Hi all! I just checked my profile today, and saw that I am only 170 IDs from 25,000!! I was so excited, and what was even more interesting was that I found it nearly five times the amount of observations I had. This got me wondering: does the majority of the community use iNat in a similar way (Addi…

I know I’m a lil newbie here but I’m amazed how most voters have over 10k obs o.o I only submit observations of spiders in a very urbanized country so maybe theres that, I wish I ever get to see that many specimens to be up there :D Even so Id def say I spend most of my time adding obs, maybe I sh…

[image] dgwdoesthings: Once again, the vocal minority is the main forum userbase I think forum users tend to skew heavily towards people who (also) ID because these tend to be a) highly active and dedicated users who thus are more likely to have a strong interest in iNat and talking about iNa…

If you are familiar with the spider species in your urban area, I’m sure other users would appreciate you sharing your knowledge by adding IDs to their spider observations!

@mkanimallover you could add a third poll, asking for the individuals users proportion between observations and identifications (probably observations divided through identifications, since most user observe more than they identify, although there are exceptions)

just seing this now, I just answered the same thing :)

Agreed. I had an account and just observed for several years but had very few observations. Some fellow moth enthusiasts recruited me to start IDing to “clean up” some misidentification messes, and after a few hundred thousand IDs, I got way more into the platform and then started observing a lot mo…

Is there an easy way to weight observation counts by how many ranks the ID did refine the the previous state? At the first glance my 25k IDs look like a big number for a layman, but most of them are like Unknown→Aves, Magnoliophyta→Brassicaceae etc. This is just curiosity, it probably doesn’t justif…

I’m definitely a better observer than identifier, but I think identification is important to keep the community working in a healthy way. I try to keep my id:obs ratio above 1:2.

Welcome to the forum, Luis! [image] moyalem: I know I’m a lil newbie here but I’m amazed how most voters have over 10k obs I’m approaching 2 years on the forum and on iNaturalist.org , but I also feel like a n00b, since I’m not a member of The Ten Thousand Club (at least 10k Observations and …

IDs vs. Observations: Please Vote!

General

gijsroaming March 18, 2026, 10:05am 16

Honestly, this is the biggest takeaway from this poll for me. We may have already known it, but this poll inadvertently still does a great job showing how big that (mis)representation actually is!

Topic		Replies	Views
Poll: Are You Primarily an iNat Observer or Identifier? Nature Talk	102	3871	April 14, 2020
Do you make more observations on iNat or identifications General question	117	1693	February 1, 2025
Little interaction by the community General question	58	4715	January 17, 2022
I realised I was using iNat wrong! General question	69	2825	May 11, 2026
Patience is a virtue General	45	1431	April 4, 2021

IDs vs. Observations: Please Vote!

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