couple weeks or a month when IDing because this way I catch the things that the people who regularly look at new observations missed on the first go-through, but the observations are not so picked over that mostly only the difficult ones are left.)
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Well I am pleasantly surprised. Just looked at my year in review and saw that I made 5000+ ID’s and 7500 obs. So I am not lagging as far behind with the ID’s as I thought. Having fun all the way.
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Agree. Enthusiastic identifiers send me out looking enthusiastically for more of what they identify. 
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Congratulations!
Sweet, that’s nice. I wish I could have that many observations. This year was busy, lol.
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