No, you are on a different track to me.
These are nice sharp pictures - intended to be a wide view for habitat or vegetation. They are what the observer wants. But there is not an ‘intended focus’ there. We cannot ID. I Mark as Reviewed. But it remains in Needs ID forever to no point and purpose. We cannot.
1 Like
can you find one easy to identify enigmatic tree species or something and just identify that? Especially if the user is gone, that’s a way of getting some data out of the observation without breaking any rules. I guess the person mentioning in the initial post is taking tons of habitat photos and not tagging with any species at all? Or taking photos of specks and calling them specific bird species? I guess it depends on the situation.
No - if I would pick out a random sp that would be going AGAINST the intention of my observers.
Posting landscape photos isn’t really the point of iNaturalist, though it can feel right to the observer. (It’s nature, isn’t it?) so I don’t feel a strong need to respect the observer’s desire to post a landscape. If the photo is recent, I’ll usually just go by it. However, if the photo is over a year old and observer isn’t active, I have no qualms about picking out something identifiable (if such a thing exists) and naming that, occasionally leaving a question like, “Is this what you would like identified?” although I suspect the person had no such wish. The frustration for me is that so often nothing shows well enough for me to ID it.
6 Likes
if they are insisting it is a landscape shot and they do not want any species tagged, then i agree it’s not really following the rules of the site. They should find an easily identifiable species in the photo to tag to, or else not add it at all.
And yes of course there are some observations where nothing can be identified at all. I think if you’re sure of that you can tag it as no further ID possible. But please do keep an open mind. Some of us are really good at identifying some species from far away and just because the photo is blurry, ‘annoying’, or not edited how the identifier wants isn’t a reason to knock it back to ‘plants’ or ‘birds’
1 Like
What the hell how have I just discovered this. I’ve been editing photos in Google Photos for so long and I could have been doing it through the iNat app instead! Oh how much time I’ve wasted. Do you know where the photo edits are stored? Directly into app storage?
It stores into the app storage. It doesn’t change your original picture in case you were wondering.
wait you can ID other people’s observations on mobile? How? Is there an identify tab?
Of course!
When you click on an observation you just click on suggest ID.
Are you using iNaturalist the app or Seek?
1 Like
Good to know!
1 Like
No, but you can use the Explore screen to find observations and add IDs to them. That being said, the mobile apps aren’t designed for heavy identifying so it’s not particularly efficient.
1 Like
This was an interesting topic as I came over to the forum today because one person was driving me mad. They post a lot of observations, one photo each (hundreds in a day), and never add any IDs. When I come along looking through “Unknowns”, and add an ID because there is an obvious spider, or flower, or…, they come back and disagree with my ID, by adding an ID for something much less obvious in the photo. So I wanted to know if I could avoid ever seeing any of their observations.
So thanks for offering me some options before I even asked!
7 Likes
This is really useful, as there are two people who I don’t want to see in my ‘identify’ page, either. It’s not because they’ve opted out of the community taxon, it’s just that they’ve decided not to EVER bother giving an ID to anything. I (and others) have added polite comments, explained how to add IDs, given links to helpful videos etc., sent polite messages - but they just WON’T add an ID to anything. I often ID things at kingdom level, and write helpful comments for new users, but if someone continually submits photos of leaves and won’t even ID them as plants, I just get annoyed and don’t want to see their stuff any more. Maybe it’s just me. lol.
5 Likes
Definitely not just you!