I agree with this 100%. Same approach for me.
Hiking through national forests and exploring tidepools with my camera is fun, and iNaturalist is a great way to document what I’ve seen while contributing to a greater body of knowledge that will outlive me (I hope).
I already have a more-than-full-time job that taxes my brain. The moment iNaturalist starts to feel like a second job, I’m out.
Oh dear, I know I’m going to make myself SO unpopular with this 
, but actually, I WOULD discourage them if all the house sparrow pictures were taken in more or less the same place at more or less the same time, without any other particularly interesting traits (mating, feeding, etc).
iNat declaredly prioritises personal engagement and that’s great, but it is also declaredly a community and couldn’t function without the involvement of that community as a whole. Now maybe I’m old-fashioned, but doesn’t being part of a community also mean giving some thought to what is best for that community, not thinking exclusively about your own personal satisfaction?
The problem is that every observation uploaded involves not just the observer themselves, but also the community as a whole. At least one other identifier and possibly many more will be investing their time and effort in that observation before it moves out of the ID process. Is it really so very wrong to encourage people to give some thought to this as they’re uploading, particularly given the relative dearth of identifiers?
I wouldn’t discount the value of house sparrow observations. I can recall reading a book about bird survival in cities—perhaps someone will jump in with the title—in which the author was hugely excited to come across a population of sparrows in London.
Also, nothing mandates that those observations obtain a confirming ID. No-one is being forced to stay up late to get them to RG. I’ve used iNat to map species occurrences with low-quality shots, and the records are useful to me even though a confirming ID is unlikely to ever emerge. I don’t believe I impose a burden on “the community” by uploading those observations.
50 obs of sparrows could be nicely balanced out by their 150 IDs of ‘other’ sparrows. Then we make progress. Together.
Perhaps the book was Moth Snowstorm by Michael McCarthy, though the loss of house sparrows from London gets discussed in many other places.
Thanks–it could well be that. I read that book not long ago.
Obviously I just used sparrows as an example because they had already been quoted in this thread. As I usually observe plants and arthropods, I could just as easily have quoted dandelions, daisies or cabbage white butterflies. Of course there can be scientific value in repeated observations of common species, for example, I usually post the first example of species common in my area to flower in that season because I know that can be useful to study phenology. But that was actually not my main point…
You’re right, but it is intrinsic to the way iNaturalist works that all observations will eventually be accessed by at least one IDer who may or may not have stayed up late to shift some observations from the “Needs ID” pile. If that doesn’t get them to RG, then they’ll be accessed by an undefined number of other IDers, until for one reason or another they exit the ID process. Even if the observer doesn’t want or need this, it is not their choice. They can’t opt out. This means that posting an observation cannot be just an individual act of engagement with nature, it also engages with a community of people. And according to my way of thinking, that is something which every observer should bear in mind. But as I said when I posted my reply, I know that this is not a popular point of view.
Oh yes, and that is exactly the point. But we all know that is just not going to happen, at least not in our time dimension 
.
I see what you mean and although I understand why people don’t want to take actions in that sense for the greater good of more engagement with nature (which I support), I do perceive an imbalance between observing versus identifying, so thats why I’d like to value more the time or IDers by not posting every day the same squirrel at the same park. Anyone looking at my profile would see that I’m an observer not an IDer (except for few basic ones), so this doesn’t come from frustration, just not taking IDing for granted.
But this being said, I feel birds are fine with quantity. I have been doing few unknowns that were common birds so I was able to provide species level and it instantly got plenty of IDs. I see some crows with 10 IDs (same Corvus corax). Then plants it starts being challenging and when I look at fungi it feels trying to find a star in the sky with the naked eye.
Finally, when speaking of quality of observation it means that the photo has clear IDing features, provides some value. I think people in the forum supporting “quantity” don’t think of hundreds of blurry shorts of a blob that would be weak evidence anyways.
But the point applies in every case. You don’t know what value that repeated observation may have. But the cost of a judgmental attitude is that you can deter someone who might otherwise become more engaged with nature, or even—not the same thing!—with iNat.
It is not judgemental. We are asking ‘prolific’ observers to ID a bit too. There are no paid identifiers. Neither Curators (who are not museum curators) nor iNat staff are obliged to make IDs. All identifiers are volunteers.
