Ask for explanations. If you show that you are interested, you will get a useful reply - which you can then use to help ID.
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Personally, my experience is that (1) most people don’t put a lot of effort into their initial IDs, and (2) most people don’t particularly care why you’re disagreeing. As a result, I will often disagree without comment as to why - but I’m very happy to provide a reason if someone shows that they’re still active and listening, and they care. So yes, I echo ‘ask for explanations’.
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I appreciate the challenges — the ones faced by identifiers, and the ones @DianaStuder presented for me.
Yes, I get that it takes time away from reviewing in order to inform. I can save reviewers time by not bothering them with those pesky observations. Does that help? We might have different philosophies about the values of iNat. To me, it seems more important that useable observations (image+location+time) get into the bank before they are lost for all time than it is to make or dispute maximum identifications ASAP. I get that people who want to use iNat data desire more and better data points, and that identifiers need something to warm their tea. I figure that science has been around for billions of years and that any data captured can remain to be understood for a long time, while all data lost will always fail to aid further understanding.
WRT the IDs I might contribute, yes, I could quickly click through “looks like to me” identifications for a fair portion of Lewisia to genus and perceive a smaller number to species — or I could make maybe the same number of confident IDs as the number of unsubmitted bitterroot observations sitting on my hard drive and camera cards. Choices. The lizards are an amusing suggestion — I have learned almost everything I know about reptiles from the iNat identifiers who have been free with their comments on my ham-handed efforts to get my observations accurate. They haven’t turned me into an expert beyond my own backyard. I am better suited to mammals or aves. But I am still looking at 20K+ images I am making very slow progress with… Overworked identifiers are free to leave them for future generations to ID if necessary, but I aspire to keep shoveling. 
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I’m not trying to discourage you or anyone from uploading (I’ve got a huge and growing backlog myself that I’m gradually working on), but I think this ‘we can just leave it for later’ attitude ignores two facts:
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The pile of Needs ID is growing faster than identifiers have a hope of keeping up with, to the point where if all observations stopped completely we could probably still be going in a year - and they’re not stopping, they’re increasing.
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The longer data is left unattended, the more incorrect IDs will creep in and not be corrected, leading to the CV drifting further and further off course and resulting in a ginormous pile of utterly useless (because largely incorrect) data. So trying to keep up with it as much as possible feels like the only option. And that doesn’t allow time for explanations most people won’t even read, far less learn from.
Summary: I think there is value in observing, but I also think if we were to just forget about identifying because ‘recording data is more important’, the recording would end up a waste of time. We need both - which doesn’t mean everyone needs to do both, but I think if you can do some, it’s helpful.
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I addressed this in the rest of my post, which you did not quote.
Communication goes both ways. It is not exclusively the responsibility of the IDer.
IDers cannot know whether you just used the first CV suggestion or put hours of work into your ID unless you leave notes about your process. Many (not all) IDers will give an explanation unasked when disagreeing if they see that the latter is the case. They are unlikely to do so if it seems to be the former, because experience teaches them that many observers just want an ID and don’t care how it was made, so typing out a long explanation in such cases is not a good use of their time.
Sometimes IDers don’t leave an explanation even when you have documented your ID process, for any number of reasons, including that they simply overlooked your notes. As a rule this is not personal or a snub and it is not intended to be rude or unhelpful.
If an explanation is important to you, it is always OK to take the initiative yourself and ask. Most IDers are willing to provide explanations if asked (it can be helpful to check their profiles to see how they want to be contacted); like most people, we tend to enjoy talking about things that interest us and we appreciate other people showing interest in those things. It is also in our own interest to have better informed observers, because this reduces the number of IDs we have to correct.
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@tgroo – You have no reason to know that you are an unusual observer. You want to learn not just the name but why we know the observation is what it is. That’s great! Unfortunately, when we identifiers look at your observation, we have no way of knowing that you feel that way. For all we know, you might just want to snatch a name and go. Or you might be one of the many “duress users” who are on iNaturalist only for a class project and don’t care beyond that. It would really be great if you would ask when you have questions. Otherwise, we just don’t know.
I do agree that it would be ideal if we always explain a disagreeing identification. When I go through one taxon, I develop copy-paste paragraphs of explanation for common problems. Some other times, I’ll write an explanation. Or sometimes not, especially when I’m tired. Explaining ID’s feels like throwing rocks in the ocean – no effect at all. Useless. Because you want the interaction, please ask for it.
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This is just my personal opinion and I don’t speak for iNaturalist community at large. That said…
It “feels” important to make 100k IDs because it is. I see you are located in Oregon. There are currently more than a million observations from Oregon waiting for IDs. I wouldn’t be able to give you the exact number, because I can’t even properly load the last page – iNaturalist can only load 10,000 pages in a search, and Oregon has nearly 35,000.
199 of those pages are from Crook county where your observations are located. At the moment I’m writing this, that’s 5952 observations that still need IDs. Let’s say it takes me a minute on average to ID an observation and move on. That’s more than two 9/5 workweeks worth of IDs just in Crook county.
And the world is much bigger than Oregon, or USA in general. There are currently almost 3,500,000 pages of observations on iNaturalist still in need of IDs. That’s more than 100 millions of individual observations. Most of those are observed by people just like you and me, and most of those people would love to have their submissions identified, or else they start to “wonder whether contributing observations to iNat is worth the effort”.
Given that it usually takes 2-3 IDs to get an observation to Research Grade, if we imagine for simplicity’s sake that each individual silent ID takes a minute to make… Let’s say that’s ~250,000,000 minutes worth of IDs. That’s ~520,835 individual 8 hour shifts. A year is ~52 weeks, so if we imagine “iNat identifier” as an official 9/5 office job with 2 weeks of PTO available per year, it would take 2083ish years worth to work to get through the currently existing pile of observations. (And that’s if we ignore all the observations that will take a lot more effort and deep knowledge to identify at least to the genus level, and if everyone stops uploading new observations right now).
Except, as far as I’m aware, “iNat identifier” is not a paid job. Hobbyists like me triaging observations for experts and taxon experts identifying them further – are all doing it in their personal time as a part of unpaid community effort to keep iNaturalist platform alive.
Based on personal experience, by the time I move 5 observations from Unknown pile to, say, Lepidoptera or Diptera so that taxon specialists would have an easier time finding them, on some days 50+ new observations appear on top. I can silently triage 5 more observations, or I can spend that time explaining why I triaged 1 the way I did. And perhaps it’s my relative lack of experience speaking, but I have no idea how to differentiate which of those 50 new observations belong to “most careful observers” that deserve more attention than the rest of us. So I treat everyone equally and go triage 5 more.
As an individual with no official affiliation with iNaturalist, I have no right to tell you how to spend your time here. If your comfort zone lies in uploading 20k+ images of bitterroot from your backyard – that’s completely fine, you do you. If you don’t want to identify things for other people – again, that is your right, you don’t have to.
But, with due respect, you need to choose one chair to sit on. It’s almost comedic to refuse to participate in community effort and then complain about not receiving personalized unpaid labor from the community.
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