I’m excited, too! I should think about setting a goal or two for myself. Maybe learn how to ID a new species or three?
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I just thought the same.. I want to set a personal goal… Maybe getting one or two more species in the CV. Just need to check which ones are feasable
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Curious to see what weekly targets they offer us. And we should get elegant feedback from iNat. We asked you to … and … (you did ?!)
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That’s a really good idea to push species into the CV! I bet I don’t know enough to do that, though (I mostly ID really common species). I was thinking of learning species I sort of know, but have to look up every time - Creeping Snowberry vs. Twinflower, for example. One has opposite leaves; the other is alternate, and I never remember which is which.
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For the ID addicts. Another 21K to play with
I will work my way thru the African ones.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/research-grade-with-only-one-id-at-that-rank/3270/118
and the most recent comments on that thread
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This URL really makes me wish for a filter out users who have opted out of the community taxon. One prolific observer (>6,000 observations) has a blanket opt-out (in addition to many other users with fewer observations).
A lot of mine are also from well-intentioned identifiers marking the ID “as good as it can be” prematurely (without a third person agreeing either level). But at least these are fixable, as opposed to most of the opt-outs. It would be nice if that vote weren’t an option until the required there are at least 2 agreeing at the same level were reached (like how evidence related to a single subject is only an option if there are 2 or more photos), but maybe there’s a drawback to that I’m not thinking of.
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global Opt Out makes my hackles rise - have had a few too.
Newbies interpret Good as Can Be as, I tried my very bestest!
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I cannot find a strategy for this. I found some of the ones that I knew I made by remembering the taxa. If anyone comes up with a good workflow, I hope you’ll share it.
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This could just as easily go into the ID-a-thon thread, but I’d like to reserve that for tips and such.
I just got rid of some Colorado ‘needs ID’, but I did that by knocking a bunch of stuff to Casual, because the observer apparently can’t figure out the difference between wild and deliberately planted. Those aren’t as annoying as the number of observations pegged to a single location (a county Forestry office).
More worrisome is the observer’s habit of taking photos of other people’s call phone photos, computer screens, photos in books, and posting all of those as their observations—all rights reserved, no less. They’ve been reminded several times that this is not allowed, but they don’t appear to respond to notifications (probably because they’re using the app).
This person is not a prolific poster, and sending stuff to Casual is probably the best way to deal with it, but I’m really torn about whether or not I should send a notice to the staff. Any advice / criticism / commiseration on the matter will be welcomed, and gratefully.
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This person should be sent a direct message and suspended if they continue to post copyrighted images --those without the photographer’s permission and of organisms they never saw–after being warned. You can either raise the issue with curators on one of the copyrighted media flags, by flagging an observation itself (noting what the issue is), or by sending a message to staff.
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Day 1 of the ID-a-thon and the European unknowns of the CNC 2025. Seems like a czech school class is responsible for most of them and nobody told them that it would be great to give a initial ID. Also photos from far away with many different plants - I remember again why unknowns take good nerves and patience…
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Finished reviewing the Needs ID orchids of Cyprus in one session. Some I could even move forward, only the difficult cases still open. Maybe some day I’ll be brave enough to touch the Epipactis and Seraphias observations…
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So, what have you been up to this first ID-a-ton week?
I started the week with the aim to do some more coarse needs ID observations at arachnida.. as a nod to the theme of IDing unknowns this week, but still IDing in my lane.. but well, arachnida bored me fast I have to admit.. so many acari/mites in the mix I know nothing about.
So I thought I go a bit less coarse and went into order aranae, then into superfamily lycosoidea.. the latter is a bit frustrating to see. So many observations are now stuck at this level because of a recent taxon change that pulled all those observations back from familiy level that had been correct actually and sometimes confirmed by several IDers before and now you just go and mob the floor behind this change and type in that correct family again.. so much IDer time wasted.
Since 2 days I am back at my favourite task in 2025 - Tigrosa. I think I will keep at them at least for the rest of the year to meet some totally made up Tigrosa goals (cleaning of maps, pushing species to a certain number, ratio of needs ID to RG, personal Tigrosa ID numbers and so on.. I am such a simple wired brain) that make me happy 
Overall I IDed a lot less this week as I felt a bit under the weather…
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I made it through the pterygota (reviewed and not) in New Mexico today. I typically stick with plants but I wanted something different. I actually wasn’t able to put in too many IDs but I was able to do a little.
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Haven’t done a whole lot since I’ve been pretty busy. Here’s what I worked on:
Unknowns
Kingdom disagreements
Bird song
Birds (photos) with missing observation date
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I wonder what next Monday’s lesson 2 will be, now the Unknowns are ‘done’.
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I started with European unknowns, made a detour into reviewing orchids of Cyprus, back again into unknown and currently I am trying to see if I can move some Glechoma hederacea in Germany (at least those with flowers) into RG. After that, I’ll try Ficaria verna.
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After the unknowns, I might start to try moving observations IDed at Plants/Dicots … to a lower level (but not those stuck there because of disagreements). Does anybody know a good Identify filter for this?
In the filters in identify, you can select lowest and highest rank – so to see observations with an ID of dicots, enter magnoliopsida as the taxon and “class” as the lowest rank.
There is a filter for observations with disagreements, but none for those without. But to see observations without disagreements, I think it should work to add &disagreements=false to the end of the url.
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I’m looking for a note about someone interested in moving lichen IDs from kingdom, etc.
Unknown / Cladoniaceae project is chock full of under-IDd observations, with 1300 waiting for narrower ID. IDing these to family would really move things along, if it’s one with which you’re familiar.
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