People sometimes upload a random photo that has no obvious subject and they provide no ID, or a nonsensical ID. The new ID-a-thon Week 1 seems to focus on these identifications. A teacher at a local college seems to have encouraged their students to upload as many observations as possible and a few may have taken an artistic approach to seeing who can post the vaguest image. It’s an interesting experiment and mildly inappropriate for this site.
Is there some feature that says, “This looks like an accidental/careless post and should not be identified.” That if 3 or more identifiers agree, the original poster has to respond, describing what they want identified, before more identifiers see it in their to-ID queue?
Once a second ID has been added, you can vote “No” for “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon be improved?” (if that is the case) and this will remove the observation from Needs ID.
Move on to the next observation. This always works but is not very satisfying.
Leave a comment asking what the focus of the observation is. This rarely works but is very satisfying when it does.
Guess and ID whatever organism in the photo you think you might be the focus. This generally works, but leaves me feeling like maybe I’ve guessed wrong.
I go mostly by how old the observation is and whether the observer is still active.
If they made three observations seven years ago and haven’t been seen since, I pick something in the photo I can identify.
Same if I see a months old comment from someone else seeking clarity that has gone unanswered, even if the person is still active. (If the observer returns later to object, I can always withdraw.)
I only bother asking if the observation is recent, the observer is still active, and no one else has asked yet. If I get a response I will go back, and if no response at least the next identifier might feel comfortable going ahead and picking something at random.
As for what to pick, I go by either whichever I consider rarer/more interesting, or if none very interesting, something I can identify to species (meaning it only takes one more person to move it out of needs ID.)
I’ve been doing number a combination of 2 and 3 after rarely getting an answer to 2 alone. Selecting what seems to be the focus, or the closest thing to the foreground in the photo. I also include a comment that I’ve done that, and if I’ve picked the wrong focus, for the observer to please add a comment clarifying.
If user is inactive, I would pick something and choose that because a RG observation is better than a casual observation. If the user is active, tag them and ask which species.
There’s a fourth: no evidence of organism. I do this when the photos look like an abstract and nothing at all is discernible, or when a species it mentioned in comments of which I can detect no trace in the evidence.
I wrote the admin, but didn’t get a response yet. I’m glad I was polite, but I wish I had suggested that if they make their students upload almost 3K observations for a class, they might share the work of identifying some of those observations. Also, if a student uploads good observations and follows up politely, that should help their grade, and vice-versa. That would require reviewing the posts.
Regarding your solutions:
Mark as “Reviewed” and move on: I was hoping to spare other identifiers from having to look at it.
Leaving a comment is good.
The problem with guessing: When an identifier has to guess at the subject of the photo, it becomes a rogue project for the identifiers, not an attempt to ID what the OP posted.
No Evidence of Organism: This is probably what I’ll do, with a little note saying, “If you tell me what you want ID’d I’ll withdraw my no-evidence vote.”
Thanks to your suggestions, I found some ways to vote “no-evidence” and move it to Casual and therefore out of the ID queue:
Please don’t use this option very often. There are times it’s the best choice, but not very many times. If it’s a distant shot of vegetation, “Plants” is almost always an option.