I don’t think I’ve IDed less this year, but I’ve definitely shifted where I ID. My taxon of choice is Thomisidae, and I was trying to review all of the observations in North America and was doing fairly well until CNC—I had to spend a fair amount of time just reviewing incorrect RG observations, similarly to what others have shared here. Also, because many of the genera in the US are so superficially similar, and because the CV persistently confuses many genera, a lot of what I have to do is correct misidentifications, which are almost never responded to even when I give an explanation—quite disheartening. And then when someone does respond, they’re often disagreeing because of the misleading common name of the spider or because they used the compare tool and don’t understand that these spiders are the spider version of chameleons that can’t really be IDed by color and pattern unless you’ve seen thousands of them. I think these issues could be mitigated with some kind of text next to the ID that simply explains these are color and pattern changing spiders that the CV often cannot identify, and I think such a feature would help many other situations too.
Anyway, I’ve managed to not give up hope by shifting my efforts to Thomisidae of Asia, where 1) I have less knowledge, meaning I can learn more from observations, observers, and identifiers, and 2) where taxonomy issues often make species ID untenable and observers overwhelming recognize that.
My ratio of IDs to observations is currently about 5.5 to 1, so I think I’m doing my part towards IDs. I do feel as though the number of new, easy-to-ID observations is accelerating, which does feel overwhelming. For the slice of observations I often ID (New England and New York in the US), I think more and more and MORE people are using iNat. That’s great, but it also means more and more and MORE observations that need IDing. Is the number of identifiers keeping pace with the increase of new observations? I don’t know. Probably not.
I have, however, changed the way I make IDs, and I think that change has made me more efficient. Here are the changes I made, in case these help anyone else:
I used to spend lots of time adding initial IDs to Unknowns. Then an identifier I respect mentioned to me that they thought moving observations to Research Grade was most important to them. After thinking it over, I agree. So now, I mostly ignore Unknowns and concentrate on observations already at species and genus levels.
When I can move an observation from genus to species, I used to tag another identifier to help get it to RG quickly (and I’m talking very easy-to-ID observations here). Well, sometimes I would tag someone and sometimes I didn’t, because I felt badly burdening another identifier. Plus, when I did tag someone, that meant they were getting a notification they had to read, among the hundreds they were probably getting every day. So I and a couple of other identifiers created a project for cooperative plant identification in my region: IDers manually add observations to the project instead of tagging someone and other IDers can come along at their leisure and help where they can. I think it’s working reasonably well.
I often filter for a species or genus when I identify; I think that makes the process more efficient. Recently, I made myself a list of 75 or so taxa I can ID easily and I often work from that list, rather than flailing about trying to decide what to work on next.
Along with that list, I started using the Mark As Reviewed button, which I never used to do. I used to think, “Someday, I will learn how to ID the leaves of Plant A, not just the flowers,” but, of course, that never happened. So now, those leaf observations no longer clog up my Identify page.
I used to mostly work just on New England, but now I routinely look at New York as well, and sometimes at eastern North America, depending on the species.
Making these changes has definitely increased the rate at which I can make IDs, but I still can’t keep up with all the new observations - not even close.
We very much do need more identifiers. We (and here I really mean the iNat staff) need to make structural changes that make IDing easier - a better notification system, better onboarding of new iNatters, adding the Identify tab to the apps, etc. But what can we do as individuals, right now? Write individual messages to our friends on iNat, asking them to make more IDs? Lead more ID marathons, probably in the off-season for field work? Do a work stoppage - refuse to add IDs to Unknowns for the CNC, for example? Sleep only 6 hours a night so we can spend an extra 2 hours a day making IDs?
I don’t know. It is clear to us identifiers that iNat is so successful precisely because identifiers have put so much effort into helping to build a decent CV system and to responding to observers as quickly as humanly possible (that dopamine rush!). Without us, it’s just another data recording system.
Yesterday, there were 3,558 observations of plants in New England and New York uploaded to iNat. 2,601 of those are still Needs ID (which means more than 900 were IDed in the first day!). And that was on a weekday. Where’s that statistic about how IDs I personally make on an average day - maybe I make 200? I guess I better shut up now, there’s too much work to do.
