Is there an appropriate/approved method for finding/contacting potential expert identifiers? I’ve been on iNaturalist for two years now, and its become painfully obvious that my area lacks suitable experts in a number of areas, ranging from big (the fungi/lichen kingdom) to small (such as the oenoth…

Also, try to make friends! iNat has an option to subscribe to an user. You can find identifiers who are willing to help and ask them to subscribe to your profile. Then they would see your observations in their notification list and have a simple option to go ID them (see screenshot). [изображение_…

[image] lappelbaum: [image] lynnharper: So maybe people make IDs as a way of saying thank you? I definitely do that Or, sometimes if I have in mind to tag someone, I will first go through their observations and review as many as I can – then tag them.

Fungi are definitely tough; I’m in the midwest, I’ll give a glance at your obs and see if there are any fungi that I can pick out, but as @lynnharper said, often times microscopic or chemical characteristics are needs to get fungi down to species level. Mushroomexpert.com is a decent starting point …

@bcs_mass Unfortunately one of the issues of Inat is that there is a 10:1 ratio of observers to identifiers. I barely have enough time to cover an area with 900K observations(I only ID plants for the most part). Keep in mind that many lesser known taxa may not have experts and there are a lot of gen…

I’ve been trying my hand at some ID’s I hadn’t realised that so few are responsible for so much

Considering the many dead or rejected identifier-friendly feature requests, I’d say the system is more supportive of observers than of identifiers. This is understandable, in a way.

I haven’t had issues with getting IDs in Pennsylvania, but WV definitely has a lack of identifiers, particularly in certain categories. In my experience: *Animals - particularly diurnal or “interesting” species - get IDed quickly. *With plants, cultivated ones get IDed promptly, as do “true” woodl…

Thank you. I may take you up on that - but it will likely take a couple of days. A wave of family obligations is headed my way.

There are several ways to identify frequent identifiers but this is not the same as finding either local identifiers or expert ones. You really need to look at an identifier’s profile to know more about how they can help you: check what they say in the profile, check how many identifications they ha…

And yet West Virginia has incredible flora in my limited (alas) experience! @merrimacga mentioned making IDs yourself - you already have about three times as many IDs as observations, so you are doing more than your share of those. Something that has helped in New England and New York are a couple …

Etiquette/Method for Finding Identifiers?

General

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Effective ways to get ID help General	21	1496	June 18, 2022
Identify identifiers IDs General identify	127	3419	November 12, 2025
Little interaction by the community General question	58	4712	January 17, 2022
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Etiquette/Method for Finding Identifiers?

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