Every Friday, aim to make identifications (or improve your existing identifications) on at least 5 observations. For an extra challenge, make sure at least one of those identifications incorporates some aspect that is new for you – a taxon you’ve never identified before, an observation in a place you’ve never tried identifying in, an observation for a user you’ve never helped before, etc.
If you’re already a regular / power identifier, then aim to make as many identifications as your current average daily identification count, and then do (at least) 5 more.
To spread the word, occasionally tag your Friday identifications with #IdentiFriday.
Oh, good idea! I particularly like the idea of trying something new each week. There are MANY local plant genera that I want to learn, plus moths, plus some year I will get to visit my sister in Australia (I’m in the USA) and I want to know some of the common species before I go.
Now, how do we remember to keep doing this? I hesitate to suggest a new project, because there are already so many, but what other ways are there to remind people every, say, Thursday, that IdentiFriday is coming up?
Great idea, but I would caution people to stick to identifying taxa that they are familiar with. I have had trouble with people mis-identifying some of my observations. For example I posted a picture of a fly that is a bee mimic, and someone identified it as a bee! It was clearly a fly to those who know their insects, but this set back my observation to a very general category, making it not useful for scientists. I messaged the person to no avail, and finally deleted the observation. I had plants identified to species not found in my area. I sit here with excellent reference books and do a lot of homework before posting observations when I can. Please stick to what you know. Good observations are useful, mis-identified ones are not. Thank you, and I love iNaturalist!
You need to either tag somebody to help you with id (there’re tons of people who could help with flies) or resubmit it (duplicating and deleting old one works fastest).
honestly, i don’t see an issue with someone occasionally making a wrong ID. no one would ever grow as an identifier if they never tried to identify something new. that said, it would be good practice as an identifier to be relatively sure if they’re going to disagree with an existing ID, and to be responsive to discussion about any subsequent disagreements.
i’ve had folks come in and post disagreeing – and what i thought were obviously incorrect – IDs… and then would not respond after that. it’s annoying, but the good news is that this doesn’t happen a lot, and in most such cases, other identifiers will eventually come through with the right ID, and all will be good in the world again. you just have give the process some time to work sometimes…
I did - accidentally. I had honestly forgotten about it at the time, but I met all the criteria (I made 57 IDs and most of them were on taxa I don’t usually identify). I confirmed a few birds, got some observations with kingdom disagreements out of “Life”, and narrowed the IDs on several pages of 2019 Needs ID.
Took me until Sunday but I “participated” haha. I was out of town on real Friday. Sorry for the refining notifications @astra_the_dragon it was a coincidence that my chosen filters found your course IDs :)
