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.

[lothlin]

Encouraging more liberal use of the ‘Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?’ DQA somehow might also be a good idea - if people used this more, it could help clear out some of the observations that clog up the identification queue for ages because they’re either too poor-quality or too cryptic to ID based on the given evidence.

[williampaulwhite17]

@DianaStuder

• onboarding to improve the quality of obs, so they can be IDed
• reminders to respond to Notifications (but Notification management is a huge problem)
• to encourage observers to pay it forward with IDs. Or Annotations. Something at least.
• generally to encourage IDs. Waiting for better management of Notifications is a barrier that has put off identifiers.

@sedgequeen

The obvious evidence for me is that I can find easily identified North American birds still unidentified eight or ten pages in

Yeah. I had a full frame shot of a young yellow crowned night heron take like 5ish days to get ID’d recently. Good shots of common birds used to be really quick to get ID’d but that’s less so now.

As far as my ID’ing I’m about 3 years behind on Texas reptiles, but there’s a lot that I just can’t/won’t spend time to get to species (think young Plestidon skinks for example, where you need good scale counts).

I think part of it is we need to be a lot more OK hitting “cannot be improved” on the community ID page. There’s a lot of shots that just aren’t going to be identifiable to species, at least for my area of interest (far distant shots of turtles at dusk for example).

[nancylightfoot]

Well, that really compellingly answers my question. Even doing fifty to one hundred IDs per day, I don’t get even close to that old. I think that’s in part because there are so many bird IDers that the number of birds that can be identified gets really small at that point. But I’ll give it a try using your and @tiwane’s methods. I hadn’t thought about adding more general IDs. Thanks as always, for your excellent suggestions!

[nancylightfoot]

Could I suggest/request the option to leave search parameters at your default instead of re-entering every time? Not a big deal, but it would be easier to pop in and do a few for a stress break. Thank you!

[yongestation]

You may already be doing this, but since all the filters are saved to the URL I like just bookmarking the page for an identify search I do a lot. It’s nice since you can even have a bookmarks folder filled with different searches.

[nancylightfoot]

That’s very kind of you to think that, but no! I was not already doing this. I’ll re-save my iNat bookmark for my best ID page. Thank you so much!

[jasonhernandez74]

@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.

Thank you for saying it.

@beepboop

I think there may be fewer widespread generalists and more specialists overall.

As I have advocated before, those of us who are not specialists should all become widespread generalists. You taking your insects to lower taxo levels is you being a widespread generalist.

[lothlin]

Honestly, the wrong IDs might get people an ID from taxa specialists faster

There’s a couple of genera that i’ve cleaned up that i periodically go through and fix all the CV-driven misidentifications on

[tiwane]

Yup, I’ve got a bunch of Identify bookmarks saved, including one that helps me annotate my own observations:

[oxalismtp]

What does the anomaly detector look like?

[dlevitis]

Thank you all for the many informative replies! There are far too many good points here for me to respond to in any detail.

It does sound like most forum users agree that identifications are taking longer, and there is a good discussion on why. Commonly mentioned reasons include an increased number of observers (a good thing), burnout/changes in IDing habits after the last CNC (staff is working to address this before next year), and northern hemisphere summer drawing identifiers away from their computers (also good).

I do have a thought on how make IDing seem approachable for more people:

This is an overview of what is awaiting ID in my county, easy to find from the Explore page: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2764&quality_grade=needs_id&view=species

There are 269K observations in my county that are both Verifiable and Needs ID. This is more than a third of all the observations in the county. There are several dozen species which each have hundreds of observations needing ID. I know how to ID a few of those, and can work through one list in under an hour. Someone who wanted to get started IDing could easily also do this and quickly contribute hundreds of IDs. Suggesting such links to new IDers could offer an entryway.

Another thing I notice from this is that Ammopelmatus has 660 observations stuck at genus because they can’t be IDed to species from most photos. Is there an efficient way to mark the Community Taxon on these as “No, it’s as good as it can be?”

[fluffyinca]

@dlevitis

Is there an efficient way to mark the Community Taxon on these as “No, it’s as good as it can be?”

If you mean some kind of batch operation, no, there isn’t. Someone would have to manually review all of them and check the box if appropriate.

[dlevitis]

I’m trying it now, and (given the need to actually look at the photos and make sure what I’m agreeing to) clicking the box for each one isn’t too bad. It is two clicks per observation (box, right arrow, box, right arrow, etc.) which is actually fewer than I suspected it would be. So a manageable task for just the 660 in my county. For all of California there are 13K of these, which is more daunting.

[lynkos]

@lothlin

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.

Swop “plant shots” for “mushroom shots” and I totally agree. I’m not talking about observations where it just wasn’t possible to get a better picture, but about the thousands and thousands and thousands of observations where the observer could clearly not be bothered to even try and get a decent image, let alone one showing enough details for a serious ID attempt. And I’m talking about plants here, not flighty birds or minute restless insects. I’ve said this before too, but maybe at least making new(ish) observers aware that their observation will involve the time and commitment of at least two other people to get a confirmed ID and move it through the system might just make them pause and think a little before posting the first snap off their camera/smartphone. I’ve come across more than one otherwise smart observers who in good faith had absolutely no idea human beings were involved in iNaturalist IDing. They just assumed it was another Seek-like app.
I’m aware that talking about quality sometimes makes me sound like a quality snob, but there’s nothing that makes me close the browser window quicker than page after page of poor quality “snap and post” shots of anonymous leaves or often long distance trees and I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

[grampianshiker]

@spiphany

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.

I agree, to a point. At the same time, I’ve also found scattered in among those some very obvious ones that I can only suppose ended up back there because identifiers have left? So if you’re willing to trawl through lots of ‘no idea!’, there can be ones that are still helpable.

[spiphany]

Absolutely, I’ve found perfectly idable observations that were 3+ years old that apparently just got overlooked,^[1] so I’m not suggesting that it is a waste of time to look at older ones. But if one is new to IDing and is struggling with the feeling of not knowing very much, observations that are a month or two old are likely to be more rewarding (the percentage of observations that one can help with is likely to be larger). Another advantage to looking at recent-ish observations is that there is a greater likelihood that the observer is still active and will respond to your ID or to comments/queries, which can also help with motivation and feeling like one’s IDs matter.

The advanced filters are an easy way to sort for all observations up to a particular date, or I might choose observations from a particular day if I want the feeling of accomplishment of going through an entire “set” of pages, however arbitrary that set might be.

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1. e.g., honeybees are one of the easiest bees to ID and there are several people in Europe who regularly go through them and add IDs to any that aren’t yet RG, so if I find a honeybee observation in bees or hymenoptera, this is almost certainly not the result of a deleted account, since this would have required multiple people deleting accounts within a short period of time ↩︎

[grampianshiker]

Fair point. It may also be easier to pick a particular season, say, the time of year when most plants are flowering in an area? While people may upload out of season, that might give you the best chance of finding identifiable observations (including because it’s when identifiers are most likely to be overwhelmed and miss things).

[DianaStuder]

Geomodel Anomaly ?

https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/99727-using-the-geomodel-to-highlight-unusual-observations

[DianaStuder]

@tiwane

we’ve discussed it with the CNC team

I hope that does and will apply to GSB too? I am concerned that the same location that broke CNC25 is on schedule to break GSB25 in turn.

CNC23 they were at 12% RG

CNC24 dropped to 7%

CNC25 even further down to 4% still 23K Needs ID using Geomodel Anomaly

Meanwhile their

GSB24 was a solid 36% with only 49 obs for Geomodel Anomaly - I will clear those!

GSB25 … ?