I have tried Date Ascending before, and it definitely allows you to find things you can’t find with Random. I usually do that if I’m trying to clear a particular project, such as the CNC. Otherwise if I try and start with the very beginning of iNat, it just gets overwhelming.
I’ve been working on clearing Unknowns from the CNC - there are so many that are just blatantly someone’s potted plant or pet! It’s very satisfying to see the numbers go down, but I totally understand why people are so exhausted and frustrated. Thank you for the appreciation - I’m very happy to join the ID’ers. It’s nice to get to contribute back to this site that has made such a difference in my life :)
As an amateur with little expertise, I spend a lot of my time trying just to narrow down those Unknowns. I usually can’t tell you if something is wild carrot or water hemlock, but I can tell you it’s in the carrot family! And I hope by narrowing those down, I can bring them to the attention of people more skilled than me. Sometimes, though, I worry I’m just making things harder - if I ID an “unknown” as a dicot, am I helping narrow things down for plant specialists? Or am I just making them harder to find?
I also struggle with things where I’m pretty sure of an ID, but not 100%. Like if I’m 90% certain this jelly fungus is Tremella mesenterica…but it could be a Dacrymyces. I tend to just leave those blank because I’m worried about making a wrong ID, but is it better to risk a wrong ID and get some kind of ID there?? I get all anxious about it, haha.
Better broadly right, than narrowly wrong. Yesterday I said ‘snake’ and … 4 minutes later it was at sp!!
Dicot helps, if someone (local?) is checking those in turn.
For the overwhelming - keep working with filters, till you achieve a batch you can reach the end of. Even the overwhelming, you can get there, a bit at a time - especially if you are a small team working together.
In a case like this, I suggest identifying it as one, but noting that it might be the other. I’ve found an observation of a caterpillar, which I think was already identified as a lep, with fewer prolegs than usual. I put it in Geometridae, with a note that it might be a noctuid, as caterpillars with less prolegs are found it that family too. It turned out to be in Noctuoidea, so I changed my ID.
These observations are often actually identifiable, and commonly need attention because the DNA barcode gets added long after the observation is created - and the new direction that the DNA barcode leads is often not reflected in previous identifications.