I don’t view “unknown” as trash! I view it as “not yet named,” often because the poster doesn’t know what it is and has posted it hoping someone will identify it.
I view “casual” as trash. But captive/cultivated observations aren’t trash, which is one of the reasons I’d like to see some changes in how observations are classified.
Not all casual observations are useless either. For example, I’ve recently added comments on casual observations of endangered plants missing locations and got responses that the observers didn’t put the location up because they were worried about poaching. Totally valid concern but after explaining how to obscure locations and pointing them to the help info on geo privacy, several of these are now RG with obscured locations instead of casual with missing location. So it can be worth engaging with some of these as they may be in that ‘bin’ simply because of lack of knowledge how iNat works.
Agree.
I have some casuals. Some for example are host plants for non-casual wildlife that are clearly planted… I linked those with the wildlife that I actually wanted to observe and think this is very usefull (especially as I am not a plant person and am not able to just name the host… it´s better to show)
for example this one https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/105938662
I also think in certain regions documentations of animals like cows or sheep can be useful (e.g. in national parks or when I observed some stuff on pastures in the middle of forest… it can complete the picture), so I sometimes also document those
The sad part is, that is true of multi-species observations, too.
Absolutely - stunning picture of … why has nobody identified it yet?!
Sigh, more multiples in limbo.
I know what taxonomy is. My understanding was that I was uploading photos so that people who know much more than I do can identify them correctly. I read a lot of instructions when I signed up, and I don’t remember any emphasis on “taking a guess” at the identification. What I wish this system had: a way for me to thank or otherwise give some good energy to people who add IDs to my observations. It’s still kind of exciting when that happens and I appreciate it.
But you can, add a comment with thanks or go and id some of their observations, they’ll appreciate it.
The people who ID are willing to do their best. We are by no means all expert so our ID might be as simple as … beetle … bird … Experts can then filter for their chosen taxon and take it further.
Have a look how many Unknowns, or Needs ID obs there are in the queue ahead of yours. I am not a birder, but nudging Unknown to Aves can go all the way to Research Grade species, while I work my way thru another batch. All identifiers are volunteers. And. We. Are. Swamped!
A good target is IDs for others equal to your own hopeful obs. That is received as an enthusiastic Thank You!
Thank you, I’ll do that!
Thank you, that helps. But could you clarify what you mean by this?:
“A good target is IDs for others equal to your own hopeful obs. That is received as an enthusiastic Thank You!”
Trying to do this right and not be a knucklehead.
Ah! Its basically pay it forward. For as many observations as you upload, try to ID that many things for others. Even if it is only high level (plant, fungi, etc) it gets the process started! There is no rule about this; but its nice goal to aim for :)
Allowing for some obs which are complicated, provoke discussion and need more IDs, average out your obs to 2 IDs each. And pay that forward by helping to ID twice as many as you have observed. That is appreciated by both the other observers, and any identifiers. That is a sincere pay it forward thank you.
Idle curiosity. How many obs at Plantae waiting … almost 2 thirds of a million. Maybe 1 in 10 had a placeholder with info?
This exactly! I know in my case I really only focus on unknown taxon in my local area and specific taxons worldwide/nationally. I never see most unknown obs.
You can choose to reach out further.
I have folders of iNat URLs lined up. So rewarding to keep finding new biodiversity. This morning - a long leggedy cricket in Namibia (needs the long legs to keep him off the hot sand)
Mostly, what bothers me is that when I do iconic_taxon=unknown, literally every page has at least one multi-species observation. It’s getting mighty tedious having to do the exact same cut-and-paste over and over again.
I get more of the - each picture is a separate obs - please combine ALL the distinguishing features so we can work out what The One is.
Yep, I hear you.
Question to the IDers: which tentative layman’s ID strategy makes it optimal for IDers to find and ID the species with minimal workload? Recently I had an insect larva [0] on an aphid-infested plant.
The only animals which I knew back then to look like the image were lacewings, so I put this as tentative ID and mentioned that there should be claws which were absent in my specimen. That was corrected to Hover flies (syphidae) by people who know them. What should I have done to make ID easy and effective for you?
(a) select Pterygota (the narrowest reasonable clade as I was sure about Endopterygota [1] which is inside of pterygota)
(b) be bold, select lacewing and wait to be corrected
Method (a) would make it pop up on the screens of all generalists for flying insects, 99% of which might not be interested that much in hoverflies. Method (b) would make it pop up for lacewing specialists, eating their time for a clade they don’t specialize in; and hoverfly specialists won’t see it at all.
[0] observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/127216537
[1] iNaturalist doesn’t have Endopterygota and probably never will get them, see https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/422296, there is no Toxicofera either (probably for similar reasons).
(Thank you for asking this. I have often wondered myself so will be curious to see the responses.)