Maybe I am in the minority, but if I find I am making bad IDs due to being sleepy I generally go to bed.
I didn’t realize there were so many people identifying after drinking either, maybe we should start an identification project for buzzed IDs that need sober confirmation?
If I sip 3 or 4 beers over the course of a couple hours of ID/leisure time it doesn’t typically impact my ability to ID - if i notice my ability to pay attention is impacted I step back. In my case I never just get drunk and then ID but vet away, nothing but appreciation!
It was more of a half joke, but I do think it’s like being sleep-impaired, it’s likely there’s some element of reduced accuracy there.
I guess it depends how much a person drinks, for me a half drink would be enough to make me a little sloppier than usual since I’ve cut back quite a lot over the years, but I could see a more regular drinker having a couple of beers and just being more relaxed in identifying.
I think it would actually be a cool experiment to track how accurate IDs are for each person while drinking and not, of course there’d be lots of confounding factors for each person, but with enough data I think we could show that IDs get more general and less accurate, but the effect may be small and really variable for any given person.
Just interesting to think about how creative/resourceful we can get with analysing the amount of data that comes out of iNat!
Thank you all! Getting all these perspectives is helpful!
Since I have very little time except when I’m too tired to do much else, I’m stuck with the choice of IDing while sleepy or not IDing much at all. Unfortunately some of the mistakes this leads to aren’t so much “it could be these three species and I chose the wrong one,” but instead, “I have no memory of putting this ID there at all, but no one would think it could be that.”
That said, for roughly every several hundred identifications I make one really obvious mistake and a few understandable errors. The question then becomes is that ratio bad enough that I should just cut way back?
This is a situation where I would leave it at a higher level.
I’m not sure what that means in this situation. If I have no intention of adding an identification to an observation, but then later see that I’ve added a completely wrong identification, leaving it at a higher level isn’t really an answer that has meaning.
If you find you’ve misidentified something, change your ID to something correct.
What kind of mistakes are you making? Moose instead of ant, peccary instead of dicot? This kind is easy to make when sleepy. Or is it another kind?
I find that sometimes these odd unexplainable IDs are the result of typing a taxon name and selecting the wrong item from the dropdown list (it sometimes seems that it likes to move while one is in the process of choosing the name one wants). It can help to consciously wait a few more seconds until the ID is fully entered and the observation updates so that you see what you selected and can check it is correct.
I do - always wait to see if iNat applied the ID which I chose. Tired fingers inadvertently slip to the next name on the list - which is then beyond utterly mystifuddling why that taxon is even ON The List !! I wouldn’t choose that, I have never heard of it, have no idea what even is it and where it fits into the web of life. Aiming at D for dicot, I can get Dic (which is a taxon!) or Diptera which is next on the list. We don’t, we really don’t, deliberately conflate those widely divergent D options.
The inexhaustible list of homonyms is why I work thru Kingdom Disagreements for Africa each day.
Keep IDing … one day you will have more time … (says the retired GINK)
Love that word!
I type “dicot”, but the second item, as I mentioned above, is a peccary in the genus Dicotyles. As to moose, it’s called “ant” in Catalan.
I have a similar experience. What I tend to do, if it’s not stating the obvious, is to consciously “skip” the tricky cases (I am usually awake/alert enough to just about tell the difference) and leave them until I have the time to focus more and do any additional research. In my experience, these are the ones that tend to get “skipped” by other identifiers too, and they are usually still floating about, unconfirmed, when I have time to get back to them. Thanks for the question. A good opportunity for reflection.
Lately, tired and/or stressed is the only state in which I can make ID’s, since that’s how I’ve been lately. I have found myself making more errors. (At least I hope more than normal.) So I’m doing a lot less identifying and sticking more closely with the easy ones. (Not entirely . . . ) However, I find identifying on iNaturalist to be a good way to calm down and relax. So I’m not giving it up. And fortunately, some of the stressors in my life are winding down. Soon I may be back to the background error rate, which unfortunately is not zero. So it goes.
My cut-off is 75% correct for mosses and 95% correct for grasses.
When I think I am bad and not improving, I just give up on that genus.
I am not apologising for misidentifications. I thank for correction of “fat finger” type or obvious errors, for the rest I just accept the alternative or argue my case.
If you work in the field and you think that the errors undermine your professional standing, by all means slow down.
Otherwise, your percentages look good to me.
I am perfectly capable of making horrible mistakes identifying while fully rested, undistracted and motivated. That is mostly because I am human. It is part of being human - we make mistakes. Perfection is not a human trait. I know I will make mistakes, but I also know I can rely on the community to fix those errors. That is why I think iNat works so well. Community.