This really is one of the most rewarding parts of identifying, isn’t it? The satisfaction of having figured out a tricky ID, the successful detective work (or sometimes just recognizing that it was a rare observation and getting it to the attention of relevant experts).
I thought of you this summer when I came across a couple of observations of Ripiphorus subdipterus that had ended up in Hymenoptera. I started by looking at sawflies, but something about these insects just didn’t fit, so I did a bit more hunting, followed up on an intuitive lead – and there it was.
I have been hit by that nasty little gremlin, which scrolls the list up, just enough pixels that I hit - what? - I would NEVER have chosen that! Never even heard of it.
Click F to prompt fungus or fern, and they are in gremlin reach.
I wonder why the list scrolls, just a tiny but significant bit?
In my case, the list scrolls because my internet connection is slow, such that it takes longer to finish showing all of the map than it does for me to type in an ID. That causes me to choose the wrong taxon to click or, sometimes, to miss hitting the Agree button when I’m aiming for it. It’s quite annoying.
The other niggle around slow internet is when you see an ID, withdrawn, then added again. Because it didn’t take while they waited, so they tried again - now iNat shows it, twice. Little sigh.
I have been back at my laptop a few days after only IDing on my phone for a long time… it is interesting how different the IDing experience is.
On my phone I prefer to go to needs ID batches that will either require me to suggest a finer ID or to agree with an excisting ID at species level. The identify pages does not work well on my phone, so I either can do the agree on the overview page (need to be pretty charismatic species then that I can agree on in this small view) or I need to open the observations in new tabs. I usually do the latter, skimming to through order or family level for the observations I can push further until I have about 30-40 tabs open and will then go through them to suggest my ID.
I haaaaate doing e.g. genus level agreements on my phone. It quickly gets super boring to open all these observations, agree, scroll down to the DQA to mark “good as it can be” and go on… not doing this.
On my laptop this is much easier and faster. So I went to one of my long abandoned pet projects - pisaurids of Europe - and ran into 99 new pages of needs ID … I like doing those on the laptop, as they are super quick and will help push many observations out of the ID chain (did 22 pages = ~650 obs in just a bit over an hour of baby sleep yesterday while listening to the news ;-))
Just thought it was interesting how different my ID behaviour is on different devices
Sometimes I just get tired of looking at plants. Been working on inverts in the Pre-Maverick project this weekend. I got started doing isopod vs myriapod vs beetle larvae on Friday and continued Saturday. Today became mostly slug/worm vs caterpillar/other larvae. I really should go to bed now.
@tiwane, let me congratulate the iNat staff on yet another really fantastic tool. Only about 12,000 such anomalous observations to sort through in my region - I guess I better get started.
I’ve been working through these unknowns. May I suggest that the next time we work on a big bioblitz or school project we set up a subproject or a code to paste into the observation meaning, “I think this could be identified, if the right person came along”? Something to put on plants that are in focus and have the flowers and/or fruits as well as leaves? (Or sometimes just really distinctive leaves.) Something to direct relevant identifiers to the observations that are most likely to “pay off” in terms of identification? In among the thousands of poorly focused photos or nice photos of utterly unidentifiable entire leaves (and the soft-focus Acacia leaves) there are some really nice observations.
Day by day, what is still waiting for an ID, gets blurrier and
whimpers off into a corner, harder to get any further than … dicot. (I hate to do that, but it is a leetle bit better than plant)
The ones with field marks to work with, are a reward for plodding on.
This is a game-changer in motivating and focusing identification effort on a fraction of the overall observation pool. Kudos to the iNat team behind it, again and again and again.
Today I’m helping out with correcting the many RG obs of Potentilla indica in east Texas and Louisiana which are actually Potentilla hebiichigo, a species that I only learned of last week.
… I like doing those on the laptop, as they are super quick and will help push many observations out of the ID chain (did 22 pages = ~650 obs in just a bit over an hour of baby sleep yesterday while listening to the news ;-))