When I look at the top 10 leaderboards for identifying species and click on the identification icon, I notice that some people have a variety of “supporting/leading/improving” IDs, while other people have primarily “supporting IDs”. I am wondering if these labels are important to you, and if having a variety is something to strive for. I am primarily identifying fungi.
Welcome to the forum!
There is a good current thread on a very similar topic that may be worth checking out:
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@cthawley Thank you. That is very useful.
Where are you seeing the Top 10 Leaderboards where you can click an icon to see this?
If you’re on an observation, on the right towards the bottom there’s the section Top Identifiers of [Observation Taxon]. If you click on the number under a top identifier’s name it will take you to a page that has a pie chart that shows what proportion of supporting/leading/improving IDs that identifier has for that taxon.
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I can see that this could be of personal interest, but what REALLY matters is helping observations move through the ID process and out the other end, with a correct ID of course. So does it matter if most of your IDs are supporting? Absolutely not! With the exception of those who add additional IDs to observations with a long list of correct IDs already, but that’s quite another story.
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Since iNat is 24/7 across the world - who gets to an obs for I was FIRST is random, and meaningless. What matters is who can leave a comment explaining why they chose that taxon. With a nice explanation here
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/still-dont-understand-what-a-leading-identification-is/47513/9
Matthew has already answered your specific questions, but as it seems you are more interested in what it means overall I’ll try to get at that.
Lots of leading IDs generally means that you have IDed a lot of observations that are not RG, or you are correcting misIDed observations. This could indicate you are one of the only IDers IDing this group to this level of specificity. You tend to (hopefully) lead the community in the right direction, but they are not there yet.
Lots of improving IDs means you had a lot of leading IDs that subsequent IDers later came along and agreed with. This could mean you are usually the first in a group of IDers to add IDs, observers just agree with your IDs, or a community of IDers has emerged when previously it was just you. You tend to successfully improve the community ID, which only happens when others agree with you.
Lots of supporting IDs mean you agree with a lot of existing IDs. Maybe you are confirming a lot of single IDs to make observations RG, or you just like adding another confirming ID to observations. You tend to support the existing community.
Lots of maverick IDs mean you ID a lot of observations where the community (or you) is very confused. Maybe you ID chronically misIDed groups, or observations stuck at higher levels.
Overall I tend to focus on adding leading IDs. Ideally they become improving if there are other IDers (in my case there often aren’t). I will add supporting IDs, but only if an observation is not yet RG. Other IDers have other priorities though.
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@DianaStuder This is very helpful. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it all in such detail.
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The explanation is from @thomaseverest
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