Just needed to vent a little here… I’m finding some identifiers do not bother to read the notes I provide, or to look at additional photos beyond the first one, leading to confusion that would otherwise be quite simple to resolve. If identifying, take a few moments to read!
Okay, I feel better now.
Most users don’t read the forum, and most forum users are probably already aware of this.
Even those of use who do make a point to read notes and look at all the photos sometimes overlook things. We are human.
Particularly if the first photo is misleading (say, the subject of interest is in the corner of the photo and some other organism dominates it) we may be primed by a glance at the photo or the thumbnail with a particular expectation about what the observation is and it can be difficult to override this – the impulse “it is this organism” may make it difficult to consciously notice that there is some other information we need to take into account.
If more observers, were willing to ID for others. The next pair of eyes could engage with those (missed) notes. We need more / active identifiers!
Yeah, I know, but I’ve had a handful of frustrating issues recently along these lines and needed someplace to complain, even if I’m “preaching to the choir”.
I find leaving your notes in your ID or as a separate comment to be more eye-catching than putting them in the actual notes area.
Thank you for including notes and more than one photo in your observations.
I’m talking above my pay grade, but I guess observers who are genuinely curious about why their observation was rejected or their notes were ignored, should assume that the identifier has too many notifications to read, so they should DM (Direct Message) the identifier. Which might be explained in the identifier’s profile.
Like @spiphany said:
I realize this is asking a lot of observers, but like anything in life, you get out of it what you put into it. If you want to get more learning out of your observation, then you’ll probably have to put more effort into communicating with busy identifiers who have vast numbers of unread notifications.
I use the tiny little thumbnails in the Identify view about half the time, and there’s no way to see if there even are notes when in that view. Maybe in future updates iNat will come up with a way to indicate that an observation has notes, the same way they show that observations have multiple photos in the Identify view
if you are adding to the massive pile of outstanding observations, which vastly outnumber the available identifiers and outstrip their available time, please take a moment to consider that getting identifications is receiving a free favour which may not always be up to your standards but costs you nothing. all but a few identifiers are happy to respond to follow-up comments and that too only takes you a little bit of time. the very few people who do leave identifications are generally dealing with many thousands of records among which yours are an atypical drop in an enormous bucket. I don’t mean this to be provocative, it’s just important to know that one could be just as easily having no identifications at all.
I would have been better off with no identification. Misidentifications are of no value.
In that case I agree the remedies we’re always told to seek (asking the identifier to withdraw their ID, tagging others to overrule it) are extra time on top of everything else and can be frustrating to effect fully. In the grand ocean of iNaturalist content though, I’ve had better luck with getting identifiers to take further action than I have with getting observers to give better details. The identifiers after all are those few who put in the time to interact with other people’s records…
I always respect the notes. However most of the time I don’t have enough time to explain why I am identifying an observation as x y or z.
If you are uploading 1000 observations in a day not to species level it makes things really hard for identifiers.
They are a learning opportunity. Whether the lesson is “this bird could have been another species you forgot about” or “learn how to communicate better” or “oops! I should not be identifying when I’m so tired!” or whatever else.
Does anyone actually upload that many observations in a day? Seems impossible. I average about one a day, over a year’s time. Sometimes a dozen at once, some days none.
I do agree notes are important and hope they get read. If I think notes will help an IDer I definietly add them.
I’m new to this, and I did look at the notes the first few times (after I noticed the feature was there!) but I never found anything in there so stopped. If you do leave notes (and please do! You can’t see everything in photos) please mention that you’ve added notes in the comment.
perhaps not 1000 but many of the iNaturalist observers in my circles might upload half a dozen on a slow day and most certainly up to 700-1000 on a good day. I find it’s much more common to see power uploaders than power identifiers, which of course is borne out by the oft-repeated statistics about how the vast majority of identifications are made by a vanishingly small minority of identifiers.
Seems like a flaw in the Identify system if notes are not shown on the ID page since they’re often helpful in the process.
You can achieve that by Opting Out of CID. Then both sides are happy. Especially if identifiers can be forewarned - Opted Out, Mark as Reviewed, Next.
Already half of them are RG!