I finally realized that the upload is not necessarily a request for labor. Not telling myself stories about other people’s motivations keeps it fun. When I fail tondo that, I get irritable. INat as spiritual practice
Once or twice - I have filtered for That Name. Skimmed thru very fast for good stuff that leaps out. Mark as Reviewed. And my Unknown stream reverts to diversity.
I know something of that inner conflict. Like when the irritable side of me grumbles, “Argh! Everyone observes the same butterflies!” And then the reasonable side of me says, “But… only certain butterflies occur there.”
Plus, maybe for a lot of these folks it’s the first time in their life that they’ve consciously observed that butterfly. Just because we’ve observed and/or ID’d it before does not mean they have. It’s easy to forget our first encounters with something that now is common and way less exciting for us.
So nice when you can find a plant that has been languishing at Dicot for years and give it a species name and the observer is still on the platform and gives a hearty thanks 
And so nice for the person who labeled it “dicot”
Hope I’m not overloading you with notifications
I never see it that way anymore
Honestly I get the same feeling when going through the fungi pages sometimes, but in a ‘the single pic of a brown mushroom from above isn’t going to be enough to ID it to family, let alone species’ way… but then I breathe and just move on because poor pictures aren’t a personal attack on me and I know I don’t have to put an ID on everything XD
I really would like to know why the CV aggressively IDs so many images of a brown mushroom with no stems/pores visible as Sutorius eximius, a species with less than five hundred observations
I bet in some cases like this (eg, Brefeldia maxima same but flat and white) it could be from a longstanding effect of false positives in the RG pool, perhaps cleaned up by now. But I bet you already know an example from Russula. ;)
Oh, you mean Russula rosacea?
EDIT: Also, I’m becoming convinced that there is an undescribed Sutorius species hanging out in Costa Rica, because there is a cluster of specimens there that all have oddly thin stipes compared to what I’m used to seeing, and there certainly aren’t any Hemlocks in central America. But who knows
EDIT 2: Oh LOL nevermind computer vision seems to think red russulas with a single picture from the top are Exsudoporus frostii
Sometimes i search the crazy species, review the ones on the area in question, and then watch the CV change. When the problem is geographic, it makes a difference quickly
Wow, it’s like doing invasive species removal in some remediation area, except with iNat data instead of the earth. Thank you for your service. :)
I went through all the pages for this mushroom - I honestly don’t think it will make a difference, unfortunately, I think the difference is too subtle for CV to really pick up. It doesn’t know the difference between naturally brown pores and ones that are brown because they’re rotten or old ;_;
CV and mushrooms, in general, is really rough a lot of times.
I’ve had a few unknowns lately that are “boundary” posts, like “end of place where species X and Y are abundant” or of red tape in the woods that marks places that should be protected from logging. I’m trying to explain that this kind of “observation”, which basically is just a “pin” for the beginning/end of an area, aren’t really appropriate for iNat, and I hope I’m getting through, the jury is still out for that.
The real question, though: How do I mark them as casual? “No evidence of organism” seems wrong when they’re unknowns and there clearly are many organisms in the pic, and nothing else really fits either. And I don’t want to add a meaningless coarse ID that will never resolve.
I add the least meaningless ID I can. Someone needs the data point for research. I don’t want to interfere.
Okay stupid question here, how on earth do you add plant phenology annotations? The option just isn’t there. I tried to research it and I still don’t understand.
Is the observation you’re looking at a flowering plant?
Check that the arrow next to the word Annotations is pointing down. If it is pointing to the right, the annotation fields will not show. Click on the arrow to toggle between the two.