I am very new here, but can see that 2 of my observations are showing ID of Unknown, and I would like to find out what they are. In one case, I am fairly sure it is a type of Maple (and this was confirmed by the app when i originally made the observation), but for some reason this ID never made it to the observation itself ? I have added a comment to state this possibility, but i cannot find a way that I can add the ID myself - I feel if I were to at least ID this as Maple leaf family, I might be more likely to get someone jumping in to help.
For the other observation, I have no idea what it was. Again it was IDâd via the app at the time, but this ID was lost, and I now have no idea what it was. Is my only option here to withdraw the observation ?
If you click on your observation, you should see the box at the bottom where you can leave a comment. That box has a different tab, âsuggest an identificationâ, that you can click on to, well, suggest an identification. Thatâll add that ID to the observation. If you at any point decide your original ID was wrong, you can do the same thing, which will âcross outâ your prior ID and replace it with your new ID.
Youâre right that IDing your thing as a maple will probably get attention from people who know about maples. For your other thing, if you can put any ID whatsoever, even if itâs just (for example) âinsectsâ or even âanimalsâ, that will help bring it to the attention of people who know about that particular group. Anything is better than a complete lack of ID.
I donât use the app so I canât speak directly to the issue youâre describing. But I think one thing that confuses people⌠thereâs a place, on initial upload, that says something like âwhat did you seeâ. That field is for an ID. If you write something like âmapleâ, it will bring up suggestions on what it thinks youâre referring to. You have to actually choose one of those options. If you write something that doesnât exactly match one of the options, iNat will leave it as âUnknownâ, and put what you wrote as âplaceholder textâ.
I just looked at the two observations youâre referring to and the maple observation did not have placeholder text. You just suggested or guessed maple as a note (technically different from a comment but not substantially different).
iNat will suggest something and if that suggestion looks good, choose that option. If it doesnât look good, try suggesting (as someone else said) insect or plant and then when an option pops up for insect or plant - choose that option. If you write insect it will suggest insects ⌠plural. If you donât choose insects, it will use what you wrote⌠insect, singular⌠as a placeholder.
I always tell people you canât make a mistake that canât be fixed if you check your notifications that will alert you to a potential mistake. Any suggestion can be withdrawn or corrected.
I think the site is actually pretty daunting at first because itâs powerful. It does lots of stuff. But I figure it took me about 10 days to figure it out. And I did figure it out because I made mistakes and people helped me correct them. :-)
Thank you all for the suggestions, I do in fact already have advanced mode configured.
@fishkeeper In the app I see a comments box but there is no tab for suggest ID, the only option is to leave a comment (which I thought I had). If I go to the other option at the bottom, suggest ID, it gives me a list, but I do not get an option to write âmapleâ anywhere ? I would have to select one from the list (which I am not confident to do). The only other box at the bottom says âignore locationâ.
If I edit the observation in the web page directly, there is no option to suggest id at all, only Notes, Tags and a drop-down âadd a fieldâ but none of these is suggest id.
@mmmiller It looks as if this field is only available on initial upload, I can neither see nor edit this field in the observation. Where are you seeing this on my two observations ?
In summary, I cannot see anywhere on the app nor web page where I can add any kind of suggestion of (for example) maple, or even tree/plant ?
