When you’re the top identifier and the top observer, then you really know you’ve made it. :-)
The numbers are silly, but people like silly things sometimes.
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I usually check the leaderboards to see who I can tag for help with a difficult ID - so it’s actually a bit annoying when I go to look and the top person is … me.
I do get vague satisfaction from being able to see how many identifications I’ve helped with - it helps me to remember that I’m doing something potentially useful.
But I don’t put too much stock in the numbers themselves. I have a list of “top” identifiers who I know just agree with everything, no matter how unlikely - it’s discouraging to know that some people care more about the numbers and leaderboards than they care about actually being correct.
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Selfish isn’t always bad - self care is a good thing! If identifying doesn’t help out, cutting back/quitting for a while is completely fine. Or go out and do the other part of iNaturalist, which is observing: getting out in nature, or even looking for it during your daily life, is very stress-relieving for me. Especially when I find something interesting or unexpected!
I’m not a big identifier, but I tend to leave a lot of comments to help teach people about particular taxa, or direct them to a user-created guide, something I think they’ll find useful (I also go the extra mile and check to see if they’ve observed the taxon before so I don’t get repetitive). I can sort-of tell who is interested in learning more about something, or as I see it, “the naturalist’s mindset”.
I don’t reach as much people, but often those that I do reach are often quite grateful for the information I give them, and that makes me happy that I’ve helped them learn something new :) I don’t blame top identifiers for being brief and not giving explanations, their mindset is to help as many people as possible by reaching as many people as possible. But if only there were also more local, charismatic identifiers like me who enjoy helping and teaching other people…
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I’m always amazed by the identifiers who have racked up 100-200K IDs, especially for what I consider difficult taxa like insects and plants. Those deserve admiration. I can’t devote that much time, effort, and patience to IDing anywhere close to those numbers for any taxa. I’m less impressed by those who add a 4th or 5th (or 10th) ID to a RG record that isn’t that hard to ID and they have done thousands of those. It appears they’re trying to get to the top of the leaderboard for those species. It isn’t doing any harm in most cases but isn’t really helpful. We all have our own goals and I guess that’s important to some.
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I’ll speak in support of leaderboards. I’m one of the top identifiers in my taxon of interest and region of interest, which happens to overlap a lot with @Manassas interests. I don’t think of it as a game or an ego trip, but it feels good to see some sort of measure of my time and effort. Inevitably I’ll one day drift down the list and that will be great. It’ll mean that new people have come in with more knowledge and time and I’ll probably learn a lot from them. After just a few years, I already see people learning to recognize species that I used to be the main identifier for, including the people who actually live and study in the region, and that’s really the ultimate measure of my efforts. I’ve made identifications for thousands of people in the last few years, and I know that at least a dozen of those people appreciated and valued my input. I really find that rewarding, and I’m not being sarcastic. I think of inat just like a museum collection. When I add a species name to a specimen in a museum, it’s really a solitary activity. I have no expectation that anyone is going to follow up with me. I don’t even know if anyone will see it in my lifetime. Now through inat, I’ve been able to have helpful little exchanges with @Manassas and others and I think it’s one of the really powerful things about this platform. One person in Canada and one in China, both interested in neotropical insects for no obvious reason, discussing the finer points of identification of some Panamanian katydid – it’s something that was never possible before. So, @Manassas, I guess I’ve never said it before, but thank you. I appreciate you. Whether you keep making identifications for a short time or a long time, you’ve made a contribution here and we’ll never know the true measure of our contribution. It might be someone who didn’t respond but really appreciated an ID, it might be someone who learned to identify by reviewing our ID’s, or it might be some future researcher going through inat just like a museum collection and creating some new knowledge out of it. Hopefully it’s all these things and others that I didn’t think of.
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As soon as I hit the top of a NZ Spider leaderboard I was suddenly imbued with a golden light.
Power coursed through me. Trumpets blared from the heavens.
A host of rainbow unicorns swooped around me, gambolling and whinnying.
Angels sang.
Then a booming voice (I think it was Satan) said “OK iNat users from all over the world, you can now randomly ‘@’ this guy to help ID spiders of which he has no knowledge.”
Wit great power comes great responsibility.
(Ironically, that adage was popularised by the Spider Man comics. No relation.)
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This is definitely one of the words that touched me the most.
I can’t thank you enough for that.
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That’s funny. But indeed it is!
I am quite enjoy that someone tags me to help with their observation or ID. Although they are not very frequent but I still feel happy. It means that I am not solitary, I am valuable, I am needed by other and I can make contribution to them.
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@manassas here are your rainbow unicorns (I have bookmarked mine so I can see lighting up Africa)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/map?ident_user_id=manassas#2/0/0
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I looked after your profile to find what’s that P.taeda tree but could not find it.
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What’s this map about? It looks so cool!
I too find it flattering, if somewhat hopeful on the part of the ‘@’-er. I also feel general disappointment when I can’t help. It reminds me how little I really know.
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I had changed my name on my Inat to prevent people from thinking I might be any good at IDing herps (edit: or birds). I just updated the profile link for here (mecynogea_palustris). You can find Pinus Taeda in my favorites.
That link shows all the places where you made identifications. You can think of each of those observers appreciating your IDs.
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A pleasant reminder of room to grow. I’m sure the person who tagged would be happy to get as much info as you can bring them.
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That’s cool! When I see it just feels like how vast the ‘ID Empire’ that I have built. I honestly feel deeply proud about that.
BTW how do you discover this function? There are a lot of function I don’t even know of iNat.
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It was thanks to @jeremygilmore
Lots of helpful people bring us useful links they have built. I have 2 folders full bookmarked just for iNat. Keep your questions coming, and the answers will come.
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There was a thread somewhere about identifying, and someone said they think it would be nice if people ID’d 10 things for every 1 upload they did (I have approx 1500 observations, and only about 11,500 ID’s for others). I’m almost getting there xD but also I don’t throw on “pointless” ID’s - to me this means the 5th confirmation of something common, already research grade, etc. I am going through our state’s backlog of non-RG observations and I can help further ID on about 10% of them. I was actually surprised by that. I certainly have felt appreciated every time someone has tagged me, usually other active iNat users, and I’ve definitely met some other helpful folk who can ID various things in my area and now we tend to just tag each other back and forth when we get lost. So I guess for me, IDing a lot is neat because of the community it builds. Also, I start seeing who not to tag, as someone else mentioned top-ID-er doesn’t mean they actually know things…and I have come across a couple of those folk and I wouldn’t have figured that out with being active on the ID-side of things. So I think it’s about knowledge building, and network-building, more than the raw numbers. I have yet to be tagged by someone I “don’t know” even though I think I’m near or at top of board or two now.
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I keep becoming the top identifier by things entirely by accident because I decide “well there’s only two thousand observations of them and I know how to identify them, so I might as well go through and confirm them” and then the next thing I know I’m the top identifier >.>
And then there’s small-flower pawpaws, where I’m both the top identifier and top observer…but only because I seem to be the most active iNaturalist user in my general area, where small-flower pawpaws tend to be found…
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That was fun!
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