After 6 years, all that’s left is a couple of kingdom disagreements and photos marked as “Life” because there’s no clear subject.
I’ve been systematically going through Unknowns on past CNCs for about six months now. This is the first one I’ve fully cleared out. On to 2021!
yeah!!! Alright
That is dedication!
And now I will bomb you with ID improvements
That is a wonderful achievement !!
Achievement Unlocked: yarrowbrighteyes has now become yarrowneedsglasses
Woohoo that’s amazing!
Are you able to share the links to the ID filters for these challenges? I’d be happy to help. :)
Here is a filter I have been using to apply ID to unknowns from 2025 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=unknown&order_by=random&project_id=227779
For CNC25 then you can set the location filter to suit. 54K worldwide. For 2025 we can still hope observers will respond to - please split multiple sp, or answer identifier’s questions. Or you can adjust the year in the project name if you prefer to clear oldest and most neglected first.
CNC25
Thank you for sharing the filter! There’s also a way to show 100 results per page that I usually use (I can’t remember the exact link, it’s on my computer at home).
I tend to use the Sort By: Random filter as well. I know that probably causes me to miss duplicates, but I find that otherwise I struggle to focus for long stretches.
My biggest problem with this so far has been landscape shots. There are so many observations that are just… a photo of the ocean, or a park, or the view from a mountain, with lots of nature and no obvious single subject. I have no idea how to narrow them from Unknown, especially if the observer is dormant.
This was discussed in another thread last month: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/musings-on-the-id-a-thon-and-observations-tagged-unknown/73825
And–no surprise–there were various approaches suggested, so feel free to pick one!
As @larry216 alluded to, you are in good company!
We need a feature request for a new DQA. Landscape (no obvious focus visible nor in the observer’s notes / placeholder / comment) Similar to ‘Not a Single Subject’ that DQA would push the obs to Casual. Where future identifiers can do, or not, as they please. iNat pushing it to Casual takes it out of the Needs ID queue - which is what we want.
I usually identify landscape photos as Plants, assuming plants are visible. When I find such photos that another identifier has IDed as Plants, I agree with that ID and then check the DQA for “as good as it can be.” Yes, that’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a reasonable one, to my mind.
My issue is usually kingdom level is too high a level for the community taxon boxes to be active. Not sure if getting it to dicots makes it active or not.
Lately, I’ve just been tagging it Plants, and I note in the comments it’s a landscape photo so whoever happens back across it doesn’t expend energy reaching out to the observer.
Occasionally, I luck out and it’s a photo of just water, so I can use a DQA at that point.
The level of the ID affects whether clicking the DQA makes the observation casual or not (must be family or lower to be eligible for RG), but unless something has changed recently, it should not make a difference to whether the DQA is active.
The main hindrance here is that “ID cannot be improved” requires that the observation has a community ID – i.e. at least 2 IDs. (And since the recent changes, this must be the same as the observation ID.)
Thank you for your dedication!