First, sorry if there’s a post about this already. I’ll delete this one, but I couldn’t find it.
I saw some external tools, typically quizzes, but I wonder if there’s someone who already created something for IDing practice without actually going to the real ID. A bit like the quiz games but less for kids and more about a tool to learn by practice using the large data set of iNat.
If it doesn’t exist, I believe for motivated developers it might be something that would be very useful to increase the number of future IDers.
I guess what we all do at the moment is to use the identify page but not actually put an ID when we’re not quite confident and that already slowly builds some skill. However, I believe seeing already the genus or species tag “influences” my decision and I suspect having a tool that hides it until you put yours would help the learning process.
But if you want to ID without a prior influence, go to Unknowns. So long as you follow your notifications and withdraw or reconsider as appropriate – that is a friendly way to learn, with help from most taxon specialists. That is what worked for me.
If unsure you can leave your potential ID as a comment. Or simply go up to the level where you are confident, and again, follow notifications to see if CID comes to meet you, or wanders off on a different road. All part of the learning curve.
And frankly, broad IDs with good intentions all help to clear the backlog and encourage observers and identifiers.
PS It is hugely rewarding in a year or 2, to realise your skills have moved on from Is a Dicot, to Hello Sally ! Now you can agree and take it to RG
I leave few comments, typically when I’m sure of the genus but not the species. So a comment without ID for me means “probably this” but not sure. Then I check the following ID when it comes, and have the satisfaction to see if I was right or wrong.
And I do unknowns from time to time and, frankly, these are my most meaningful IDs, I believe. Often the specific IDs I do, I have the sensation that somebody else would have done it just maybe a few days later. But ID unknowns have move them from a long wait to a quick ID (often genus if not more) in a matter of few days.
But if there’s a tool on top of all that to learn more, I would love it. And if there’s already one, then I would feel silly to miss it .
i’d say take this approach, give IDs to a higher level and keep an eye on your notifications to see if they get more specific.
it’s helpful to explore the search filters on the Identify page, so you’re not just looking at a raging river of observations. i’m partial to setting the ‘Rank - Low’ to something like Family or Order, that way you’ll only see things that with broader IDs
someone could write an extension or add functionality to an existing extension to do this with less setup required. i’m sure an LLM could do this if you can’t code or can’t find someone to code such a thing. there might even be new browsers out there that are built with LLMs integrated in them which might be able to handle the necessary page modifications without extra extensions.
That’s not really true. When you interact with an observation like that you’re automatically following it, so you get alerts on future IDs and comments on it.
Assuming others interact with it afterward, which often happens once an observation had been given an ID kick, you can ind up getting tons of feedback of all sorts.
I would (and I do just to train myself out of my comfort zone…) follow Diana’s suggestion, mainly because it helps a lot iNat, and you learn quite a lot about things you would not, because less interested in, or by lack of knowledge, things evolve, I have realised that having left university more than 40 years ago, wow how taxonomy has changed !
Even high-level can be a challenge, and looking at photos you haven’t taken, you see how lost you can be because you are missing the environment…plants: start by monocot/dicot if too easy drop a level etc… in animals, look above insecta…
And as already mentionned you are after looking at the notices you get, so be careful at the beginning not to find yourself like me, with a morning having 400 to look at, and you just follow the progress, you were wrong? just withdraw… but keep looking, maybe you were right after all…
It means you accept the idea you will make some/plenty mistakes at the beginning, and will withdraw many times and have a lot to follow, you will learn where you made mistakes, and, it happened to me, when you see not, just post a comment asking what you miss? to identify correctly…
When in the same situations, you now give good ID, you know you have progressed
And then there are obs like this. Just over 12 hours to glide from What is it to RG at sp with an ID tip for the future. When iNat works well, it works really well !
I see a lot of plants, and make observations, of plants that I don’t know. Last night I came up with the idea of figuring out what in the world I have observed by describing the plants verbally to my botanist wife, without letting her see the photos. Since I don’t know the names of the parts of the plants, this will be a challenge for everyone. Scoring, haven’t figured that out.
I would give her double points, for a verbal description with no picture.
Altho I guess you could try 20 questions.
Does it have flowers ? Little white dots. Some wisps of red fluff. Roses. Daisies. Lilies.
In life - are the leaves fragrant ? Hard or soft ?
Velvety or leathery, succulent, toothed margins or smooth ?
That info is often not IN the photo, so cannot be in your description … definitely double points to her !
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