For the record, Oscar is one of the most knowledgeable botanists in Mexico and the southwest US and we’re super fortunate that he’s a member of this community
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Respectfully, I think you’re chasing glory that doesn’t exist. Helping ID isn’t thankless work, per se, but it’s not going to net you much beyond people pestering you about ID assistance (which, to some, could be a reward, if they love IDing). To be frank, if you want notoreity or a material reward, iNaturalist is probably not the place to find them.
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I would add that almost anything in the field of organismal biology – such as publishing your research – won’t gain you much in notoriety or material rewards, beyond recognition by a handful of fellow specialists who might reference your work (and your own personal satisfaction). But it can help get you a job.
Teaching about the subject (such as in a classroom or field course) does have its own personal rewards, so I don’t want to diminish that, and iNat is after all a teaching tool.
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For now I am not wealthy or famous enough to say I don’t need glory. If I am already successful like being a reputed professor or someone else I won’t ask this question, And I think seeking satisfaction is an immortal topic for human.
You won’t get any money from iNat and everything you can get from it is in human interactions with other scientists, which is maybe easier here than without the site, but not unique to iNat. There is nothing to gain and honestly it would be better if people helped others without sense that they do it only to gain something from it.
If you seek satisfaction you should start with what you see it as, I assure you “thanks” comments don’t make the process any easier, and can’t be seen as glory. If you seek something serious from the idea of iNat, then why not do more about it? Time we spend here discussing it can be used for observing and iding more, find a group where help is urgently needed and check it all, become an actual top ider or top observer, there’re so many unobserved species in your region, help with iding what is uploaded there and observing what is possible.
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I get it. I also need money, I’m a student working a part-time job at a plant store. iNaturalist is interesting, it’s a great place to learn more about science, but it doesn’t pay. I’m sorry. I wish I could get paid to ID too :P.
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I am doing so. Before this replying I already finish IDing a bunch of observations in South America, That’s what I am doing. By filling the blank that few people do, I am not ‘top agreer’. You can check my ID list at any time.
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I don’t mean paying or reward or something, but hoping the time and effords we put into it worthy.
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In college, I was a technician in a physical research museum collection. I spent many many hours sorting through preserved specimens, providing IDs, fixing bad IDs, checking collection data for accuracy and completeness, etc. … basic curatorial work. I didn’t think my time was wasted and believe the effort was worthwhile. iNat is the virtual equivalent of a physical museum and curatorial work such as you and the rest of us do is important work to keep the site functioning.
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I don’t think anyone here called you an agreer, all I said there’s certainly more that can be done, by each and everyone of us.
Sure, I might try more If I have more time. Maybe I also need to find a guider to help me.
You can contact experts in the field you’re interested in.
I will. I am doing tetrigid following Josip Skejo. But unlickily he is not so free to guide me. I have to learn it my self but it’s a hard time because I know little about it before. I have to lay it down for a while because I can’t spare too much time. I need to prepare for my entrance exam.
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Well said! Reminds of similar discussion on leaderboards I read somewhere, what is reddit, or on here? Can’t exactly remember.
The bottom line is don’t do IDs for the vanity sake of popularity or recognition.
That was quite interesting! I couldn’t understand why I was so active in Spain when I have no observations there… but it seems it’s all the mistaken California IDs on Spanish plants that I’ve been involved in correcting… Mediterranean climates as you know.
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There are more of us who feel that way than are willing to admit it.
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I am currently the top identifier of molluscs in New Zealand and Japan (also worldwide, but in terms of the number of non-confirming IDs I’m probably at about #5).
A good thing to be a top identifier is that you are more likely to be mentioned in interesting observations.
However, the overall number of IDs added doesn’t really matter except for the number of notifications and a bit of self satisfaction (to see how much work I’ve done).
Since 2019, I have added 15k non-confirming IDs (besides 130k confirming IDs for often wrongly identified mollusc groups), so I recieve quite a lot of notifications everyday which I need to go through.
Fortunately I have enough motivation to go through them every 12 hours, but it takes a lot of effort and time.
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Tidying up the distribution maps accounts for my Out of Africa IDs.
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I mostly identify spiders in Canada, but I’ve been doing it for long enough now that I’ve made more than 100,000 identifications and have made the most identifications for many families of spiders. It seems many people mistake quantity of identifications as evidence for identification expertise, so I get tagged a lot more now than I used to for observations around the world which I mostly can’t identify. To a certain extent they’re correct, I am more likely to be able to identify random spiders in the rain-forests of Africa than most people, but that isn’t saying much.
For those of you who, like me, specialize in identifying things in a particular geographic area but are beginning to get tagged more and more for observations around the world, consider voting for this feature: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/show-top-identifiers-by-continent-by-default/15310
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I know how embarrassed it is to ID an observation which group or area you are not familiar with. I might made this mistake at first. But after I become familiar with a group in an area (after making thousnads of IDs). I will know who is IDing this area, too. And the next I need someone to help with ID here I won’t ask people elsewhere. But people who just observing might not have the chance to know who is the ‘boss’ of this area. In this case, I think observer just need to do one more step: searching specific group (like plants or insects) in the area and then find more reliable IDer.
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