I have started to visit the “identify” page, and to give some tentative IDs to people’s observations. Like a lot of people on here, I am familiar with nature, especially with the common plants and animals of my area, but I am not a scientist, and don’t have specific training. So should I still give…

Generally it’s suggested that you identify to the lowest level you are comfortable/confident with. In a situation like that of the two types of Taricha it’s often best to leave it at genus level and add a note in the comment that it may be species X, but that determining if it’s X or Y takes specia…

Generally for levels above species, I am more comfortable going out on a limb. But when you identify somebody else’s obs to species, there is a risk that the observer will take your word for it and agree, creating a research-grade observation on your less-than-confident ID. Observations with a commu…

I agree with the previous posts, so I’ll focus on this instead: [image] mnharris: So should I still give an ID of the most likely species for observations? I’d say nooooo, definitely not! one of the purposes of iNat is to determine where/when things are, what/when they are doing it, and how …

To add a little bit of nuance that at first may seem completely contradictory to my previous post, it CAN sometimes be good to ID things well below the level you actually know anything about. I can think of two scenarios in which this is the case: at higher levels, it’s often extremely useful to …

@mnharris you’ll find many more thoughts on this here: Identification Etiquette on iNaturalist - Wiki When suggesting IDs–should they all be very confident, or is reasonably confident sometimes enough?

let’s address the specific example of Eschscholzia californica. i think what a botanist might do if they’re not super familiar with E. californica is consult a dichotomous key to aid in identification to the species level. in this case, it looks like all species of Eschscholzia occur in the US. so i…

I take a more relaxed view, particularly for the Neotropical, African and Oriental regions. Please help with IDing, even if you cannot be 100% sure! There are not enough IDers around, and the few have to deal with 10- or 100-thousands of observations. Therefore, I think it is very helpful if there i…

[image] chrisangell: there is a risk that the observer will take your word for it and agree, creating a research-grade observation on your less-than-confident ID. It seems like this problem might be important enough to not allow people to do that?

I am fairly new to iNat and not an expert in any particular field, but I recently discovered that even I can help get Observations IDed. It started with the City Nature Challenge . I participated in a web conference after the weekend to help get more Observations in NYC to Research Grade. The organi…

[image] chrisangell: But when you identify somebody else’s obs to species, there is a risk that the observer will take your word for it and agree, creating a research-grade observation on your less-than-confident ID. More detail than my last reply: When a person posts an observation, and the…

How much expertise should we have when identifying?

General

bouteloua May 11, 2020, 3:37am 6

@mnharris you’ll find many more thoughts on this here:

Identification Etiquette on iNaturalist - Wiki
When suggesting IDs–should they all be very confident, or is reasonably confident sometimes enough?

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How much expertise should we have when identifying?

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