And identifiers are ‘expected to explain themselves on each obs’ too
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lack-of-reasoning-on-disagreements/75635
As a proportionate identifier, I’m familiar with these points. But we are arguing about a hypothetical repeat observer (e.g. of sparrows), onto whom each projects a particular set of characteristics, so it’s not surprising if we reach different conclusions.
If the goal of iNat were for observations to reach RG, prolific sparrow-observing behaviour might “matter”. But I regularly see staff pointing out that RG isn’t the goal. My OCD traits notwithstanding, I’m getting more comfortable with that stance.
My comfortable way of dealing with 50 sparrows - would be to sort out that batch of 50 - mark as Reviewed - leave them to a happy birder - and move on. Really not judgemental. We each choose what, and if, to observe. And if and what to ID.
I would limit wrong to - joke IDs. And using copyrighted pictures. Both of which can be sorted with flags or DQA. All good.
Of course it does… sparrows, daises, dandelions, cabbage white butterflies, exactly as I said, glad you agree with me 
.
But as I also said, that was not my main point. I suppose my mistake, if indeed a mistake it is, is to feel very strongly that iNaturalist is a community and as with all communities, it doesn’t hurt to be aware of the effect one’s actions have on other members of that community. As they say: “no man is an island”, even though I personally quite often wish I was 
!
I don’t think you can convincingly assert both that your position is unpopular and that your discussion partners are, whether they know it or not, simply agreeing with you.
If you are fine with the repeated observations, then you are fine with them, and there is no need to say anything else about the matter.
This “investing their time and effort” view of what identifiers do is honestly where I find myself disagreeing with a lot of the forum. If we think about any other online community- like Reddit or Facebook or Instagram- no one views their time spent engaging with the platform as a “time investment”. No one goes around to sparrow-lovers on Facebook saying “don’t post 20 sparrow photos on here because I don’t want to see photos of sparrows and you’re being disrespectful to this whole community by posting things I don’t want to invest my time looking at!” We just engage with those communities by looking at what we want to look at, contributing to conversation where we want to contribute, and ignoring the 99+% of content that doesn’t interest us.
I get that iNat has its own quirks and we can spend hours arguing “here are ways iNat is different!” but at a basic level, it’s an online community of people sharing what we find in nature. If you don’t want to interact with 50 sparrow photos, then just ignore them. They don’t have to have any impact whatsoever on your use of the platform, beyond just scrolling past them.
Here’s my very unpopular opinion: self-identifying “Identifiers” on the forum have a tendency to treat the identification process as a burden that we take on for the benefit of others. It’s not. No one is making us identify anything. I identify because I like looking through people’s critter photos. If I see photos that don’t interest me, I scroll past them, like I do on every other online social platform. This is how I’ve gotten past 400,000 IDs without getting frustrated or burnt out. Many of us have gotten so caught up in our desire to “get things out of Needs ID” that we seem to treat it like a chore. “Oh no, someone just posted 100 photos of the same planted tree, now I have to fix the situation!” No, you really don’t. Just take a sip of your beer and scroll past them if you don’t want to engage with them today. If I make myself a goal of identifying every single pigeon, then any anger I feel about someone posting 500 pigeons is a “me problem”, not a “them problem”; they neither asked nor expected me to identify their pigeons. What’s that old saying about gambling- “When the fun stops, STOP.” If I ever find myself joylessly scrolling through pages of pretty birds mumbling curses under my breath about how much work someone has given me by sharing all the birds they saw today, I hope iNat cuts me off on the spot. I hope no one on the forum has gotten to that point, but the way some of us talk about the woes and time sacrifice of identification, I sometimes worry that we’ve started to view every observation as an implicit “ask” for the community to respond in some way.
I guess I just wish identifying observations were framed more as a fun thing to do to learn and teach about nature, rather than an investment that we do to pay our dues to the community. Who knows, maybe “identifying is fun!” as a frame would even encourage more people to try it than “identification is your solemn duty”.
I don’t actually think of iNaturalist as any old “online social platform”, more as a precious opportunity to contribute my experience and what few skills I have developed over the years for the benefit of nature, science and any other users who could do with my particular helping hand. But absolutely no problem, to each their own 
… and my sincere thanks for your expertise and those 400,000 IDs.
I agree with you that no one has to ID anything here. We’re all volunteers, and it’s best when we can keep it in mind. But I think there’s another aspect of this that gets overlooked when everything is reduced to “just scroll past it.”
