Identifications taking longer?

[tiwane]

@dlevitis

I have the impression that in recent months (3 months? 9 months? I’m not sure) it is taking longer for even very easily identified animals in areas with lots of iNat users to receive identifications.

I agree, anecdotally I’m feeling this as well.

@cooperj

The last City Nature Challenge produced an avalanche of very poor quality observations, with lots of cheating.

A few people have brought this up, thanks for doing so. As I’ve said elsehwere, we’ve discussed it witih the CNC team and want to make both organization changes and technical change (eg I’d love for any observation flagged as copyright infringement to not be included in a collection project, or maybe one voted as date inaccurate to not be included in a project with a date restriction).

And as others have noted, northern hemisphere summer is here (and it started around the time of CNC), which means people are likely spendig more time in the field and busy with friends and family. I suspect more identificaitons will happen as fall and winter hit the northern hemisphere.

@spiphany

And ultimately, you should do what you find interesting and rewarding. I think sometimes discussions here make IDing sound like some complex process that requires all sorts of tricks to optimize efficiency with the primary goal of reducing the numbers in the pile that one has assigned oneself. But for most of us I don’t think it is helpful to judge oneself or measure one’s success in this way. I see IDing as another way of engaging with nature, as a complement to observing.

Totally agree. I think a lot the people who do want to ID a lot are kinds of people who feel they need to shoulder such a huge burden (I’m in the same boat, it’s not a criticism of anyone, just an observation), but I don’t think it’s particularly helpful in the long run. I try to make a dent where I can while still enjoying myself and realizing that’s all I can do. And if yo come across something you don’t know, it’s OK to skip it. Or if you have the time and energy, you can use it as a chance to do some research and learning.

Each ID is maybe someone learning about a creature or plant they didn’t know about before, which I think is cool. Or each ID I add brings the observation one step closer toward the right answer. Every drop raises the ocean.

@nancylightfoot

Finally, is there a buildup of older observations that have been overlooked? And how would we address that using search parameters?

I’m sure there are. Sometimes I’ll use the date-added range in the filters to look at observations that were made a few months ago. For example. here are observations from April 1st-May 31st: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?created_d1=2025-04-01&created_d2=2025-05-31&createdDateType=range I then restricted it to California and was able to find easy ones for me to pick up, like https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/285868689

@beepboop

I have also noticed, when I take the time myself to get all my insects to lower taxo levels, they are more likely to finally get an ID of sorts. I think there may be fewer widespread generalists and more specialists overall.

Yup! See more at How to refine observations stuck at a high taxonomic level. I’ve been doing this a lot and it’s very satisfying to see experts find them and refine them.

@sedgequeen

We really do need more people identifying. I’m not sure how to recruit them.

Some short-termish ideas:

• I’m working an webinar (I tested it with iNat staff) about how to add IDs even if you’re not an expert. I’d like to do that in the northern hemisphere fall, as people start spending more time indoors, maybe.
• some sort of engagement with a user, like an email after they’ve made X observations or something, letting them know they can help out by adding IDs and linking them to some resources.
• adding some buttons to the Identify page for fast filtering, like: ID unknowns, ID new users, turn on the “anomaly detector”, etc
• surfacing information that can help people learn and identify and making it easier to find.

Adding an Identify module in the app would be great but really needs to be well thought out so that it’s not too easy for people to add poor IDs, and so that people can easily access important obs data on such a small screen.