It was a dream to set a race to see how many identifications can I actually make in a year. The bigger question, how many species I could id for the first time.
This year I identified 234 hoppers which were never represented on iNat before. This number is less than the actual quantity as many observations did not reach species due to ids by users who did not change their ids.
For me this is a great feat, even if I have only been active since September.
Now let us (identifiers) set a crazy goal. Keep track of your stats!
The goal is -
Identify atleast 100 (it would be better if we can do atleast 250) ids a day. Note the number of ids at the start of the year and then keep it somewhere, maybe in your journal. At the end of the year just subtract that number from the total ids you have made. if you have 36500 ids or more you daily average is above 100.
If you want to actually enjoy the challenge then try to prevent pressing âagreeâ buttons on observations already at species level. Instead try to attempt making leading ids on taxa which are stuck above species.
Try to id atleast 150 species that have not been observed before.
While I really appreciate the aspect of setting goals for identifications, etc., there is a balance to be struck here. Just aiming at a high number of identificationsâof the magnitude you suggestâruns the risk of mindless agreements to IDs and the higher likelihood of incorrect IDs reaching Research Grade. Iâd much rather encourage everyone to lean into learning about a group of organisms well and contributing solid IDsâwith commentsâwhich will advance our collective knowledge of the group.
Now, I currently have averaged just over 110 IDs for others per day since joining iNat, and Iâm always trying to encourage others to ID stuff and âget the NeedsID pile downâ, but I would never want anyone else to set that number as a target if they cannot achieve it whilst simulataneously enjoying themselves. Sometimes I can do 100 IDs well within half an hour, sometimes I can spend that long on just a couple of IDs, depending on the difficulty/interestingness of the observation. They all need to be done. Ultra-ambitious goals can be a counterproductive burden. So I would just say, hold your goals lightly, and enjoy what youâre doing. Aim most of all to learn, enjoy and keep going :)
I donât have an insanely large amount of time in a day, and it is decreasing at an alarming rate because I have to prepare for retaking the ACT (An insanely difficult test you have to take in the U.S. to get into a college, unless you take the SAT, also hard), AND starting ninth grade, I will be taking dual enrollment classes. I canât believe how over my eight grade year, so much of my free time has been lost, to schooling, extracurriculars, and everything else as I struggle to return to the natural world. INaturalist is now something I fit in between the cracks in my schedule, so I ID when I can and am recognizing more and more organisms, leading to faster and more IDs in general, but I donât think I will be able to reach this goal seeing how crunched I am.
That said, I will by no means shirk doing what I love, which is being a member of the iNat community, and will try to ID as much as possible to help others and learn more about the organisms around me, but I will probably not set a terribly high goal for myself, at least daily, because sometimes I will have an easy or off day and can do a lot, and some will leave almost no time (For the next month and a half, I will be obsessing over preparing for this big test, which is on Valentineâs Day.) Hopefully, I can continue contributing to this wonderful community as much as possible over the next year, and good luck to you on all of your IDing!!
My goal is coherence. I suffer from a chronically butterfly mind, so sticking at things with persistence is difficult for me. In 2026 I wonât be aiming for big numbers, just the promise to myself to do at least a couple of pages of my bookmarked URLs each day. Hope my resolution lasts beyond January .
Your goals do not really fit my way of IDing and are to ambitious for me and experience taught me that overambitiousness can kill any drive of doing anything in me.
So I stick with my first goal for the year: review half of all Tigrosa observations uploaded to the page .. which is a somewhat moving goalpost as new observations get uploaded, but winter season is slow. So at the moment it is 3k IDsâŚwhen I reached that goal I am going on from there finding a new aim
I think youâll find many identifiers are opposed to that kind of approach. Personally, I regularly get burned out on identifying and often go for several weeks (or even months) without doing anything other than attending to notifications. I spent many years of my working life in a performance-related admin job, and I have absolutely no desire to recreate that sort of vibe on iNaturalist. Also, itâs very important to me to devote time to my other interests, otherwise I would completely lose my enthusiasm for identifying (and vice versa).
@DianaStuder I can totally relate. I have 500+ bookmarked obs. and am not able to catch up. I literally regret bookmarking them as now they feel like a headache and of course looks like more of a messâŚ
I wish most of the observers would try to focus a bit more on quality over quantity. I am quite surprised to see power users with thousands of IDs and in unknown (that were uploaded at least over 9 months ago). Usually low quality observations are associated with new users still discovering the app and iNaturalist in general, but I am surprised with the ID-a-thon to see quite some heavy users that arenât new that just âdumpâ photos.
I noticed I come a bit pessimistic in this upbeat thread, it wasnât my intention. I just hope some people might consider it in their 2026 goal, but naturally anyone can use it the platform as s/he wishes.
My goal for 2026 is the same than all previous years; jump in those rabbit-holes of learning while discovering new branches in the amazingly vast tree of life. But this year I do want to help more with IDing generic stuff from the unknowns in gratitude for the IDs of my observations, and build some IDing skills in some more familiar species.
Oh not bookmarked obs. A bookmarked URL for a dedicated set of filters. I have 4 open now. Proteas for Tony Rebelo - 7 pages of Leucospermum in Western Cape. CNC Western Cape residue - 25 pages. Pre-Mavericks for South Africa at Class - 45 pages. Angiosperms for the Western Cape for the ID-a-thon - 73 pages down to 66. Each of the 4 needs a different set of âID muscle memoryâ.
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