I realise that this sort of gushing praise isn’t the sort of forum feedback that you’re probably looking for, but I just wanted to say some positive words to thank iNat’s incredible army of identifiers for their hard work and diligence. Over a 120,000 people helped identify our observations in 2024. At least five hundred of these made over 18,000 identifications each - that’s about fifty a day, every day. That is an incredible amount of work. Whether iNaturalist could exist without the work of these people may be open to question, but there is no way that it could give the the same level of service, being a brilliant educational and inspirational tool, without them.
From my own perspective, in my first full year of retirement, I undertook a private challenge in 2024 to observe 100 different bird species every month (perhaps I should have mentioned this on the gamification thread). I’m very pleased to report that I was successful, but there is no way that I would have been were it not for the identifiers here on iNat who confirmed, and sometimes challenged, what I thought I’d seen. Who put labels on things I didn’t have a clue about and who sometimes picked out additional ‘sightings’ in the backgrounds of my photos. In particular, I’d like to thank kakariki14, muhummedh, bonxie62, steve_mcwilliam, lefebvremax, ikelman and steve1984a who each made two-hundred or more IDs on my observations. And @casperrex, @oakleafe and @alanhorstman who, somewhat incredibly, made over a thousand each.
Finally, I feel that I must mention @fregjie, iNat’s most prolific of identifiers last year, whose daily average was well over 1,200 and who clocked up nearly half a million IDs. That is simply amazing.
Thanks all and keep up the good work (please).