I suspect in a not insignificant number of these cases the observer is using iNat like Seek is meant to be used (point the camera at something to find out/record its name) and has no concept of their photos becoming data. I’ve had some people comment that they had no idea someone other than “the app” was actually looking at their crappy pictures to try to identify what’s in them.
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That would explain some of them. One species has the common name ‘biting stonecrop’ and I have to resist the urge to comment ‘Move in closer. They don’t actually bite’.
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Working through Rudbeckia, as I have been for quite some fridays now. 78k+ observations, after already adding IDs to 10K+, I’ll never see them all!
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Cape Peninsula counts as a ‘tiny remote island’ where the Geomodel does not cope with our endemics.
Will clear my Needs ID batch first. 1.5K is still a lot to check thru.
Has taken me 16 days.
https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/99727-using-the-geomodel-to-highlight-unusual-observations
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I try to ID all mosses and liverworts that are id able by picture within finland :) wish me luck, and feel free to help. Sadly a lot of images are not good enough or one would need microscopic ones for clear ID
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Any way I can help?
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I’d say any of them you are comfortable IDing will be helpful! It’s such a huge backlog and some are impossible to ID to species from the photo, but there are a lot of very clear R. hirta and R. fulgida ‘Goldstrum’ in gardens that take just a glance, or R. amplexicaulis with clear ID shots, all just hanging out at genus level. I admit that a lot of the SE species that got broken off from R. fulgida are beyond my general comfort zone so those I largely pass over while I’m working on learning them better.
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I find for my area one of the easiest-to-recognize and most likely to be wild is R. laciniata. The other two options for plants with lobed leaves in my area are R. triloba and subtomentosa. I have them all growing in my yard and that certainly helps with learning the differences between them. I also have R. hirta and fulgida but the key suggests there are a lot more similar species out there that I’m not even aware of.
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And fortunately those three, once you get to know them a little, are easy to tell apart!
There are absolutely a lot more Rudbeckia than a lot of people realize, but many of them are either rare or largely endemic to one area. Many of the species east of the rockies are pretty easy to tell apart if you know what to look for and assuming someone photographed the necessary details- until you stumble around R. fulgida and what used to be subspecies that are all now full species. Mostly I’ve been leaving those alone for now while I’m learning the subtle differences better.
The double Rudbeckia lacinata likes hiding away amongst the Dahlias and the Chrysanthemums, occasionally spending time with the Kerrias and other fluffy yellow things.
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Now only 8 pages left to review. And 44 pages reviewed that still need more IDs to get out of Family level.
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I usually don’t touch the Plantae → Mono/Dicot bin until far later in the winter, but I noticed an user that mass-imported a bunch of very interesting observations 2 weeks ago ! They identified a lot of their own obs but they just imported so much that ~ 80 pages are stuck at Plantae for now. I’m not sure if I can do it all tonight, maybe I’ll keep some for next Friday :)
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Currently working on Lagomorpha at order level in North America. I see a lot of observers comment that it is a rabbit, but they don’t realize that they can put it in family Leporidae. Also seeing a lot of people coming to disagree that there is enough evidence to ID to species (usually scat and tracks) and putting their disagreement at order level. Unless you think there is a possibility that it is a pika, please put it in Leporidae. 
Also keeping up with Taxodiomyia (baldcypress gall midges) as usual. Making some new pages on Gallformers website for undescribed species too: spindle gall, pinwheel gall, urchin gall. There is another one I need to make a page for but I can’t think of what to call it. Here are some observations if you want to help me come up with a name: obs #1, obs #2, obs #3 (top branch), obs #4.
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Earlier this year, I mentioned how I was working on reviewing the large pile of Arisaema observations that were at Needs ID. I paused that project when I started a long road trip in May. I’ve resumed working on that now, although I’ve modified my procedure a bit. I’m using the Identify page instead of the Explore page, and I’m concentrating on one state or province at a time, instead of trying to plow through all of it at once. And I’m making sure to click the Reviewed checkbox when I can’t add an ID, so I don’t have to review an observation again.
Small victories to celebrate this week: resolving a couple of eight or nine year old observations that had been stuck in a pre-maverick status. Nine to four–that’s RG!
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I finally thought of a name last night. The Gallformers Code (observation field) “t-distichum-ridged-gall” should be added to Taxodiomyia galls that look like these. The new gallformers.org page is here.
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I’m at a conference on Friday, but wanted to share that I’ve been identifying observations from a few months ago to see what may have slipped through the cracks, and it’s been pretty satisfying. I’ll do something like look at all reptile observations in California added in May of this year and see how many i can pick off.
Having a bunch of different Identify bookmarks for vaious types of observations really helps to keep things interesting.
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Friday! In ten minutes, I am off to look at liverworts with a friend, but with the start of iNat’s new Ambassador program, I was thinking it would be fun?/good?interesting? to chat yet again about how to recruit new identifiers.
