Helpful Tips and Resources for Beginner (Plant) iNatters AND Common Beginner Mistakes

[DianaStuder]

Think of the iNat Reviewed as = Mark as Read. Thank you, don’t want to see that again.

While I am, still interested in the ongoing What IS that discussion, I leave it in my dashboard queue. When the discussion moves to sailing over my head, Reviewed, Next.

Thanks for reminding me of one of the MANY things that I have learnt about ‘how to iNat’ by (painful) trial and error. And my own ranting Help HELP questions.

[carnifex]

Several things to be covered here:

The ‘reviewed’ option is a setting specifically affecting what will be displayed for you in the Identify module. Everything that is marked as ‘reviewed’ will not be displayed for you by the default settings (which can be modified, however).

In other words: The ‘reviewed’ button only changes the display for your personal account, it won’t have any effect on the observation for any other user.

So, I don’t think it works as you assume, regarding the dashboard:

@amybirder

I had NO idea that I could check it and that it would have the result of no longer showing the observation marked as reviewed on my dashboard.

But I stand corrected.

However,

@amybirder

what if I look at an observation, identify it to the best of my ability and then mark it as reviewed

• this should not be possible, as when you leave an ID on someone’s observation, the ‘reviewed’ box should automatically be ticked, so you would only be able to de-select it again. Just viewing or commenting on someone’s observation won’t trigger the ‘reviewed’ field.

Next topic:

@amybirder

I get tired of seeing observations that I’ve already identified show up in my dashboard queue

If you don’t want to receive notifications about agreeing ID’s, you can change your personal settings accordingly, by turning Confirming IDs off:

You will still be notified if someone disagrees with your ID.

You can also stop following observations on a case-by-case level by choosing ‘unfollow’ in the upper right corner on an observation page:

or likewise in the Identify module:

I’d assume that in ‘unfollowing’ an observation you also won’t be notified about disagreeing IDs, however.

Lastly,

@amybirder

basic things still aren’t covered anywhere that I can find

I feel the help section would become too large and hard to view if every detail would be covered there.
But often, you can find further information about a function by either hovering your mouse over it or clicking on it (or on a ‘?’ or ‘i’ beside of it)

E.g., clicking:

on the ‘i’

on the ‘?’

even two, redundant, options here (either ‘what’s this’ or ‘about’)

Or, via mouse-over:

the annotations are further explained that way

quality grades on an observation are also explained via this method

And also the ‘reviewed’ function is explained that way:

Whether this information is easy to find, I am not commenting on.
But I wanted to show that at least sometimes, explanations exist.

[carl_r]

As an aging non-botanist, I would say not to be too shy about using specialized words. Even when I don’t know them (or actually, don’t remember them) it gives me specific things to learn and focus on. I appreciate when botanists give me a correction, followed with very specific, factual information.

By the way – excellent forum!!

[carl_r]

I like this idea too!! There’s definitely a phased development, for me, and I’m still in newbie phase.

[arnanthescout]

I can understand that! I appreciated learning the occasional botanical term, like in this early instance during my iNat career. Other people can get overwhelmed or daunted by it, especially once you start stringing those words together like a beaded necklace; I have been on that end as well. Usually I prefer it best when the definition is given with a specialized word, or an image to explain.

The problem is you don’t know who is receptive to what information you’re giving or not. As a non-bulk identifier, I go through a user’s profile (and sometimes observations) to gauge whether they’d appreciate identification information or grasp specialized words. Bulk identifiers are trying to help many more people and ID many more observations. With that goal, my strategy is rather inefficient, and those people typically don’t give information unless someone tags them for an explanation. It’s why I always appreciate local IDers as well, people who give those little bits of ID information; it creates a sense of community.

[carl_r]

As with all you’ve said, very true! It’s easy for a specialist to overwhelm an outsider, even without the specialized terminology. (I tend to overwhelm in sheer mass of thoughts, observations, speculations, theories and, in short, talk.)

Thanks for your insight and wisdom.

[ralfmuschall]

After having gone thru a bunch of things laelled as “unknown” to give at least a coarse ID so IDers can find them, I’d add a few tips:

• When taking pictures of flowers, try to make sepals, stamens etc. clearly visible. In low quality flower-only images, it might become hard to separate Chelidonium majus (12+ stamens) from Brassicaceae (2 outer+4 inner stamens) or Oenothera (4 outer+4 inner stamens), a similar problem occurs with Geum (spiky sepals) vs. Ranunculus (round sepals);
• Sometimes plants grow over another and it is hard to see in the picure which leaves belong to which flower - try to untangle them a bit;
• If several things are in the image (e.g. aphids on a plant), tell if the observation is about the plant or the parasite (and even if it is about the plant, knowing what eats it might help and vice-versa);
• For slugs: try to get a good image of the right side of the mantle where the breathing hole is (the position of the hole is important);
• For rapidly moving small animals: take dozens or even hundreds of image in rapid-fire mode, most of which will be blurry or otherwise bad (unless you have a very expensive camera). Later discard all of them except the good ones before uploading. Remember that in a macro photograph, even a slowly crawling ant is “rapidly moving”.