You could try setting a filter to a higher taxon level from Needs ID. Pick out what you know. Probably you can move some of the others in that batch too. It is for specialists with filters set, that some of us pick thru Unknowns - without spending time on - it IS A Spider, but which one I will leave to the next identifier (except for MY own handful)
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And if they only use the app, they may not even know they have notifications - or has that changed? I’ve never used the iPhone app but seen lots of comments that it doesn’t tell you if you have mentions or messages to check on the website.
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Oh, I start with filtering for the taxa I know, where I can quickly add confirming IDs. And I’m slowly building that list, with taxa that I’m confident I can’t confuse with anything else, at least within a certain range. I’ve been IDing some of the spring ephemerals lately, which has been greatly boosting my ID count and getting me close to that 2.5:1 ratio of IDs for others vs. Observations.
But when I’m done with those, I’ll move on to the most recent unknowns.
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Just a note that it is possible to retrieve overwritten placeholder text by appending “.json” after the observation number in the URL. But you have to know. Compare:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/207351524
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/207351524.json
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Oh, when I do Unknowns, I’m mostly just adding very general IDs, like Fungi or Birds. Only in my local area do I feel comfortable adding IDs at the species level. I think lifting an observation from Unknown to, say, Birds, is enough to get it in front of the eyes of the local bird experts and then they can take it from there (and judging by the notifications I get, that’s exactly what happens, eventually).
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Well, not necessarily responded to, but looked at - yes.
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@jeanphilippeb tested. If you delete your ID.
The placeholder text is gone.
I would like - an easy way - to retrieve from many thousands of African plants IDed to Kingdom - any which might have had placeholder text. The tiny typos I can … reinterpret. Or the potential - please add missing sp.
Jsut a reminder that you can respond to multiple posts with one post using the Quote feature.
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I didn’t know that!
Sounds like it would make a good feature request.
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I have tried. But if iNat chooses to delete the info …
I don’t see a [true] placeholder in the JSON data. The word “placeholder” appears twice just because it is present in 2 comments in the observation (but this is not a [true] placeholder). If there was a [true] placeholder earlier in the observation, then I don’t see it in these JSON data.
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The placeholder text appears under “species_guess”
When i delete my ID, the placeholder text returns. How odd! Can you please check again?
Maybe it’s different if it’s your own observation? In the example I linked to, which was not my observation, I deleted my ID, and the “species_guess” went to Null. When I reinstate my ID, it remains Null. Before I deleted my ID, even after I had overwritten the placeholder with my broad ID, “species_guess” retained the species name, which was not in the iNaturalist database.
By the way, if someone wants to move this conversation about placeholders to a new thread, that’s ok with me!
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My main genus is Latrodectus (widow spiders) and they will soon be having a large taxon reform (hint hint, secret info 
) and so I’m trying to keep down the ids on them because the amount of species that will be switched and changed/combined into one will truly mess up the ids and cause a new wave of ids desperately needed for the taxon and I’d rather not make it harder on myself haha.
Although, during this time I’m working on a some guides and furthering my someone short knowledge on Lepidoptera. The main reason I’m doing this is because I was tasked with creating a field guide for my area because some of the species are so often mixed up that identifiers just ignore them.
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I think combining species will not mess up IDing too much, as this can be done rather automated on this plattform…splitting is more annoying, as that will push observations back to genus
I’ve made a song for us about the CNC. Enjoy! CNC 2024
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Still doing my “love bombing” thing – pick a profile and see how many of their observations I can ID.
And in between, I’m taking a break from the Dominican Republic and looking at Puerto Rico. Smaller island, but more observations (because United States).
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I confirm that the initial “species_guess” content is lost if I put an ID (on my own observation) and then delete the ID. See this observation, initially with a “blablabla” placeholder and now with a “plants” placeholder:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/208842946
Could someone put an ID on this observation, and delete it, so that we can check if the “blablabla” placeholder comes back:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/208843471
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Added monocots and deleted it - seems the placeholder is gone and not coming back. Species_guess is listed as “null” as far as I can tell.
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