You wanted a better challenge from the ID-a-thon ?
Today you have half a million angiosperms (where will that be on 15 January ?) - I will tackle the Western Cape.
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Well, at least we won’t run out of observations to work on in this week of the ID-a-thon!
More seriously, it’s obvious this ID-a-thon is focused on bringing new or inexperienced identifiers along. That’s wonderful, but I wonder what an ID-a-thon would look like for high-volume identifiers, say, those who have made more than 10,000 IDs for others. Would we just target reducing the numbers of Needs ID observations? Or target all the Needs ID observations more than 6 years old? Or coordinate on boosting some species into being included in the CV? Or enlist experts in neglected groups to teach us how to sort, for example, liverworts into genera and when to declare liverwort observations into As Good As It Can Be at the family level and above?
What would an ideal ID-A-thon look like for you, DianaStuder - and all the rest of you, as well?
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It just looks like every other day of the year 
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All of the above?
Or none of the above. As danly said, we’re already putting in the effort, every day of the year. Maybe putting more time into this than we ought to. If we were motivated to dedicate more time for an organized event, picking any one of those goals you mentioned wouldn’t mesh with each of our individual interests and skills. So we just have to push on, in all these multiple directions, as best as we can do.
Personally, I’m still trying to add taxa to my identification repertoire, one taxon at a time. I wrote a post yesterday that was feedback on the ID Summaries Demo, but it did include a question that I’d love an answer to, if someone can provide some mentoring: how can I distinguish observations of Hippodamia convergens from similar species in that genus? Even an answer of “no, that’s not possible from a photo” would be helpful.
For the last couple days of this year, I have two particular goals related to my year in review page. I’ve almost made as many identifications this year as I have in my first five years on iNaturalist. I’m not sure if I can match that figure, particularly because of the different ways IDs are counted, but I’m also just short of having helped 25,000 people with my IDs, and that target is easily within reach.
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@danly and @larry216 you are both so right! I have definitely been putting more time into this than I ought to.
As far as Hippodamia goes, I know nothing, alas. But that reminds me of another question I have: do we (the entire iNat community) want iNat to replace paper or digital field guides or manuals with keys? I don’t mean to dicuss the use of AI to collate comments on iNat (there’s certainly enough discussion elsewhere), but I keep thinking iNatters should just buy and read and use field guides. Now, first, that statement reflects my immense privilege in living somewhere with lots of field guides (and I have the money to buy them), but it may also reflect my experience of growing up decades ago with nothing but field guides to learn from. Should the iNat community be pointing new observers and identifiers to field guides and manuals elsewhere, or even helping to produce such tools for taxa and regions where nothing’s available?
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“It looks like every other day” is pretty much what I said in the ID-a-thon thread and got told my attitude was too discouraging.
I think for me an ID-a-thon would look like a group of IDers interested in a particular taxon getting together to coordinate their efforts in working on a particular set of observations (and maybe improve their skills along the way). For example, something like @matthewvosper 's approach in the UK syrphid project:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/uk-hoverflies-syrphidae/journal/120854-12-tribes-of-christmas
We have not intentionally coordinated, but I and a couple other of the regional bee identifiers seem to all have decided to use the quite period during the holidays and the off-season to look at some of the observations that have been stuck at “bees” for months or years due to disagreements. It’s been fun to see observations that are 5 or 6 years old finally get sorted out.
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That’s always my favorite sort of Identifying: looking for disagreements (for plants) in my region, starting with the oldest. The fun ones are the really old ones with a long string of incorrect IDs, requiring an even longer string of correct ones, along with some lively discussions and explanations, to get them over the finish line.
I’m personally not doing anything differently for ID-a-thon, just plodding along in my usual way in my spare moments/hours…
That’s happiness, even when it’s not “Identifriday”!
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I think it would be great if we had field guides available for people to access remotely - I don’t know how that would work, but it would get over the monetary barrier.
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An ideal ID-a-thon is active identifiers. New identifiers. Willing teams helping … earthworms for a random example. If you will excuse me, I have angiosperms and proteas waiting and and and 
And in between wandering back to see if the bucky balls mystery is getting past, Not a Rodent, Not an Insect, is so too an Insect !
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My personal goal for the last days of the year is trying to push Tigrosa observations over the 50k hump by going through Lycosoidea-Lycosinae observations .. So far it seems I will not succeed this year anymore.. only 250 missing now, but there are so many other genera in the mix as well and I am still not as active as I had been in other times of the year. But it is still fun to see so many observations going to genus or even species and RG after years and years of waiting. Just recently I had several waiting for 10 years and longer that are now RG.. the best
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There are so many possible areas to focus my attention. Location 131031 is one I am going to push at the moment, in spite of all of the other possible priorities. Maybe the iNat community can help get the data sorted in light of any geopolitical risks to the GPS data.
