We are close to the 3rd anniversary of IdentiFriday! @pisum when was the exact date of the original post?
I’m one of those people that does look at family (or order in the case of Poales). I concentrate on families that I know a lot about. Especially ones where even if I don’t know how to ID the species outside of my area, I can still ID down to tribe, subtribe, genus, or section. @jeanphilippeb projects are very helpful. I can look at the unknown project for a particular group rather than relying on people to put it in the proper family.
I, too, wander from one ID focus to another. I look at everything in my region almost every day, but I certainly don’t get around to every single new observation. I filter for particular species that I can ID easily (usually plants) and that seem to be popular the week I’m checking. I look at Unknowns uploaded a week ago. I’ve started looking at Needs ID plants above the family level. Sometimes I look at jeanphilippb’s projects, sometimes I filter for plants at the genus level. Rarely do I get around to looking at observations that might teach me something, unfortunately - there just seem to be too many common, easy-to-ID observations that keep piling on (I’m thinking of Chicory and Eastern Gray Squirrel, for example).
Some families have lots of stuck observations because of the documentation requirements.
Regards,
Patti Tessler
Documentation requirements? Do you mean that some observations don’t have enough details shown to allow a competent identifier to take them further?
I’m aware that different organisms may get stuck at different taxonomic levels depending on the amount of variation within or between these levels and what features are required for ID for different groups (e.g., typical Apiaceae are easy to recognize to family, but if the photos show umbels without leaves, they are often going to be difficult to refine much further).
But there are lots of observations that end up sitting at family not because the ID cannot be refined any further, but because nobody with relevant expertise has looked at them (e.g. a lot of the European Asteraceae at family may not be IDable to species level, but many are observations of plants in flower that can probably be refined to at least tribe).
I was specifically concerned with the repeated claims by some users that IDing plants as dicots is useless and IDing them to family is useful. This is a claim that needs to be examined. There are many thousands of observations at dicots, but there are also many thousands of observations at other levels as well.
I was thinking that same thing recently, and decided that IDing is in some ways like doing housework:
You get through all the new observations of plants for your state or region one day, feel a sense of accomplishment, and the next day there’s a whole new batch to go through. You clean your house one day, feel a sense of accomplishment, and lo and behold, the next day there is dust everywhere, all over again.
Except that with IDing you can actually learn things. It’s much more exciting to discover that there are more species in genus X than you previously knew, than it is to discover that there are more dust bunnies under the beds than you realized.
Which explains a lot about all those dust bunnies under my beds…
Once upon a time, my mother said to me, “There is always something more worth doing than housework.” Making iNat IDs is definitely more worth doing than housework, in my book. (Also, just wander around your house without your glasses on, if you wear them. It’s what I do and surprisingly there’s much less dust in my life.)
So, I’ve been thinking. (This is what comes of being somewhat laid up with a bum knee - sorry about that.)
I watch the notifications on my own observations roll in and it seems to me that there are many more IDs added to many of my observations than necessary. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that having three agreeing IDs is a good thing for several reasons, even though only two are needed at the species level. But I wonder how many more observations could reach Research Grade more quickly if identifiers who are adding the fourth through tenth ID on a single observation could be persuaded to work on Needs ID observations instead.
When people open iNat, are they opening to an Explore page, so they are seeing both RG and Needs ID observations? My primary iNat bookmark is to Needs ID observations in my region, so I rarely even look at RG observations at all. All these “extra” identifications can’t all be people practicing IDing, can they? Do we have any idea how many IDs, on average, are associated with each RG observation? Does that average vary with taxonomic group? More IDs for, say, birds and fewer for graminoids and powdery mildews, perhaps?
How can we persuade identifiers to work only on Needs ID observations? Within the limits of their knowledge, of course.
When my notifications for my IDs, or following that - get past 2 or 3 I unfollow.
Because iNat doesn’t give us a way to say, seen that obs, people who curate a taxon, use ‘add an ID’ = seen that one. Perhaps the other 4th identifier can tell us why?
Ha! I worked with a woman who was very disappointed in how dirty her house was after her cataract surgery. Lesson learned lol
Regards,
Patti Tessler
Yes, that’s what I mean.
But overall, I agree with OPs point.
There are expert IDers who regularly review certain families or lower taxa for things to be IDd, but these are rare
Regards,
Patti Tessler
This thread includes some comments by IDers about why they might add IDs to observations that are already RG: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/shouting-into-the-abyss-why-do-some-easy-observations-sometimes-go-unidentified/53506/ (Fair warning: it also includes some rather despairing wailing by yours truly about the difficulty of trying to figure out how to distribute IDs more equally and coordinate IDer efforts in a taxon that is chronically short of IDers.)
My purely subjective impression is that apart from users adding additional IDs as part of their process of learning or systematically reviewing a taxon, there are quite a few users who look at observations via their subscriptions (e-mail or dashboard notifications) or using Explore (e.g. generalist users who like to browse recent observations in their particular region and add some IDs along the way).
I hadn’t thought about people looking at their dashboards and thus seeing mostly observations from observers they follow, but I bet that’s part of the reason for “extra” IDs. I have a lot of followers (perhaps because I make a lot of observations? I’m certainly no expert in anything in particular), so maybe that’s why I see lots of “extra” IDs.
I only look at observations in the “needs ID” category.
For me, it’s much more satisfying helping one of those get IDed properly, than it is piling on extra IDs to observations that are already correct.
Maybe some IDers are adding ID’s to already-RG Observations so they can more easily achieve the goal of making twice as many IDs as OBs (which we are often urged to do.)
Or to reach an impressive number of IDs to post to the forum topic “iNat milestones,” where many power IDers post jaw-dropping feats of Identifying prowess.
Or maybe it’s just too much fun? “You know you’re really into iNat when…”
you just can’t stop adding IDs to Observations that don’t need it?
To me it seems that some people put an ID instead of a fave. At least that’s what I noted in my own observations like:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/235816622
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/177060733
(How many IDs does Gerald have?)
It is me that whines about that - but if I could, I would only count IDs that move from Unknown or Needs ID. It feels like more effective use of my own iNat time. Will escape once we hit the GSB cutoff!
I’m not exactly sure how subscriptions to a taxon or a place work since I don’t use this feature, but I imagine it is much like following a user, so these notifications may well also take people to the Explore page and not Identify as well.
Citizen science is many wonderful things, but it isn’t efficient. Mostly, we do what we’re doing because it’s what we want to do. There isn’t a simple trade-off whereby if we weren’t adding 4th or 5th agreeing ID’s we would identify an equal number of Needs ID observations. We might go play with the dog, instead.
It’s true that some people use Explore when they’d be happier (and more efficient) if they used Identify, and we may be able to encourage the switch. That would be good. But mostly, we can’t make this different. I mean, if I want to add a 12th agreeing ID to a funny observation on Geralds of the World project, I will. And before it even comes to that, I will sometimes “waste” my iNaturalist time looking through the observations on Geralds or Blue! or some other frivolous but fun project. If some people want to “waste” their time adding extra ID’s, I’ll let them do that, too. I’d rather focus on what’s going right and let a lot of the slop go by.
I would love to have that problem. Of my 989 observations, 513 are research grade – just over half, 51.9%
The “within the limits of their knowledge” is the problem. The 48.1% of my observations stuck at Needs ID are outside most identifiers’ limits of knowledge.