I wonder how much difference this will make?
Currently, there are about 215,000 observations that are both Needs ID and Pre-Maverick. Even if all of those became Research Grade, I don’t think it would change the overall numbers that much. (But it’s still a great project!)
I can see the animal pre-mavericks coming thru now …
Okay fungus are giving me a headache again (one day someone is going to tell me to shut up about mushrooms, I swear XD)
So I’m pretty familiar with Tylopilus alboater, but apparantly it has a New Zealand look alike called Tylopilus formosus. According to what I can find online, it is endemic to New Zealand, whereas T. alboater is listed as being found in Eastern NA and East Asia. Follow me?
If you look at the map for T. formosus - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?locale=en&place_id=any&preferred_place_id=1&subview=map&taxon_id=384621 - there’s a smattering of IDs in mexico, east asia, and europe. The east asia & mexico ones can probably be chalked up to computer vision misidentifications, but the europe ones are throwing me.
Glancing through quickly someone of the European observations are going to be hard to ID, period, and definitely aren’t either of the abovementioned Tylopilus species, but like, before I go ham on this and correct a few things, is there a european look alike that I’m missing? Are there anything european mycologists that regularly read the forums?
Am I overthinking this? Help
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I am not a particularly skilled macromycologist but looking at the 7 European observations of that one, 3 are beyond me, one seems to be a young Imleria badia and the last 3 seem to have scales rather than net on the stalk making them Leccinoideae spp.
I sadly don’t know an English key to European boletes but an ongoing Danish book project (covering somewhat more than just Denmark) has made their keys available online for public testing and feedback, you might be able to run it through a translator and get something useful, or at least look at the names and get a sense of the possible options: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RkvH52lUVO3n_4LWFxsHKrV_M1YGx5Wl/view
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For the burnt out identifiers who need something easy and satisfying.
Try 11K Kingdom Disagreements. Tweak to your location.
Once you clear your backlog, I can keep up with Africa now.
And those move nicely towards a good ID, especially if you @mention for the good ones!
Use the usual tricks to get them out of the ID pool, if you need to.
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Wow. I read
Wow. I read that first paragraph on assessing cap color …reminds me of going to the Good Art Supply store to try and match a no-longer-manufactured color of paint. 
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Diana, I’ll add this to my list, but I can’t guarantee I’ll get to it any time soon. Spring WILL come soon and then I’ll be out playing in the fields of glory, so to speak, rather than identifying.
(Although given the 6 to 12 inches of snow we’re getting today, spring is still a ways off.)
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Ooh I actually really like how that danish key is set out, with all the pictures of the different mushrooms on a wheel and also some color comparisons in the key. Why do I never see english keys set up like this? Thank you so much that’s a great little booklet.
But thanks for the extra pair of eyes!
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Why do I never see english keys set up like this?
I suspect part of it is that we are blessed with having Jens H. Petersen as a coauthor who somehow manages to be an experienced mycologist, masterful photographer and graphic designer all at once, whereas most key authors only are the first one.
The overview wheels are reused (slightly modified) from Nordeuropas Svampe, which is also available in English as Fungi of Temperate Europe (lots of great pictures but no dichotomous keys). From what I hear the (multiply delayed) deadline for the new book of keys is some time next year and given the scope of it I strongly expect it will also get an English version, so there is something to look forward to even if it might not be of too much help in North America (assuming they ever finish that is, apparently making a key to Inocybe even in Europe is quote “a bit like trying to nail pudding to a wall”). Until then most of the other work-in-progress keys for other groups are also available online for testing: http://www.mycokey.com/Bestemmelseshjul/bestemmelseshjulBasiLinks.html
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@lotteryd, I think we’ve cleaned up this chunk of your State of Matter Life observations. Feel free to put together another chunk!
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388 … I slowed down a bit this week and needed a break from the pisaurids every now and then to do some more general stuff (pushing “Aranae” form around the world a bit further for example). Just cleaned out the need ID of Mariana islands for a change.
But I will keep going… one day I will be done 
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How I spent my IdentiFriday:
I understand that someone was trying to show the red seeds when they chose the seed puff as the taxon picture for Red-seeded Dandelion; but they don’t seem to have considered the psychology of our user base. In the CV’s thumbnail, you can’t make out the color of the seeds. You only see a seed puff. So if someone’s observation is of a dandelion seed puff, and the several CV suggestions show various dandelion flowers and one seed puff, guess which one they will pick?
So, first I changed the taxon picture to one which I hope emphasizes the smaller size of the flower head. Then, I went through observations identified as “Red-seeded Dandelion,” and added disagreeing IDs to the seed puffs that were either clearly Section Taraxacum or lacked sufficient evidence to ID them to section. (And while I was at it, corrected the genus of several Sonchus seed puffs which were also IDed as “Red-seeded Dandelion.”)
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It reminds me of this feature request (yet the use case is different):
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/ideas-for-a-revamped-explore-observations-search-page/8439/157
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Going to go through Dagestan project, quite a lot of birds and tons of insects there https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?project_id=bioraznoobrazie-dagestana
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Isn’t it so satisfying to see swaths of difficult observations become tucked out of identifiers’ way for now!
The last chunk was easy to find because they were all in the “no evidence” project. There are many more of the same, but they are inconveniently scattered through years’ worth of Life observations. I started tagging you yesterday but realized that will get way too spammy, and that route only gets to 1 person per tag.
So, following in @jeanphilippeb’s footsteps, I’ve just made a project to try to coordinate things!
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/variable-species-and-other-life
Edit: It’s now a traditional project, for manual additions and removals
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inspired by another thread, i finished cleaned up a few old identifications on my own observations this morning.
not sure what i’ll try to tackle when i get back later this afternoon…
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Determined to get to the bottom of Pre-Mavericks for the Western Cape.
On the way I have reached 85K IDs for others.
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@lotteryd, I think I found all the observations where you mentioned me, but my internet access has been misbehaving the last few days, so I may have missed some. The little demonic internet trolls have let me into their kingdom again today, so I’ll try to catch up.
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No worries, if I come across them again I’ll add them to that new project so they’ll be findable. ;)
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