When you’re a new user, people swarm over your observations like flies around a corpse. But a while later, after you’ve been on iNaturalist for a while, you find that less people are identifying your observations, and a lot of them are needs id. It’s just kind of sad. That’s happened to a lot of us…

This is so true T_T I have so many lichen observations that have sat for months, but I post one cardinal and it is ID’d in under 5 minutes :/ We need more lichen folks!

[image] im-a_cat-purrson: But a while later, after you’ve been on iNaturalist for a while, you find that less people are identifying your observations I don’t think you’re being forgotten or ignored. You’re just getting lost in the shuffle like everyone else. There are just too many observa…

[image] DianaStuder: I’m sorry, but your chosen name is difficult to remember with the correct punctuation. You can type “purrson” in the blank in the upper left of the home page, where you’d normally type a taxon you’re looking for. I think what’s happening is that the search function consid…

If that’s the case at all, I’d expect it to be less about a declining number of users or identifications, and more the opposite. More users = more observations = more work for people who can ID things, so the percentage of observations that get IDed lowers without the actual number of IDs lowering. …

Lichen are challenging. Sometimes the lichenologists say – this needs microscopy or chemistry.

I’ve sort of gotten the hang of them? I think? - at one point I mistook the “fairy ring” morphology as something genus specific. :P because I had only ever seen it in Caloplaca eugyra. Then I had all these confused lichenologists wondering why I was so frustrated :P I’ve been using this lichen port…

I looked at your observations. Your early ones are of large, well lit subjects that are identifiable, so they were. The early arthropod and snail photos are very good too. For some reason, the latest close-up photos have a lot less resolution. This is one factor that contributes to less identifica…

Yes, more lichenologists would be great, but in many cases it would just mean more people saying no, that one can’t be identified from a photo.

I’ve found the opposite! I know for a fact there are people who watch my account to get first digs on certain species I observe lots of. Some others know I make a lot of observations and I know what I’m looking at most times, so it’s easy IDs.

Feeling Forgotten

General

DianaStuder September 18, 2026, 7:00am 37

Thank you for that !
I battle to get iNat to offer me the right user name.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/mention-broken-links-are-blue-on-open-obs/84111/10

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Feeling Forgotten

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