The iNat community in that location is one of the warmest and most generous around.
No response necessary. Happy 2026!
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And it‘s even Friday 
As I am getting closer to my goal of reaching 10 000 IDs for the ID-A-Thon, here’s what I learned about myself as an identifier:
I don’t think that I currently have the time to learn the ID keys/look-alikes for certain species/families (fungi, plants…) so I can be usefull in helping to reach certain species RG. I feel confident ID’ing 2-3 plant species and 1 fungi species in Germany (as long it is not a hard case and it is close to normal type) and a few orchid species in Cyprus, but after my cleaning spree during ID-A-Thon in those, there is not much left in those categories where I feel confident to confirm.
What seems to be more my niche at the moment (until I have more free time, so perhaps in retirement 
) seem to be sorting unknowns (and perhaps later the dreadful plantae and dicots) into broad categories - sometimes only dicot, but with the help of the CV to refresh my taxonomy memory sometimes even finer.
One really nice feature of the ID-A-Thon was the fast ping-ponging back of IDs. I would move a unknown, e.g. in Acer and somebody else would move it to species only a few hours. That probably won’t be feasible to keep up all the time, but it was a really rewarding community experience, actively feeling so many other people around the world pushing towards the same goals.
If I had a wish list for doing more IDing, it would be a better tool for IDing in the App. After a full work day in front of a PC, my brain and eyes really can’t handle more time in front of a PC screen at home. But I’m spending ~ 3 h each day in a train/bus going from/to work where I could do IDs. During the last weeks I tried IDing in the app (using Explore, which stops working after a few observations and I have to close and restart the app) or using the web site on my tablet (where the touch screen wants to select everything but the ID I have chosen), but that is really a pain.
Did you all find out something about yourselves as identifiers during this ID-A-Thon? Or was it more business as usual for you?
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I added Western Cape angiosperms to my bookmarked URLs. Have whittled them from 73 to 58 pages. Going to take … a day or so for each page (with the others I ID) And another 4 pages of WC arthropods but that residue is mostly not going anywhere in a hurry.
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I learned that I already have found my IDers niche and am happy with it.. I tried straying off of my business as usual for a bit, but quickly went back to my pile… not that I really need any new suggestions anyways, my pile will kep me busy for as long as I feel like it I guess…
I cleaned off all of my personal needs ID Tigrosa observations in Canada today. I might want to look at the ones I already reviewed years ago, to update those not at species yet.
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Besides working on my usual repertoire of taxa as the observations arrived, there were a couple things that stood out, this week.
First, another active identifier must have deleted their account, resulting in a batch of about 30 observations of one taxa I follow showing up as “Needs ID”, when their remaining IDs were several months old. I was perfectly happy to ID these, but it would be nice if some comment remained with these observations, to the effect of “Deleted ID from Deleted Account”, so that I could rule out the other possibility, that I was not finding these observations because of a bug in the software, when I filter for them several times a day.
I also spent time checking some of the Phylogenetic Projects for ‘unknown’ observations for familiar taxa. In one of those, an observation I came across sent me down another rabbit hole. A beetle from Honduras with a striking pattern of white (or maybe silver) dots on a black elytra. The initial ID called it a Leaf Beetle (Family Chrysomelidae). I thought that I could surely find a match among one of the species in this family, but scanning through all of the thumbnail icon photos for this family (and for Coccinellidae) for all of Central America failed to turn up anything. I’m sure there’s just something I don’t know, like a species having a different color morph that’s not reflected in the icon photo, but there’s still the tantalizing thought that this could be a species not reported on iNat before. For now, I’ve just followed the observation and saved a bookmark, in case I have some further inspiration.
As for the last rabbit hole I went down in November, that observation came from a casual observer who hasn’t been active since I made my ID. I tagged the top IDer for the taxon (who indicates an appropriate interest in the group and who’s a curator) but he also hasn’t been active, except for one day last month. And I’m guessing he never saw the notification for my tag. Patience. I need to show more patience!
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You need to find another taxon specialist to @mention …
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I definitely encountered more IDs that had just been made in the previous hour - or even just minutes - before I got to them, and I liked thinking that right now User X is patrolling the same grounds that I am!
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The mysterious beetle is RG!
Calligrapha vigintimaculata, the third observation of this species on iNaturalist and the first of these from Honduras. And definitely the rarest observation I’ve been involved with, either as an observer or an identifier.
Thanks to @jeanphilippeb and his Phylogenetic Projects, without which this observation might have lingered in the unidentified pile, indefinitely.
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Yeah!!! That’s a pretty beetle too.
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