Hello, fellow Inaters
I think we all have noticed that after a few days it becomes increasingly likely for observations to be left behind and not be ID’d… so they stay as unkown or something very vague like “bird”.
My question is if there is a way to make them stand out, it could be to have an specific project to add them so users can browse, just like there are projects for the unknown, or some way to “repost” them again. The idea is to avoid having them effectively lost.
I think the most effective way to do this is to tag people. Tag a person to ID some particular observation. Ask (message) a person to ID your observations, all observations or maybe observations before 2025 or observations of spiders or whatever.
If you go this route, do it judiciously. Don’t overwhelm one identifier. Ask several, each individually. Let some time go by before tagging an individual again.
As an identifier, while I try to keep up on recent crab postings, I often sort by “random” which pulls up old observations that may have gotten buried - and often reveals some very cool gems I missed.
As an observer, I find that mentioning people is most effective but try to do it judiciously.
I sort by Date Observed and Ascending for my bookmarked filters. First clear the neglected backlog, then work up to more recent stuff – which others have picked over … leaving the doubtful stuff, sigh. There is a window of YEARS between ‘this week’ which gets seen, and before.
Also taxon-based projects where a team goes thru and looks at all of those.
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/phylica-hardleaves-of-southern-africa
I specifically like doing random and Disagreements, because that frequently means that there’s enough information in the photos for people to have disagreements about, which means that I may be able to be helpful. Or (occasionally), that there’s a photo of a very blurry caterpillar that really can be marked “as good as it can be”. As opposed to decent photos that have been identified as a genus or species that is currently difficult to impossible to prove or disprove and needs someone to do a good rearing series, better field guide, etc.
Adding them to projects can help get more eyes on them, depending on the project.
eg. In the past I’ve added older observations to “Beach Finds & Washashore”, “Intertidal Zone”, “Microscopy”, or “Tilly Bones” where appropriate and they get IDed fairly quickly afterward, even if they’d been waiting at Needs ID for years before. Other projects may have varying degrees of activity.
This could be part of your problem. If your observation is still Unknown, that means the bird/fungi/bug/plant/etc experts who are IDing in that category will never see it. Always make sure to make a guess, even if it’s as broad as one of the big categories.
Everyday in California the Needs ID list of birds gets longer, despite the diligent efforts of a large group of identifiers. About 5 years ago it was around 80,000. I personally have made over 300,000 ID’s in the last 5 years, and despite that today it’s more than doubled to over 200,000. iNat needs more identifiers in almost every taxonomic group.
From every 100 observations x percent will not get an ID because there is a lack of identifiers. If you do not want your observations lost you have to identify more yourself, so that identifiers have more time for your observations?
I think of it more as people who contribute to the community mutually support each other. People who drop 50 Unknowns of shrubs in a park at once without any effort are not going to be a priority for me to ID. People who contribute their volunteer labor will receive the same in return, one hopes.
Personally, I love meeting new people out in the world or bumping into them on Bsky/Reddit and then IDing their old observations. It’s like networking but actually fun.
Absolutely second this. It always puzzles me how often people don’t bother tagging a mushroom as Fungi or a plant as Plantae. This adds work for identifers to weed through Unknown for the organisms they can identify (or to add the correct category so that others can find it) rather than being able to simply filter for the category they know. (Not to mention the amount of low effort observations in there.) There is a number of experienced identifiers who seem to ignore Unknown and I absolutely can’t blame them.
What I try to do is choose one category (Birds, for example) and set the location narrow to my County, with the filter set to Needs ID and Date Added → Ascending (oldest first).
I make a goal and try to identify 100 older, forgotten about, un-ID’d/non species-level bird observations in my county each day to improve the species-level observations which are familiar to me and close to home.
It’s satisfying to see the number of Needs ID observations go down slowly day after day in my county.
this is a toughie, it feels like luck sometimes. maybe like ~48% of my obs are still needs id, and they span a very long period of time. it always feels exciting when a 3+ year old obs gets an id though. it sparks more people coming in to either id or comment on it.
i’ve been an avid user of the taxon project cooperative plant identifying in new england. if i’m having trouble getting it to order or family level & it’s more than a few months old, i tend to stick it into this project to get more eyes on it. you’re not supposed to put you own obs into it, so it doesn’t entirely solve the problem of “there is no one else looking at my uploads!”. i’m also in a couple regional projects, and if there’s a place i visit i also join a project there. stuff i add to birds of greater vancouver tends to get ids pretty quick!
yup… even a vague id like that gets people to see it sooo much faster. sometimes it feels like a broad id can shave off like, 1-2 years of in-the-void time for an observation. i recently discovered the random button on the identify page, and i’ve just been doing broad ids since it’s fairly mindless & saves more knowledgeable people a good chunk of their time.
I would rather suggest a project or campaign to encourage observers, especial beginners on iNat to instead of leaving their OBs ‘Unknown’ to do anything at all, like to take a guess or just use AI suggestion.
I just employ patience. Sometimes years after posting a handful of observations will suddenly be identified.
It’s not a competition to see who has the most RG observations, it’s enough to make the observation itself.
my main problem w this is identifiers now being burdened with incorrect species suggestions. one thing i’ve found that kind of helps for beginners is seeing the cv model suggestion and then setting the id to that order or class the cv suggestion is in. then they start seeing the commonalities between certain taxonomies. (like say, telling the difference between asterales and fabales)
getting rg observations is valuable on the observer’s side for learning purposes. if i don’t know what something is it is very nice to get feedback in a somewhat timely way so that i can use that to build up my own identification skills. im defining “timely” here as < 6 months.
Do identifications yourself, add them to projects, add annotations and tags, try your best to get it as low as possible, tag people asking for IDs.
Make it so IDing it is easier! Refine the location if possible, make sure the time and date is accurate, add more photos if you have any, put any details you can think of in anywhere you can!
Simply, the growth of the number of observations does not scale with the growth of the number of identifiers. The number of oservations scales much more quickly. I can no longer skim over all plant observations from the country in a day and choose those I could ID. Not even close. I can only select some family, subfamily or a few genuses and go through those. And this growth is not balanced by more identifiers. While the number of them totally did increase and some real experts joined iNat and some beginner students became senior or graduated and became professionals and still stayed on iNat, the backlog can grow.
Yes, it’s nice, but you also have to accept the fact that it’s not at all uncommon for community IDs to take years, depending on the species and location, and that in some cases observations simply can’t be IDd to the desired level.
Others are making IDs out of the goodness of their own hearts, not because they are obligated or required to do so. As a result I don’t really find it appropriate for people to be complaining about IDs taking a long time.
Oh, I can’t believe I didn’t know this project! That’s my stomping grounds. I like to ID by ascending order, and often by “disagreements.” I often find perfectly good observations that have been stuck for years, and after I help them along, they sometimes still need more eyes. Now I will have a place to put them.
To me it’s a bigger thrill to see an observation reach RG after a few years, than it is after a few days (whether it’s my own, or another user’s.)
Although there is also a special thrill that comes when you see someone make an ID 1 second after you do, because you think, “wow! so-and-so, at this very moment, is looking at the same things I am!”
Kind of like when you look up at the night sky, and think that someone else is also looking at the very same stars. (Wait, What? Who has time for stargazing, when so many Obs still need identifying!?)