To my mind, there are two sorts of potential new identifiers: people who are already using iNat, and people who don’t use iNat but who have lots of knowledge. Both sorts of people, I suspect, already have busy lives, with little time to devote to identifying. Or maybe they are sick of spending time on computers and would prefer to be outside looking at reality.
Whoops, time for me to go, but in the meantime, how do we and the iNat staff attract and keep both kinds of potential identifiers. I don’t want to hear about “You’ve added 1,000 observations, now add 1,000 IDs” - I’m actually hearing some misgivings about those sorts of directives from people I know. Let’s concentrate instead on other actions the iNat community and staff can take.
(And now I’m off to poke some liverworts.)
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Enjoy your liverworts!
I’ve had the same things on my mind actually lately. I’m working with my colleagues who use inat for our work project to continue to branch out and offer identifications on the plants they are most familiar with. And of all people I (accidentally) recruited one of my children to IDing! They were sitting next to me while I’ve been working on it here and expressed interest so we spent hours going over one particular genus and its constituent species in our local area. They made an account and are now IDing (with support on the IDs and site etiquette) on their own for the taxa they are learning with me!
(our personal rule is because at this time the ID information is coming primarily through me, we don’t confirm each others identifications, which just seems like good practice at this early learning stage)
It’s been a blast to do together and it’s been a lovely additional connection we’ve made as a family that we’ve both been very much enjoying!
So right now I suppose the point is that, from a milestones/identification standpoint, I’m working on mentoring three identifiers who are going out and spreading their collective wings!
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As someone that is dipping her toes in and out of IDing, I can say that there are two main blockades that keep me from staying on track to becoming a power IDler (next to lack of time - so many hobbies, so little time …):
The first is finding reliable information for identifying in my chosen slice of IDs (or even finding that slice where I can contribute). My shelves are overflowing with new, thick fungi guides, yet finding that spot to start (and have successes to keep motivated!) seem so hard to find. There have been efforts to organize all that nice information (that feature request for a ID center… lothlin’s nice thread on the overview of fungi groups …) and for me that has the most potential. We do have a treasure trove on how to identify …that this is this … and not that… but finding (and refinding!) it is quite time consuming (leaving you no time to do an ID anymore). My opinion is that finding that first slice of the ID cake where you feel confident and have successes will be the step to your addiction to IDs (and getting further down the rabbit hole to other, larger slices of IDs…), making you continue and invest your time. That probably won’t be sorting the dicot hole into families, but maybe a small slice (this red fungi with white spots in Germany is a fly agaric) is more manageable for a first IDer. The better we help onboard this newbies by finding them their first success, the higher the probability that they will keep going. Thats my take (and experience) on this.
The second is your experience with the community itsself in your first hours of identifying. IDing in my mind links itsself sometimes to a mine field. As you are getting started as a baby identifier (full of shiny enthusiasm! You will improve the inat world! But perhaps you lack a bit of knowledge…), you might unknowingly find yourself stepping into that watering hole of a snapping turtle aka an old established identifier that is defending their work flow and “their” ID slice (whether this is in accordance to inat guidelines or perhaps not…). Perhaps that was not meanly meant, they only had a bad day, they were tired and burned out, they don’t have much time and want to only ID and your well meant ID (but sooo wrong) was the last drop on that hot stone… but you still got (verbally and perhaps mentally) bruised by that snapping turtle and so you stay muuuch away from any similar watering holes. And perhaps won’t ID again when that bad experience stays with you.
I can truly understand the pain of power IDlers (thank you! thank you! thank you! for your work and perhaps suffering) and that they feel that everything that takes away from their (little) time for IDing is an immense burden, but if you wish to attract new identifiers, a part of that is staying nice (at least in your comments to a wrong ID) even when you feel annoyed, don’t have time etc. For you, it was only a second in your busy work but for the other person it was the demotivation that stopped all their efforts at further identifying in this slice (and maybe giving up altogether and moving on to a different thing).
But well, you say - that is against the guide lines of iNaturalist if someone answers you that badly and you should report them! And this response (and affirmation) of the iNaturalist community is the reason that I stay here (and try to ID again) even after a few negative experiences. But yet, those first experiences stay with you (and color your motivation towards IDing).
Like with people uploading their first observation on iNat where we want to encourage them to stay engaged and deliver “good” oberservations (and perhaps not those forced school projects…), perhaps we should take the same mindset to our “baby” identifiers. All make mistakes, but we should give them the room to learn “walking” (making IDs) without discouraging them.
And to unburden those power IDer already on the verge of burnout, perhaps a solution would be to give these newbies a special area (“playground”), sets of observations that they can try their ID skills on and learn and those experienced IDers that currently are not in a frame of mind to engage with them can simply filter this set out so they are not bothered. Just a thought…
I wish you many extraordinary liverworts!
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Perhaps the best place to start is unknowns. That bucket is full of pictures of fungi. Your task is to mark them as fungi, or better if you can. Don’t worry about getting them all right. It’s often hard to tell fungi from slime molds. You’ll be surprised by how much you learn by just seeing so many different fungi.
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