If you add &identified=false to the Unknown filter URL, that 315,000 (today it’s 330,000) goes down to 240,000 … SO much more manageable! (I’m joking.)
Anyway, that extra addition to the URL filters out State of Life, Bacteria, Viruses, etc., which helps make me feel better, at any rate.
Well, 240K actually doubles the species that have more observations than Unknown, it goes from 1, to 2!
Yeah I forgot that the little Kingdoms are listed under Unknown.
Unknowns are easier to face, if you carve out a slice.
For me - Cape Peninsula not too many and there are other identifiers working with me.
Western Cape, more obs, less identifiers, more species. I try.
The Rest of Africa, because there are years of obs that never get seen - unless - identifiers can get them to a taxon which is filtered for. (All those birds are fine, not quite 100% but good enough)
Yeah, its fun watching observations pile up…
But - point it in the right direction, nudge it along - et voila! Making botanists happy.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/149081990
This species is on the iNat splash screen, zoomed in on the bizarre heart of the flower.
I love when someone IDs one of my Observations and also adds some helpful comment that I learn from. Many IDs don’t do that, so perhaps that could be a niche for you. For instance: ID a winter-season Pine Siskin and then add a comment on how to tell a winter-season Pine Siskin from a Finch or American Goldfinch.
I would suggest: - do what you enjoy doing.
Is that not why we are all on Inat?
Actually, this question on the forum has me exploring those options and others by reviving my interest in making what IDs I can. But thanks for your comment, and for always being so supportive with your comments on the forum!
As several other people have mentioned, providing broad IDs can be very useful. I’d start by going through observations in your state that need to be identified and how much you’re familiar with. Any birds you could likely identify to species, but there are probably lots more that you could identify as frogs, dragonflies, mosses, etc. You may find some observations that pique your curiosity and decide you want to learn more about that taxon!
See, doesn’t that make you feel better? grin
A great and terrible weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
I work on high-level IDs of Unknowns, which are mostly submitted by newcomers. I usually screen for Unknowns in my state that are more than 1-2 weeks old to avoid stepping on toes of those people who input an Unknown observation while intending to go back and ID it themselves later.
I have some auto-fill comments I often add to tell newcomers about iNat usage or features that may be useful to them them in the future.
“As this Observation was entered as Unknown, it may not get reviewed by experts. It helps to add even a very high level ID to the Species ID field when you enter your observation. I am identifying this very generally in the hope that it will be noticed and identified by someone with more expertise.”
“I’m not an expert, but this was Suggested by iNaturalist Computer Vision. Did you know if you click in the Species Name box (it’s under the Suggest an Identification tab) when adding your Observation that iNaturlist software will suggest likely species? It’s not always right, but it is improving all the time. The Compare button may offer similar organisms to consider. “
“Your observation includes photos of multiple species. Could you add them as separate observations? If you do that, they may all get IDed. A quick way to fix this observation is to use the duplicate feature. In the upper right corner of the observation page, click the downward arrow next to “Edit” and choose “Duplicate.” Then identify the duplicate observation as the organism in your second picture and uncheck the checkboxes next to the other pictures. You can repeat this process to create new duplicate observations for picture #3, #4, etc. Lastly, come back to the first observation, click “Edit,” and delete the extra picture. “ (this one copied from another IDer, whose username I don’t recall)
“You may also enjoy using an app called Picture This, which is designed to ID landscaping plants. “
I suspect the reason for this is users who think of iNaturalist as instead of other identification resources. So something that might be easily found in a field guide is uploaded as unknown because iNat is being used instead of a field guide.
That and people’s tendency to not read the tutorials.
I use iNat as a way to get other people’s opinions on identification, but only after adding an ID as specific as I can. As far as what to ID, I would suggest doing whatever you feel comfortable with. Birds, for example, have lots of IDers, but in the US there is still a backlog of almost 400,000 pic observation that need ID. Any identifications are useful.
I imagine “unknown” is popular for a similar reason that mallards are – nearly cosmopolitan distribution and easy for new users to make observations of. (One important difference being that there are often all sorts of treasures hiding in unknown, while a mallard is generally going to stay a mallard.)
I realize that a certain amount of facetious grumbling is part of how we as identifiers cope with the size of the task, but how about we not turn a thread about how to help on iNat into another complaint session directed at the users who enter observations as unknown. With the possible exception of users who aren’t on iNat by choice, most people aren’t doing this out of laziness, or to make more work for IDers.
Someone who interacts with iNat only via the app might be forgiven for thinking that iNat is actually just another app meant to replace physical nature guides by allowing you to take a picture of something and get an ID. They may not be aware of the way that their observations become part of a larger database, or the fact that they are not just interacting with an app and an image-recognition algorithm, but an entire community.
For many new users, it may be the first time they have engaged with nature in a conscious way. Some of them may very well even have entered an ID – “flower” or “tree” or “egg” – but these observations end up in unknown because iNat doesn’t know how to translate this into a taxon.
Other new users may know a bit about nature, but struggle with iNat’s interface, which has a certain learning curve, particularly if one isn’t very computer-savvy to start with. (Yes, I’m sure some proportion of beginner mistakes could be avoided by people using the tutorials, but let’s be honest, haven’t we all skipped this at one time or another – whether out of eagerness to just get started, or preferring to figure things out our own way, or any number of other reasons?)
Part of IDing is also helping educate users. Sometimes this is about the taxon in question, sometimes about more mundane matters like how to use the website more effectively, or why to not blindly trust the CV suggestions.
Hear, hear! You make some very good points.
I just spent a couple of months clearing Unknowns from the 2022 City Nature Challenge. Sure, a few of them were lousy photos or photos of cultivated or captive organisms, or I couldn’t find or hear any organism at all. But the vast majority were perfectly good observations. Many times, the placeholder ID was something like tree or shrub (which I then could usually translate into science-speak as Dicot). More often, there was no attempt at an ID. There were thousands of such ID-less observations from a four-day event.
I came away from this task with an increased awareness of how hard it can be for some people to figure iNat out (I should remember my own difficulties when I started). I also realized that feedback on how to use iNat correctly needs to be very quick; a four-day event like the CNC leaves little time to get people hooked on iNat. And I understood, more than ever, the struggle between IDing as many observations as possible as fast as possible vs. taking the time to write (or even paste) a sentence or two like, “Hi, and welcome to iNaturalist! If you add even a very general name like Plants or Animals or Fungi to your observation, you will likely get an identification more quickly.”
In short, I’d say to @LMP34 their efforts at IDing will be appreciated no matter where those efforts go. Explore different avenues to approach IDing and stick with the ones that interest you. If you’re numbers-oriented, maybe set a daily or weekly goal for how many IDs you make. If you’re motivated by photos of beautiful birds, maybe scan South American Unknowns and label all the birds as Birds (and then watch your notifications as other people bring the observation to species). Just do it!
As we approach the next CNC I would encourage identifiers to clear their local backlog. From CNC, from GSB if you are South like me, from Pre-Mavericks.
CNC organisers need to recruit identifiers - for clearing the problems.
Duplicates to delete or combine.
Wonderful multiples to split so they CAN be IDed.
Questions to be answered by the ‘long since gone’ observer.
That needs to happen smartly in the first days. Possibly weeks.
iNat takes two. Observer and identifier working in tandem.
I actually had a question about this as someone who lives near New York City.
Many of the “unknown” observations aren’t actually unknown but are bacteria or viruses that get lumped into the unknown category. Is there any way to separate true unknowns from these types of “unknowns”?