By invitation only - I’ve never been invited.
There seems to be an expectation among many new iNatters that things will happen fast on the site. Some observations that are clear photos of easy-to-ID organisms will get to RG quickly. Others will not. New users should consider what they are photo’ing and how. If you are shooting organisms that can be tough to ID and you aren’t posting the clearest, cropped pics you can get, your obs might not get any attention. We’ve all had to up our game when shooting these tough taxa, I know I have. I do my best to put an initial ID on each one by doing some research. And not every photo I take is worth posting, so I often don’t. And then I wait … patiently. ;-)
@im-a_cat-purrson You may be referring to me. After reading the comments by @jnstuart and @taylorse I was curious about your observations, so I have indeed just checked all of them and identified a few to the best of my abilities. Hope it made you feel a little less forgotten. :) Do not feel guilty for starting this topic. It is okay to express feelings of frustration as these often lead to taking the next step in a certain process.
One suggestion, not specifically to you but in general, is to make the whole iNaturalist experience less self-focused and to identify as many observations from other people. Keep uploading sightings and then just let them be, without caring about the fact that others may never see them. Take some time to ID at least three observations by anyone else for every observation that you upload yourself. The more you ID for others, the more other people will visit your page and find your observations. You do not need to be an expert to identify; pretty much anyone can identify a few dozen basic animal species at least.
A suggestion specifically to you after seeing all of your uploads: try to get the organisms as close as possible and upload photos from different angles. For example in the case of fungi, these are not always identifiable by just the cap so consider taking a picture of the underside of the cap (so an identifier can get a closer look at the pores, gills and ridges) and of the stipe, for example using a small mirror. In the case of plants, take a photo of the whole plant, a close-up of a branch with a few leaves, another close-up of just a leaf, maybe both upperside and underside, and a close-up of the flower or fruits (if there are any).
I recall one of my plant obs got a confirming ID about 9 years or so after I posted it. I’d forgotten all about it.
From research published by iNat 25% of IDs are made by 130 people. Think about that.
And from iNat’s stats (toggle the display to one year to include the trend across the CNC explosion) – hovering around 6 … Million ! and heading steadily to 7 million
Wednesday 16th for example 94K obs Needs ID
PS on 18 Sept that has risen to 95.7K Where are our identifiers ? 
but 54K (now 59K, almost 62K) are RG !! We have achieved a third.
Sleeping on the job. 96.6K while I was at Kirstenbosch today
98K 99.1K will we reach 100K as iNatters continue to upload their obs ?
Update 19 Sept – Yes we have 100K waiting from Wednesday. And 64K at RG
21 Sept 102K waiting and 69K RG
I’m sorry that has been your experience. This is my 10th year of iNat, and I actually feel like many identifiers work very hard in their particular areas of expertise. I haven’t noticed a real drop-off in attention to my observations–in fact, I think it’s better than 10 years ago. I also like that some experts, if they see you are trying to do better, will sometimes offer advice for taking better photos or leave a comment if you’ve found something interesting.
That said, I hope you continue to contribute because sometimes it’s just that you add observations where there are few experts identifying or (and I find this in summer a lot) when people are busily making their own observations or working hard at their day jobs. You just have to be patient. Anyway, hang in there.
Same. I’m a part of this pilot as well; I mass-ID birds in my area and don’t even look at how recently the user joined.
You should also know that many times plants, fungi and lichens cannot be identified to species by just one photograph. With one photo you might be able to get to family or genus, but to get to species often requires a lot of details about the plant. So it’s not that identifiers are passing you by, it’s that there is not enough data in the photo to make an identification.
i was going to return to this thread to cite that some of my 4 year old observations got IDs, but i recognized the user’s name from the thread lol
thanks @jorenvanschie for the IDs, sorry most of my birds are dead
to echo the people suggesting IDing, it’s a lot of fun and super customizable. the Filters button on the Identify tab is cool to play around with. you can set the Low Rank to something like Order or Family, so you only end up seeing observations that are left at a higher level - something like Plantae or Arthropoda, and you can help narrow it down if you know some different groups within those higher ranks.
or you can check the ‘Disagreements’ checkbox and only see observations where a disagreeing ID has been offered. those observations need more IDs to overcome the disagreement, so it’s always good to get more eyes on them. very common disagreements often have comments explaining how to differentiate something
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!
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 observations to keep up with, despite the heroic efforts of the mass identifiers and the lesser efforts of peewee identifiers like me.
I try to keep up with the new observations that are posted in my area, and, when I’m feeling ambitious, I chip away at the backlog of older unidentified stuff. I never selectively ignore any observer, newbie or oldster.
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 considers the underline a letter, so if you type “cat” it doesn’t find “a_cat”.
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.
Also, the longer a difficult-to-ID observation is up, the more likely it is that someone who can ID it will find it. You’d have to look at WHEN it was IDed to find any real conclusions about ID activity over time.
(That said, no, every single observation from a few years after INat’s creation is not research grade.)
Lichen are challenging. Sometimes the lichenologists say – this needs microscopy or chemistry.
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
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 portal: https://lichenportal.org/portal/ident/key.php?clid=1010&pid=526&taxon=All+Species
Texas is seriously lacking on its lichen field guides/keys. It is very understudied here.
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 identifications.
For plants, a set of photos is always better than a single one. Flower or fruit, whole plant, front of the leaves and back of the leaves; anything unusual.
Please don’t be disappointed if a photo of a tree with no added details does not get identified.
Insects and other small subject photos by phone camera:
Phone cameras have a limited focal length range, that’s why there are multiple cameras. If I have nothing else on me, I take phone photos from different distances and crop the best photo to upload. The macro camera usually has the least resolution, so getting closer often becomes unproductive.
If you see details that were not captured by the camera, describe them in the notes. These help too.
To sum it up, you have LOTS of good photos and LOTS of them are identified. If the photos are identifiable, given time most of them will be. Some can remain unidentified. Like the bird or bug that flew away, not worth getting disappointed over.
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.