So, often when I have some time I’ll go through the identify screens with the “unknown” filter on and just lump things into the highest taxon I’m comfortable with. I often feel silly doing this, because yeah, that’s obviously a flowering plant or a spider or a basidiomycete, but my goal is to move t…

super helpful. to keep it manageable I have a filter setup around my area, and try to keep the unknowns restricted to just very difficult taxa (e.g. algae, slime mold vs fungi, unidentified objects, or mistaken observations pending deletion)

I think it might even be encouraged in the FAQ ? I’m a little embarassed when I end up identifying something as Plant (Plantae) , but: It shows up for people who only filter for plants It follows the observation, so you get notified as ID is narrowed and can learn the taxon for next time The narrow…

Yeah I do the same when I have some spare time, I’ll just go to an area that I’ve been to or currently at and just sort some of the observations that did not get an ID

It’s just great to get things out of “unknown” and into a lot more searches. Anything narrower is a bonus at that point. Most of the time, kingdom is at least clear, but fungi and slime molds can be confusing. Infections from fungi, viruses, bacteria, protozoans, and insect activity can be tricky. …

Edit: sorry joedziewa I meant to reply to the topic and not to you specifically There’s an extremely loose “club,” if you will, of people who ID unknowns, although we’ve not been very chatty on our threads lately: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/amount-of-unknown-records-is-decreasing/8594 https:…

This is a question frequently asked on the forum, so not to say the same thing another time, answer is you’re not silly, it makes sense, though you personally should never stop learning, adding lower taxa is preferred than higher if you know what you id, it saves human-hour spent on ids.

Yes! This is very much encouraged! Some reading material… https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/does-anyone-else-get-bothered-by-how-many-observations-are-marked-as-unknown-species/31896 https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/coordinating-identification-of-unknowns/24572 https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/poll…

Great Southern Bioblitz is 100 days away. And I am still chewing away at the Rest of Africa backlog. Fighting down the last 1.5K … but they trickle in steadily. I have tried moving the planty stuff to broad categories, but from my notifications, I see almost NO response. If I can get it to family t…

That explains a lot (especially the last link). I’ve been baffled when I see observations from a person who I am aware is well-versed in the taxon they’re uploading having them as unknowns. I didn’t consider the network logistics, thanks.

I noticed that Why do some serious “power users” add so many unknown observations? is arguably 2 year old topic. On the phone app, there’s currently an option in settings to prevent auto upload / auto sync which takes care of uploading unknowns without an ID. Is this still a problem when using the …

Identifying taxa just to remove them from "unknown"

General

Strawberrytart July 21, 2022, 6:37pm 2

This activity is encouraged.

Topic		Replies	Views
Is it worthy to (vaguely) categorize “Unknowns”? General question	26	902	March 18, 2025
Does anyone else get bothered by how many observations are marked as "unknown species"? General question	231	9338	December 27, 2022
Thoughts on unknown ID level? General	59	1337	October 9, 2025
Why are some accounts adding super high level ids to my unknown observations General question	80	3778	September 22, 2022
Amount of "Unknown" records is decreasing General	555	38625	July 8, 2021

Identifying taxa just to remove them from "unknown"

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