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)

[image] axarus: truly has no taxonomic level they can assign it to Identifying skills across iNat range all the way. From - I am rewriting the taxonomy for … and I am The Expert on My Taxon. Across people like me - yes, almost always have some sort of idea What That is but I do bring my utt…

As a noob struggling with learning to lower my ‘unknown’ pile I am keenly aware on how relative that term is on iNat, but I don’t see how that relativity can ever really change, and that the optimistic intent is to move as many out of the ID lands of the ‘Great Unknown’. I struggled a couple times …

I observe a lot of galls, but I’ve only learned a few to the species level. What I do is add my gall observations to the Galls of North America project, where people who know their galls tend to give IDs quickly. It helps to know at least the genus of the plant the gall is on, however, and the proje…

Thanks for that project reference Lynn, and also for the kind words of encouragement. (I’ll be sure to mention your support on my next tumble down the cliffs of Mt. Stupid. Which means… pretty soon.)

[image] arboretum_amy: I have also cohosted a few virtual events dedicated to IDing unknowns. What a great idea!

I just started doing this when I saw another recent thread about it. I hope that I will learn as I do this. But I have a question. What is the quickest/easiest way to find the “unknowns”? I can click on “Identify”, and I assume these are the newest added. A search for “unknown” doesn’t bring up any…

[image] vreinkymov: 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 website interface? The web site warns you that you’ve left off an important thing (ID, …

Sorting the Unknowns is considered a valuable public service. And I learn a lot doing it, especially when I’m wrong. One thing I encourage you to do is to set the “reviewed” flag for things you skip over because you don’t have a clue. Otherwise, these observations just pester you over and over agai…

[image] jbecky: identification in the description or as placeholder text sometimes that is a tiny typo - just the one letter wrong or missing - iNat is UNforgiving. You can Fave or Follow an obs where you want to watch the ID discussion unfold. I can Coleoptera … and in a couple of hours it…

Identifying taxa just to remove them from "unknown"

General

katharinab July 24, 2022, 6:13pm 29

Laudable work!

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Is it worthy to (vaguely) categorize “Unknowns”? General question	26	905	March 18, 2025
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Thoughts on unknown ID level? General	59	1348	October 9, 2025
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Amount of "Unknown" records is decreasing General	555	38635	July 8, 2021

Identifying taxa just to remove them from "unknown"

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