Scrolling past is okay when it comes to things that just aren’t your thing. But when a post is just too bad to ID, or doesn’t have the basics (no location, no organism visible, five pictures of the same thing that are all blurry), it doesn’t just magically go away because one person decides to ignore it. It’s still there for the next IDer, and the next, and the next. At some point, someone has to be the one who either flags it as un-IDable or tells them what they’re missing.
And to be honest, this isn’t about “paying dues” or about IDing like it’s a job. It’s just basic communication. If someone posts something that can’t be IDed and everyone just scrolls past, they’re left wondering why no one helped them out. A quick comment like “this is too blurry to ID, here’s what would help next time” takes only a minute and actually teaches them something. That’s part of the community aspect too.
And I’ve seen how the “just ignore it” approach can backfire. I know someone on iNat who used to identify a huge amount, and they really enjoyed doing it. But once life got busy, the notifications piled up quickly. They suddenly had dozens of people waiting on follow-ups or clarifications. Well, sure, they could have ignored them, but they felt bad leaving people hanging for weeks.
So yes—nobody should feel burdened or obligated. But pretending low-quality observations have zero impact isn’t quite true either. Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away; it just shifts the confusion to the observer and the work to whoever comes next. A tiny bit of guidance can prevent the same issues from repeating over and over. =)
I basically agree with you, but…
Not everybody who IDs on iNat is doing so because they enjoy it. Some users ID primarily or entirely because iNat observations are research data for them and IDing is the best way to make sure that data is correct and wrong entries do not end up on GBIF. In some cases, this seems to have led to burnout and disillusionment and cynicism about iNat. I would like to see some way to encourage these users to shift their perspective and see iNat more as an opportunity, but I suspect it is likely to be a rather intractable challenge and the first step may need to be acknowledging the reality that for some users participation on iNat is fundamentally based on utilitarian motives.
Even for users who do ultimately ID because they enjoy it – I am one – it may nevertheless simultaneously be an activity for which one feels a certain sense of responsibility. This is particularly true for taxa where there are far too few people providing skilled IDs compared to the number of observations. Because we know that if we don’t look at the observations, it is quite likely that nobody else will. And if the taxon in question is one that is frequently mis-ID’d (as is often the case for taxa where there is a shortage of expertise), we may dislike the thought of abandoning something we care about to descend into chaos and wrong information. Combined with personal perfectionist tendencies, this can easily produce a sense of obligation – self-imposed obligation, but obligation nonetheless – that is difficult to put aside. And sometimes we may additionally find ourselves grappling with external pressures, such as snarky remarks from users in the first group who have decided that volunteer IDers are not doing enough to ensure that the data set is clean, or observers regularly tagging us because they want an ID.
So seeing IDing as enjoyable doesn’t preclude other feelings, including a desire to figure out ways to reduce things that diminish pleasure in this activity (such as hopelessly blurry and uncropped images) or seeing ourselves as part of a community and wanting to consider what makes other users happy and whether our choices can reduce potential frictions in that community (such as recognizing that observations that I upload for myself are not private and will be seen by other users, regardless of whether I want an ID or not).
From the ID-A-Thon I took 73 pages of angiosperms in the Western Cape on 15 December. ‘Anyone can Has Flowers !’ and they do. But I only reached the last page of IDs today. Between new obs trickling in and other identifiers, there may have been some IDs trickling in - but day by day ‘yesterday’s number of pages to work on today’ remained unchanged until I IDed another batch.
CNC25 for Africa still has 43 pages. Ignored since April. In my queue …
I also essentially agree with @paul_dennehy as well but also sympathize with the scenarios that you laid out. It is sort of natural to feel some responsibility/obligation/sense of investment once a user has put a lot of time into something like IDing (even something 100% voluntary). The community aspect of iNat plays into this as well. People feel a sense of pride/value in their role as IDers in the iNat community and want to maintain that. Overall, that’s a good thing, but it can also feel like a burden.
I think one of the biggest things that iNat could do to help IDers feel more like they are doing something fun and voluntary (and less like a duty/obligation) is to provide better notification management functionality. I’ve heard from many IDers that the sometimes overwhelming number of notifications makes them feel overwhelmed/put upon/obligated. I think that functions which help relieve this stressor could reduce the stress of large scale IDing on iNat and help users get more enjoyment out of IDing - maybe helping them feel like they are using iNat right. It might also help new users ID.
If I had to make a case for using iNat right, it would be for users to both observe and ID (even if just a little bit) because I think doing both is critical to understanding how other people are using iNat and appreciating it.