Finding identifiers for my observations

General
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Hi everyone,
I was wondering if there was a way to push or promote identifications on iNaturalist?
I have a lot of old observations that need IDing…
I also have observations that I am so excited about but are not being IDed…
Thank you,
Jerome

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Looks like you’ve mostly run into species that have fewer IDers on iNat and are difficult to ID from a photo. There’s a sawfly that could go to research grade if you withdraw your attempt at ID (unless you’re very confident in your ID).

Also, those records are not very old. They may yet get some attention. Keep observing and don’t worry about the statistics of your activity. Enjoy.

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There is no guarantee of the time period between you posting your observation and an identifier making an ID suggestion. I’ve had posts where someone provided ID literally within a minute, and other times, 2 years. If you really are desperate you can in the search bar type in your most confident-taxon level ID and then tag the top identifiers.

The truth is, there are a lot of taxa that cannot be ID’ed to species level, or even family level, through photographs only (especially insects). So wanting to get species ID is sometimes wishful thinking, due to the aforementioned reason and also because the majority of insects are wildly understudied. Also the identifiers may not be very active due to personal reasons etc.

But, we do encourage you to keep iNatting, so for now just go and enjoy the nature.

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Hi Jerome, welcome to the iNat Forum! I just wanted to drop a quick note that I changed your topic title from “push notifications” to “finding identifiers for my observations”. “Push notifications” has a specific meaning - an alert, buzz, or sound for a notification from an app on your phone or on certain websites.

Some sort of alert system for older observations in need of ID might be interesting, but tricky to design so that it doesn’t feel spammy. One thing you can do is search for the experts in that taxon in your region and drop a comment on the observation mentioning their username.

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I find that most of my bird observations are not getting RG’d. Is there some sort of problem with that?

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I quickly checked your profile and it looks like nearly 80% of your bird observations are research-grade, so that seems to contradict what you said.

There is no problem at all with not having all your observations being RG’d, due to many reasons, some of which have been stated above. Specifically for your observations, a lot of your photos are quite blurry, so it could be hiding some species distinguishing features. But, I’m not a bird expert so I could be saying a load of tosh. Just keep in mind that its other iNat users who are giving the ID’s, and it could be due to their own personal reasons that they are not being active in iNat.

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Thanks. I should have said recently my bird photos aren’t getting ID’ed as much. Some photos are blurry due to the fact of my camera not being top-notch. Sorry

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I recommend joining projects that fit your observations especially worldwide projects like https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/orthoptera. Or even something like my own project https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/passengers-parasites-taking-rides.

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@romje, you are posting attractive, well-focused photos of interesting plants and animals, some from places where there are few iNaturalist observers. They are valuable contributions. It’s frustrating waiting for identifications. (I can’t help; I don’t know the plants in your area.) One thing that can help is to keep identifying and communicating with other observers. Slowly you’ll begin to get “followers” who will see your observations as they’re posted and will probably help with identification.

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Just be patient. Often it takes years for an observation to get an ID, especially if you’re in a location that’s not in the mainstream iNat user area or if you’re dealing with species that have few observations or are difficult to accurately ID.

This is not an instant gratification type of site. Like most things in nature and the sciences it requires patience, often an extreme amount of it.

Don’t worry about observations not getting IDs rapidly, that simply is not how it works here most of the time.

Some things that can help though:

  • Joining projects that are focused on relevant species or areas.

  • Looking at other observations in your area to see if there are similar observations to yours and what IDs those have.

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I was able to move a few of your unknowns forward. I also noticed that you have a few duplicates.

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