I haven’t seen one. It would have to be a traditional project. My first thought is that it sounds fun, but actually I’m not sure what the advantage of having it would be, since staff has said repeatedly they would never alter observations in anyway, even to “fix” them.
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Good to know. I remembered the discussion, but not the result. Thank you!
When I first began to use iNaturalist, I used an android phone to take photos. I would then ‘share’ the photo from the camera app to the iNaturalist app on my phone, where a window pops up and I need to make an ID. Sometimes, I could not decide, so I would decide to cancel the observation. When I opened iNat on my phone, I found that it uploaded the photo anyway and it appeared as “unknown” in my list. So, that might explain at least a few of these “unknown” observations.
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If you just want to browse a clunky, incomplete list of multi-species observations, you can try https://www.inaturalist.org/comments?commit=Search&q=https%3A%2F%2Fforum.inaturalist.org%2Ft%2Fhow-to-fix-your-observation-with-photos-of-multiple-species%2F15096&quality_grade=needs_id
I made up that link to see how often the observer successfully follows the instructions. The answer is not often. Usually they don’t respond, or once in a while they say they tried but found it too complicated.
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I’m not literally suggesting autodumping into plants. I’m just saying it would be more efficient than leaving obs blank. As I said, the difference between how slowly unknowns get ID’d and incorrect IDs get ID’d properly is dramatic - often years’ worth of difference, and that’s not helpful to scientists or casual users. I’m aware some researchers do mass uploads in this way, and I stand by believing that shouldn’t be allowed with no ID, or just implement something like allowing mass uploads, but don’t allow the obs to be made public without an initial ID suggestion. That solves all problems, and its similar to how people publish things in any other area of life. This way observers can both mass upload and the “unknown” obs don’t get clogged up with 80-90% actual known-ish but simply not ID’d obs. It would also prevent casual users from throwing their houseplants up without even saying its a plant and running away. Personally, I don’t feel it’s too much of an expectation from casual users to bare minimum say they’re trying to ID a plant if they clearly know it is one. I also had the same idea as arboretum_amy: a temporary default ID system that can be overridden by actual human users, though I’m not sure how much of the system’s resources that would use.
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People are iding by country, so dicots in a country where experts are more active will be ided faster, most are going from new to old, so new unknowns should go to dicots immediately.
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There is an open request for draft mode - giving a less clunky workaround approach for that workflow. Would make both observers and identifiers happier. I am sad to see the broad ID I struggled with overridden by - but they KNEW what it was (or have since worked it out). I could have skipped that and worked on another from the mountain in waiting.
I confess I sometimes use the hook, line and sinker approach. Try a tentative ID - then withdraw / agree when the response comes in.
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Nice for some. My lonely pile has gone from 37K to 38K. Not seeing any progress from broad plant categories. And almost none from the few days when I tried doing that.
If I tweak the filters to what I have reviewed and still needs ID. 6K. Almost all could be autodumped in dicots, and then added to the 38K … to languish and die unnoticed.
In my region (New England), there are currently only 1,117 Unknowns, out of 1.6 million that are Needs ID. I haven’t done much lately with Unknowns, but obviously somebody has. Or maybe observers are finally learning early on to give an ID upon uploading? Either way, having only a thousand or so Unknowns to deal with is fantastic!
Although I confess I’m a little daunted by 1.6 million Needs ID observations. That’s not quite half of all New England observations for all taxa, which is currently 3.8 million.
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And what a magnificent species it is!
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@dianastuder – I apologize. Yesterday when I was doing Unknowns I shifted a fair number of African plants from Unknown to Dicot. Only last evening did I realize that you having a system in place for dealing with them meant that I should leave them alone.
If I can figure out how to find them, I’d be happy to withdraw my Dicot identification. Would it be useful to you if I did that?
There’s a question I’ve had for some time about “unknowns”. Another issue with them is that a large percentage of them aren’t unknown at all - and I don’t mean someone was just lazy with the labeling, I mean they’re literally sitting at RG ID - some for years, but they’re still popping up when I search unknowns. This puzzles me. Does anyone know why this happens?
Oh my, nevermind. I was simply using a search for obs I personally hadn’t ID’d. 
Because bacteria and allies will be shown in unknown.
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Ah, thank you. That makes sense, but is inconvenient. I just realized that I was right the first time and there are still some RG “unknowns” where the point on the map is still a question mark. The specific one I was just looking at was a Cyanobacterium.
You can use url for “no id” observations to exclude those.
Yeah I’ve actually experimented with several ways to find unknowns. For good or ill, that gives one of the most pruned results.
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No no - please don’t withdraw your hard work. Everything helps.
I am quietly ignoring the 38K. I need to tackle a mountain I can hope to clear.
The good stuff along the way is wonderful. The firsts!! Look at this distribution map … to which we have added the fourth obs on iNat! Makes my heart sing.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/107784157
If anyone wants to - there are a lot of dead fish / shark / etc among those Unknowns from a West African project where scientists work with fishermen to record their catch. Too sad for me to see dead, dead, dead.
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That is a strange looking plant – and a Lobelia!
And if it were hard work I probably wouldn’t have done it. As you say, there are fascinating things to see in the Unknown pile!
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There has been no reduction in iNat staff since Joelle departed in 2018.
What’s impeded a lot of development of new functionality (including onboarding) has been the need to focus resources (which includes staff time) on iNat’s infrastructure with such a small team.
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