I’ve noticed IDs taking longer, even for relative common/easy species I’ve submitted. The audio obs I have submitted recently are the ones that are most notably taking longer to get IDs on. Makes sense that the number of observers & observations has increased by a large margin and the number of identifiers hasn’t. I went to a local science talk a couple weeks ago focusing on the Smoky Mtns All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory - Discover Life in America and one statement really stood out to me. The presenter mentioned that if they were to design the project again, that they’d figure out how to handle all of the data before they collected ANY of it. They have a MASSIVE backlog of specimens that need ID’d because they have a hard time finding taxonomists who are specialized enough. They’re identifying quite a few new species in a variety of taxa through this project, so they definitely need highly specialized people. One of the audience members asked why they’re having a hard time finding those taxonomists. I knew, but the presenter pointed out that the old specialists are aging out and not enough new ones are being trained up. Not to mention that new species IDs anymore don’t tend to be the easy ones and often involve even more specialized techniques like DNA sequencing. I don’t get the feeling that Inat’s problem is quite the same, but it’s in the same neighborhood.
I’m not a prolific IDer but I’ve been trying to do more. But I sift through tens of thousands of camera trap images every week to ID what’s in them, so my patience for going through more on my off time is a little thin, if you can understand. Not to mention, I’m more of a generalist than a specialist.
The IDs I do submit are typically for the inatters that I follow (just a few of those, some of whom submit quite a few observations of taxa I don’t know) or for the “areas” that I follow in my very local area. Good to know about the unknowns. I’ve tended to lean towards submitting IDs on unknowns that are fairly easy to get down to at least Genus. I have not used the Identify tab to do this. Not really enthused by the fact that it sounds like (from discussions I’ve read here) that setting certain filters needs to be done through the URL rather than dropdowns or checkboxes.
For what it’s worth, I would think of it as the normal filtering being done through searches, dropdowns and checkboxes, but significant extra functionality being available if people choose to edit the URL. Most of the time I don’t bother working with the URL because the regular options do all I need. So if that’s putting you off, I’d suggest giving Identify a try to see how easily you can do what you want - you could easily find that you have no need to mess around with the URL at all.
If you have Explore set the way you want - in the filters, bottom right, you can click Identify. Then you have what you want, with the convenience of Identify (with its keyboard shortcuts) designed to be quick and efficient.
When I started on iNat I could (easily) keep up with my slice. Cape Peninsula. More please? I included the Western Cape - now running as fast as I can, I haven’t a hope of keeping up. I also want to clear the African CNC backlog before GSB looms in October already. From my Notifications I have learnt which IDs get a useful response (refining the taxon another layer).
I know this has been said numerous times in numerous different ways, but I do feel that iNaturalist is heavily biased towards observers and quantity of observations, rather than IDers and quality of identifications. Is there a solution? Doesn’t seem so, at least not in the short term. I try and do my bit, but the sheer volume makes it hard not to feel overwhelmed and disheartened at times.
I hope the work put into those CNC projects, showing the overwhelming number of cultivated plants, deliberate misidentifications, etc, will lead to a change in how the CNC is set up. Perhaps if the organizers were required to set up a team of locals who could at least review entries while the project is ongoing it would bring down the chaos. Identifying common garden plants, marking cultivated plants appropriately, and adding basic id to Unknowns would not require much specialist knowledge, would improve the accuracy of the ranking tables, and could reduce a great deal of the chaos and frustration for everyone else.
Most of what has put me off of it has been that I’ve been a bit intimidated to dive in.
I spent a little time over lunch diving into my region (Western North Carolina) and holy bajeebus there’s a lot of stuff needing identified. Over 19k observations need help. I used a few of the filters that are there. Living in a very biodiverse area results in a LOT of stuff I have no idea how to help with. Tons of fungi here and I’m ZERO help with those. So far the most useful filter for me was to cut it down to vertebrates. Of course that still leaves a lot of taxa I don’t know. But on each page, that at least leaves a couple that I can help with. Many of the birds, mammals, some of the reptiles and amphibians (the salamanders are still a bit beyond me).
As was mentioned earlier in the thread, it was pretty remarkable how many really easy-to-identify species were unidentified after some period of time. Black bears, simple backyard birds, etc. I didn’t even try sorting oldest-to-newest to help out the stuff that needs attention the most, though.
If it’s any help, I am a retired biologist with somewhere over 300,000 IDs on iNat and I definitely can’t help with at least 80% of the observations in my area. Do what you can, because even clearing out bears and Blue Jays is a big help.
I find that the really old observations can be discouraging because they are mostly the ones that are left because everyone else is stumped by them, too. But I also generally prefer to not look at the most recent observations because other local people who are online at the same time as I am in the evening are also likely looking at them and this doesn’t seem like a very useful distribution of efforts. So I will often use other filtering methods – random sorting or under advanced filters I will choose a random day or jump back a week or a month to look at the ones that are still recent but maybe got overlooked when they were first uploaded.
