I love identifying on iNat, and I’ve definitely gotten better at it over the years, but I still make some really obvious mistakes while identifying, things that I can only explain as carelessness, sleepiness, lack of attention, etc. This isn’t all that surprising, as I have three kids, a somewhat-more-than-full-time job, and many other demands on my time and energy. Usually if I get the chance to ID it is at the end of an exhausting day or in a few interstitial minutes while my brain is simultaneously doing something else (like on the phone).
I’d like to ask how other identifiers navigate the tension between desire to ID and all the factors in life that might compromise the quality of those IDs? Do others struggle to find time to ID while wide awake? What circumstances increase your errors? Hearing your experience and how you handle it would help me think about what to do about this. Thank you!
I don’t manage these tradeoffs, because I’m a wholly perfect naturalist with no faults and have never made any errors in my identifications.
All jokes aside, I’m not sure there is a specific optimal strategy – not that you’re suggesting there would be one single method for improvement, but I don’t know what the most salient way would be to mitigate factors driving against accuracy. I suppose we should be sure to take a close look at photos, not identify by gestalt alone when distracted or impaired, and especially not make assumptions or shortcuts based on commonness. I just caught a mistake of my own today, thankfully within minutes of first making the ID, but which was based on abundance rather than heeding my initial doubts. More damagingly, I’ve seen quick-draw power identifiers making numerous errors lately in identifying common plant species – I think from going through unknowns, the new queue, or the Welcoming New Users pilot (or whatever it’s called in English), while trying to cover too many observations in too short a time – where if they’ve ‘confirmed’ something to Research Grade, it’s very unlikely that others will review it and recognise the error; but where the error was obvious when the photos were zoomed in, and the problem seemed to stem from looking at the thumbnail and the general map region alone.
Also, of course, be prepared to justify an identification beyond “it seemed right at the time” in the mere vaguest way. The chain of reasoning isn’t something you have to write down, but it should be clear in hindsight what morphological characters/features were part of your thoughts, or what aspects of the gestalt shaped your idea. There’s nothing more embarrassing than going back and being unable to even suggest why you might’ve thought as you did then – that suggests either poor reasoning, or really being impaired in your attention at that moment.
I’m sure more will occur to me later, but I’m distracted while writing this reply!
I tend to make more errors late at night, like I’m sure most people do, but ironically, also seem to make more mistakes when looking over many IDs of the same taxa in a row.
Something about repetition starts to make me shoehorn IDs to fit a previous pattern.
If I’m identifying and notice I’m tired or sleepy, I just stop since I slow down a lot and the quality of the IDs is more likely to be error-prone.
If I thought I was always too tired to ID, but still wanted to, I’d probably try something a little different, like identifying “unknowns” or moving plants from Plantae to dicot or monocot–just something less cognitively demanding.
That, or maybe quality-checking and confirming a species that I know very well that has a narrow range of variation.
I often see identifiers talk in terms of doing so many hundred IDs, or clearing out a particular backlog. I found out this absolutely does not work for me. I feel burdened and my mind wanders. Instead, I have to get curious, so I generate questions to answer. “There are two species of this moss in Arkansas. Can I tell them apart?” “Are the greenbriers flowering yet in Alabama?” “Let’s look at distribution outliers of meadowbeauties.” “Any new woodrat observations this week?” As a consequence I go pretty slow (I add annotations and comments, too) and I don’t last long. But I do keep coming back, and I make fewer mistakes than if I tried to accomplish a lot.
My usual IDing time is in the morning while breakfast and lunch are cooking, which is normally from 5:30 to 6:00 (and if I find that the hunk of frozen stock is not completely melted, I continue IDing a few more minutes), except when making stock, when I spend at least half an hour between 4 and 5, since while the food is cooking, I’m eating the ends of the bones. I can sometimes do 21 pages in this time, but sometimes I spend several minutes examining the stem to see if the leaves are opposite (it’s a maple) or not (it’s a sweetgum), or looking up my previous observations to see the ventral side of an Argiope, or examining the antlers, tail, and ears of an Odocoileus. I don’t try for a number of IDs, as long as I can do at least one.
ETA: On Saturday morning I don’t cook; if I wake up with enough time to do some IDs before breakfast (cooked on Friday), I do, else I ID when I get back from church, normally after a nap.
I hear you! I feel that since I am a mom I never ID fully conscious anymore But IDing is also the refreshing moment to let your head go somewhere else for a while..
I definately had those moments when a fellow IDer had to correct me for some obvious mistakes several times in a row and that was my moment to jump of that ID train and get some sleep.
I prefer doing improving IDs. You have to focus and need to think about what you suggest there instead of just hitting agree.. it is not as easy to get sloppy as compared to just needing to agree to a bunch of IDs, which can quickly get monotonous. Instead I do some runs trough species level needs ID only (mostly) when I am more relaxed and able to dive into it.
I also like to shake it up regularly. I have my favourit taxa and regular world regions. But when I get bored I might break out a bit.. I might swap between North America, Europe and Asia.. or maybe even dip my toe into completely foreign waters like Australia recently. Instead of reviewing a certain genus I might go more broad and review my favourite family for a while.. or I go more specific to a certain country or state.. or maybe I open up all gates an do order level IDs worldwide and push them as far as I can.
