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?
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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?)
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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.
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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.
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72% of my verifiable observations are Research Grade. I am pretty sure that’s because I am trying to document the common organisms in my area, particularly the ones I already know the names of. Do I remember correctly that you tend to make observations mostly of species you have not observed before?
Mostly, yes.
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Maybe also because you have 271 followers?
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Yikes, that many? I’m embarrassed. But yes, that could also be one of the reasons my RG percentage is higher than average.
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Thank you for reminding me about Blue! I visited it last night in response to your post and ended up with a new addition to my “Favorite Taxa” list.
And I’m not sure Blue! is a frivolous project. The rationale for the absence in some languages of a word for the color blue is “blue is rare in nature” (which I find a silly premise, because if you just look up you see that the largest object in nature is blue during the daytime). By documenting the diversity of taxa with this “rare” color, we can show that it isn’t so rare after all.
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I love those lizards! So strange!
I’ve never been all that impressed by the absence of a special word for blue in some cultures. (I’ve even seen some people write that people in some cultures couldn’t see blue!) I figure that when they felt a need to make the distinction, people could refer to “sky green” vs. “leaf green” and feel no need for a separate word.
Since it wasn’t in this thread, I will add
Homer’s wine-dark sea in the Odyssey - is because Ancient Greek does not have a word for blue. I find words and languages fascinating, as I learn my way thru Botanese.
Haven’t tried this online test yet
https://ismy.blue/
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/sep/16/blue-green-viral-test-color-perception
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Perhaps today is for concentrating on IDing blue organisms. Chicory, anyone?
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(only an iNatter would be intent on a pavement ‘weed’ So blue!)
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This is a bit surprising, given how many insects of this order are notoriously hard to identify. Are there just a lot of dipterologists on iNat, are the CV & observers overconfident, or aren’t they that hard to get to family after all?
(Looking at the current numbers in ‚Needs ID’ in Europe it is: 50k at Order-Suborder, 60k at Infraorder-Superfamily, and 778k at Family or below)
Yeah, the large number of dipterans at family stood out for me, too. I interpreted it as an indication that they tend to get stuck at this level relatively more frequently than other insect orders. So it’s not so much that people are really good at getting them to family, but that it is difficult to get them past family. (I think there are a couple of people in Europe who focus specifically on broad IDing of flies down to family, which may also play a role.)
By contrast, if you can get a hymenopteran to family, most of the time someone will be able to refine it futher (with the exception of the notoriously difficult ichneumonids, though a lack of skilled IDers is also probably a factor here). Lots of hymenopterans end up sitting at tribe or genus or subgenus instead – there are 800k “needs ID” in Europe at subfamily or below.
I was making a quick and dirty comparison and probably it would need some more careful examination and tweaking of categories to draw meaningful conclusions. There is some variation across arthropod orders about what taxonomic ranks form distinctly recognizable groups (sometimes this might be superfamily or subfamily instead of family, for example).
I also didn’t account for the different numbers of total observations in each order. At first glance, the Lepidoptera numbers seem rather high, given that this is one of the more readily identifiable insect orders, until one considers that there are about 5 million Lepidoptera observations in Europe compared to only 1.1 million for Diptera and 1.4 for Hymenoptera.
(It’s possible I mistyped the numbers for the diptera at order-suborder – I doubt it would have changed all that much in the last couple of weeks…)
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Solution: find someone who will describe Pulvonatus lagomorphus so you can post observations of all the dust bunnies you discover under your bed while cleaning.
(There is likely some interesting regional variation in the distribution of the species in this genus. For example, in some parts of the world, I would expect to find the smaller sister species Pulvonatus musculus (from the German Staubmaus, “dust mouse”) instead.)
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Just to be clear, that bit of folklore is not coming from iNaturalist.