Fellow iNatters, I recognize my clients are charged with a high crime; nevertheless, all citizens are entitled to a vigorous defense. And who among us has never left a room only to forget why, or has never absent-mindedly caused a forest-fire engulfing thousands of acres? Are we not all guilty in some little way? Are none of us worthy of forgiveness?
Surely you, too, remember first encountering something outside and thinking to yourself: “What the f&*^ is that?” Let us not lose sight of the blinding beauty of the natural world, or the thrill of childlike awe and wonder, which could quite easily result in forever forgetting to label the 39 photographs we just uploaded!
My clients are a disparate cast, accordingly, their defense is multifaceted. Can we not - on occasion, just for a little while - let something just, you know, be? Are we not slightly concerned that over-fetishization of “identification” and “categorization” may ultimately result in a fascist police state? No? And as we were all taught, that specimen could be anything when it grows up!
Finally, I would like to suggest that this is but a misunderstanding; my clients understood you to enjoy providing identifications. They merely wished to provide you with the full swath of taxonomic opportunity - to allow you the thrill of exploring the Unknown. I urge you to meet this kindness in good faith.
Please cast aside your pitchforks and take mercy upon my poor clients, for collectively they are no different than you or I - nature lovers at heart. I ask that they be acquitted.
Sloth might be one of the seven deadly sins (as well as a really cool mammal), but Ignorance and Inattention don’t even make that list of traditional bad behaviors. And any one or a combination of all might explain the Unknowns. I suspect Ignorance is the main culprit: if you can’t ID the subject to species, then don’t submit any ID. We don’t all come to iNat pre-installed with a taxonomic hierarchy in our heads.
If only the iNat app itself came pre-installed with some form of artificial intelligence that could suggest an identification each and every time we upload a picture, then we wouldn’t even need the magnetic Bill Gates microchip thought-controlling injection to come up with an ID to suggest, we could just get an ID to click right there in the app that would be right more often than wrong. A fellow can dream anyway…
I’ve left my kitchen for no apparent reason, allowing a tortilla warming on the stovetop to catch fire. So in the eyes of my wife I have indeed sinned. But I’ve never posted an Unknown.
If one were to have such mercy on your clueless clients, I dare say, it would be quite the slipperiest of slopes. Today an unknown, tomorrow a free for all.
We most certainly do not want a fascist police state but a little more care and consideration from your clients is all that we require. For the greater good of all, of course.
I think I have not posted an unknown. Sometimes I’m a way off in “what I thought I saw”, but I do know vegetable from animal from fungi.
Even that broad is better than " life"
I also post from my recliner, after looking, editing photos and trying to figure it out myself.
Learning iNat on only the iOS app has been a steep learning curve.
And yes, unattended fires in the house and garage and likely to cause " words" here. Not to mention the cautionary looks. So far I’ve only set off a dropped hot pad…
I take it you don’t upload plant disease observations.
I have, in fact, uploaded an unknown (or was it “Life”?) because it was an observation of leaf curl. Was it caused by an arthopod? Microbe? Something in the plant’s environment? There is no taxon narrower than “life” that covers all these possibilities. The same is true of leaf spot, which might be fungal, bacterial, or viral, or simply a nutrient deficiency.
I’ve done a couple of either unknown or life because I really had just no idea what they were. And I understand that when people are in areas with poor mobile coverage / internet connectivity, unknowns can happen. (I’ve had no mobile phone for several days because a telco is upgrading the mobile tower I rely on and we had no warning… and local businesses are unable to use card payments because they have lost their connectivity. Unbelievable there is no backup.)
Sorry about that little side rant - that’s me walking into a room and forgetting why I am here.
However, I don’t really understand why there are people with thousands of observations (so not beginners), based in large cities where the phone coverage / internet access is way better than mine, who upload observations without IDs and don’t even come back to them to add IDs later.
Taking this a bit more seriously, I continue to fail to understand why an identification is not required to upload an observation. I even put in a feature request for this once and was rejected, but I honestly fail to see why being able to upload an observation without an ID is even valuable.
It’s okay if it’s wrong or broad, that’s why other people can add IDs. Unknows just kind of get lost.
What frustrates me are the people who give an ID to genus or species, but as a placeholder rather than an ID. Now maybe it’s sometimes a mistake or a species that doesn’t yet exist on iNat, but some (admittedly often new users) seem to only use placeholders, never IDs. Which just causes unnecessary work for identifiers…