Fatigue while IDing hasn’t been much of an issue for me, although its not uncommon for me to day drink when I’m not working and while I rarely overindulge I have had to tell myself to take a break/stop IDing to avoid erroneous errors. I squeeze in time to ID whenever I can, even if its a few minutes, but wont allow myself to stress over how many IDs I make in any given timeframe. Affirming priorities in the moment while remaining fluid with my day-to-day scheduling is key for me when avoiding the tensions you’ve described.
Hmm. I’ve never really worried too much, honestly. If I make a mistake, I make a mistake - it’s part of the process, and if anything, I feel Cunningham’s Law works in my favor if I’m particularly error-prone on any given day. I’m always happy to be corrected. Keeps me from making similar brain farts in the future.
This, 100%. I wouldn’t call myself a power identifier, but I’ve recently bumped up my ID volume for CNC, especially of unknowns. I’ve absolutely caught myself making more mistakes than normal- just one or two, but it makes me wonder how many I haven’t caught. I’m not going to lie, I’m very much looking forward to CNC to be over. I know the observations needing ID will still be there, but the pressure to ID even when I’m not mentally locked-in will definitely be much less.
Idk if is just me or happens to many in my same condition. But Inat upload is super slow. Extremely slow. I live in the country side in colombia btw.
So slow it even takes days to “finish uploading”.
The other day i uploaded like 30 observations… it took almost a week. And to top it all you can not leave the inat app window otherwise it stops uploading and the screen must be on all time. And also you can not use the option of split window, inat will stop the upload. So I have to leave my phone loading for hours. To finish a couple of uploads. IM NOT KIDDING.
And there for, sometimes I just put “plant” or even worst NOTHING. Which for some inaturalist who apparently dont appreciate it have let me know about me not even trying to put a general id.
Dude, seriously… I try.
At the begining I took it to my heart and felt guilty about it. But after so many uploads and so slow inat system. I decided not to stress myself.
I sometimes find some of my uploads without id or just a general id. And i simply identify it months later.
Nothing wrong with it. Thats just how my inat works. And there is nothing wrong for me taking my time with it.
After a long day I often really only get the time to ID late at night (say, from 11pm onwards) on my phone, and often to the point where my own sleepiness/fatigue compels me to stop identifying plants, as much as I find it mildly-addicting, and to fall asleep! I’ve realised this setup is less than optimal for many reasons other than fatigue (resolution seems to be lower in the app, I can’t easily have many tabs open to check against sources, and I can’t add annotations!), but I still convince myself that it’s better for me to do something with the data than nothing at that point in time.
I often work with a higher level of uncertainty with my late-night-phone-IDs than I do when I get the time to sit down with my laptop at a more reasonable time of day. For many identifiers this obviously won’t work the same way, but I find myself hesitating more often at higher taxonomic ranks than usual to be safe if my brain isn’t cooperating (“Gee, looks like a Ricinocarpos but I can’t presently remember how to tell it apart from Beyeria and Stachystemon, to Malpighiales I’ll go”), or I’ll often just leave a comment if I have an inkling of a taxon but don’t feel especially confident at the time. I usually then make a note to myself to return to these IDs the next day when I think I’ll be in a better position to refine or correct myself, or I’ll dock it in my Favourites tab to keep reference. That being said, I have the habit of promising to come back to my late-night-phone-IDs and then forgetting about them when I wake up, so as I’m typing this there’s probably a bunch of orphaned observations lingering out there…
Compared to others, I don’t ID very much and those that I do make are usually leading/improving/disagreeing, so these sorts of strategies might not work for others that do a lot of supporting ID work, haha
I don’t think anyone meant to criticize anyone for uploading unknowns- I know I certainly didn’t mean to do so with my comment. I think most of us understand that upload problems are an issue, and slow internet speeds. And mistakes happen too (that’s what this whole thread is about, after all). The bigger issue is the much larger volume of observations uploaded by users who never learned how to add identifications to their own observations. Some users have uploaded hundreds or even thousands of unknowns just during the CNC period (one city still has over 16,000 unknowns, and that’s after two weeks of identifying!). But that’s not their fault either- they were never properly taught to do so by the app or CNC organizers. We’re not here to make anyone feel guilty for things that aren’t their fault or intent. That’s literally one of the iNat guidelines: assume people mean well.
Thank you for persisting through the bad upload experience. I’ve had problems with slow upload speeds too, though they’ve never been that bad- I can’t imagine how frustrating that is.
I try to avoid multitasking.
I try to be aware of my biases, especially this one -translated to mammals for a wider audience: After looking at rabbits for some time, I leave a note on the unidentified fox observation: “I haven’t seen a rabbit this large and red”
There is a Rule at work, at home and almost everywhere:
If you don’t make a mistake, you are not trying hard enough
If you make too many mistakes, you need a holiday (or at least a break)
Parachuting is one of the exceptions, parallel parking and identifying are not.
I definitely had to set some boundaries for myself after the Brood X emergence of 2021, during which I would stay up to the wee hours (even until dawn) mixing insomnia with endless cicada IDs. Now I have firm rules against doing IDs late in the evening (particularly after dinner and/or cocktails) or in bed; they get me too “spun up” and interfere with sleep.
I work on challenging taxa when I’m at my best (after morning coffee, during brunch) and “comfy taxa” that I work on to relax when I’m winding down at the end of the workday.
I move to easier taskflows, sorting unknowns into broader categories if I’m too sleepy to do precise ID. Instead of, say, sorting into specific families, move up to the phylum level so you’re less likely to make a mistake
But IDing is also the refreshing moment to let your head go somewhere else for a while..