This is a perfectly legitimate way to help out and it absolutely does make a difference. When I was new on iNat I did a lot of browsing to see what interesting things other people in my region were finding and at some point I realized I could help with some of them and I started adding IDs along the way. The way I see it, if I add even just two or three IDs per page, those are two or three observations that didn’t have an ID before, and there is some passive learning going on as I skim through the other observations and see organisms I wasn’t familiar with before but now might in the future be able to at least broadly recognize.
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.
I have a personal rule that I try to keep at fifty resolved IDs before I submit another observation (a practice that might help). That keeps me honest, but I’d slipped badly and had to do a lot of makeup. For several months, I was making a very concerted effort to catch up on what I considered a personal backlog of several thousand IDs. I ID mostly birds and use North America (including ocean) for my geographic area. I was regularly running out of observations to ID, so I find this post surprising. You mentioned bird IDs specifically, and in that area I would say it’s just your imagination, at least with respect to North American birds. North American bird ID is a highly competitive activity on iNat. I’m often chasing or getting chased by other IDers and just quit because that’s a ridiculous waste of time. So I feel like that is not the problem, and I have questions.
Could the numbers be reflecting geographical differences? Where do you personally draw the line on your expertise? I occasionally try to look at Tanzanian birds or have picked up a few Central American species that I can recognize, but mostly bow out. Could this be good news in that iNat is getting submissions from new areas without sufficient IDers yet? Is educating yourself without field experience a legitimate strategy?
Are things like the city challenge making for a lot of observations that are simply not ethically IDable? I try to be generous and always encouraging, but there have been a lot of spots in grassy fields that are just not possible to distinguish to species. Newer users often don’t have the equipment to photograph birds, who will fly long before you can get close enough with a phone. I care, but I can’t ethically help. In fact, I feel like I often bend over backward a little too far.
Finally, is there a buildup of older observations that have been overlooked? And how would we address that using search parameters?
Because I ID I discover a new to me family - which now has 7 obs on iNat for Parisocladus stimpsoni
Somewhere between a pillbug, and a tiny lobster on the seashore.
I started with ‘today’ then worked back steadily till I reached the 10 or 12 year old obs. Granted some will remain trapped at That Taxon. But many can be nudged towards the relevant taxon specialist.
I took a look and I see what you mean. A few stood out otherwise, though. One that looked like it had a community ID but a taxon split erased that. Unfortunately I wasn’t confident enough to get it down to species. But I put a genus ID in hopes that it gets the attention of the folks whose IDs were demoted by the taxon split.
A few other for species I’m growing more confident with (due to my own observations) but other folks struggle with.
I see now ways that I can help out. Even if just a little.
I think that getting folks into IDing is one of the only good long term solutions (so please do!), but won’t be enough in and of itself to address needing more IDer input for the increasing number of observations.
I definitely ID a lot less now because of more observations and less time. I couldn’t keep up with the growing rate of new observations with the groups I was IDing, and I took on some relatively frequently observed groups during covid and just don’t have the time anymore. So I switched to less frequently observed groups. But I have noticed more newer IDers picking up some of the groups that I’ve stopped IDing.
Same, I’m a birder and plan on the bland, long winter months for going through old iNat observations to see if I can help. This time of year is impossible for me, I’m out naturalizing/birding and personal life is also currently insane!
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.
Due to just… life and less time, I know I’ve mostly gotten to the point where I’m only IDing things with sequences (or things posted by coworkers;) occasionally I’ll have time to go thorugh an clean up a species or two in the area, but for the most part, it isn’t just worth dealing with the endless stream of mediocre mushroom shots and unresponsive users who sign up, post a couple of things, and then never log in again.
One thing some of us can do to encourage identification is using projects. They can be used to host identification tips for certain taxa to coach new people into IDing, information about where the greatest ID needs are for particular taxa, run ID/annotation ‘events’ and build more of a team to target the group. The UK Hoverflies project has seen the UK Needs ID pile falling significantly year-on-year over the last couple of years, despite the number of observations exploding. I believe that’s from more people gaining the confidence to do a solid (not necessarily vast) amount of IDs each. It’s not about encouraging a few already-very-active-people to do a vast amount more, but a larger number of new people to do a reasonable amount more.
As for CNC, I agree that something will need to change to keep the competition meaningful. I thought this year that perhaps it would be better if there were two weeks to ID; ease the time pressure and give us a chance! Hopefully not too long to wait for results. There were nearly 3000 UK hoverfly observations during that weekend! I also like the idea of each participating city having to nominate a certain number of people to police what is uploaded somehow. I know this is not in iNat’s hands of course - but we and staff should have a voice given how important the platform is to the competition.