Hello everyone,
I have been using Inat for five years now, but I am still continuing to make the same mistakes that I made when I started. These mistakes usually include identifying everything to species level(even if there is not enough evidence or I am not confident), making inappropriate generalizations(i.e. All Taraxacum are T. officinale unless there is evidence showing otherwise), focusing on quantity over quality for my observations, and making justifications based off of “my experience” rather than the scientific consensus.
I am going to change how I observe and identify moving forward, but I need some help.
What advice do you have? This should apply to anyone making these mistakes, not just me.
Thanks,
Robby
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Sounds like you’re basically doing the right things. Note that focusing on quantity rather than quality is a choice, not a mistake. iNat needs lots of observations. As long as the photos are identifiable and have accurate dates and locations, they’re fine. You may want to post better photos and that’s great, but it’s not necessary.
I don’t know about others, but my learning to ID better comes bits at a time. You know about the Taraxacum problem now. (You probably also know that its taxonomic confusion is so great it hardly matters how we label them.) You’ll learn more, if you pay attention to the comments. Keep going and try not to repeat mistakes too often.
I say that as a person who makes lots of mistakes of every kind and who posts lots of poor photos (but some good ones, too, I hope).
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It’s good to try to learn the details people generally look at when determining species for a broader taxon like genus, if you find yourself observing it often. For example, I didn’t think to take pictures of the outer hinge of bivalves until I read that it’s important in someone’s guide. Personally, I’ve mostly narrowed my interests in terms of observing things only if I care enough to read a bit about it later. Of course that can lead to making many observations of the same things that aren’t so interesting to the general user base, and I think that’s a good outcome more than a problem.
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Barbara shared a great life lesson here, and I want to highlight it, in case somebody missed it:
No self-judgement. Continued execution, making mistakes, dusting yourself off, and continuously learning and trying and moving forward.
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Always a bit more to tweak on an obs - location accuracy, location notes, annotations, projects. I add the description of field marks - since that is an easy way for me to find - why is it THIS sp - again.
Somewhere you have to decide, good enough is good enough.
And get back to IDing for CNC …
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Successful people fail more times than unsuccessful people even try . . .
There are threads on the forum about new users who are scared to upload or ID because they’re afraid of being wrong . . .
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Ha ha! Guilty as well
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Aah, you’ve strengthened my resolve: I’ll go through and correct IDs I gave locally based on a book that turned out to be a poor source.
Improving my IDs has improved my observations by informing the details I now try to capture in photos. That has meant reading the full species descriptions and going back to them when the online keys aren’t clear enough.
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