I know that 5,000 identifications is nothing compared to the many thousands that some of you have achieved, but I’m kind of proud of myself. I can’t help but think that if everyone did that it would be a huge benefit to iNat. I’m not an expert in anything, but I’m very careful and follow all my notifications. My error rate is well below 1% because I’m a wimp about identifying and just ignore observations if I’m not confident. It’s been fun and I’ve learned a lot, too. It’s easy to feel intimidated by the super identifiers on the site, but I think that if enough of us identify at any level, it a good thing. At least I hope others feel that way, too.
Congratulations!
congratulations! 5k is not a small feat.
My goal has been to try and keep myself at 2:1 observations to identifications. Even if it was ‘easy’ ones, or moving things from unknown or life into a kingdom or something. Every little bit helps!
Thank you. Every single ID is appreciated – by the observer and the team of identifiers working alongside you.
Way to go!
Keep it up.
Congratulations!!! 5,000 IDs is a big deal! It’s always wonderful to have more people identifying
Awesone accomplishment!
Love your comments! Just yesterday someone told me “I thought you had to be a real expert to do identifications.” That’s a big obstacle to recruiting identifiers, and you cogently explain why it’s not true. Thanks for identifying!
Congratulations!
Congratulations :)
This is the way!
That’s great. You do not need to compare yourself with big identifiers. I have 15,000+ ids but that too is not a lot. The big identifiers are often the ones who started early, so they have more time to build that, and also people who press the agree button a lot without second thought. If you are making self-thought, improving/leading ids, even of a higher taxon (i.e. identifying a beetle as a beetle), that is great. There is much more in stock to achieve, hopefully you will get there soon.
Way to go!
I’m around 6000 ± a few hundred; many of those are high-level taxa like dicots. I’ve learned some species, such as fan clubmoss and Argiope aurantia, both of which I first observed while surveying the same lot, and dogfennel, which I recognized as “it’s a one of those” before finding out what it’s called and how it’s classified.
nods in Mandalorian
I sometimes wonder whether people who have seriously large observations or identifications have actual lives beyond iNat 
Valid question!
For me, tbh a lot of time is dedicated to (almost to say life is dedicated to) iNat and taxonomy & the problems under current taxonomies. I am nearly a monomaniac for these. Generally I prefer to id rare ones are what I feel was never identified on iNat before. There are some lists in my journal and they are my encouragement.
I decided I’d specialize and just be very good at identifying a subset of a large group. This way I wouldn’t contribute as much to mis-identifications 
Yep. I see some people with almost a million identifications, which comes up to almost 350 identifications a DAY, and you gotta wonder 
Almost everything I do off-iNaturalist is nature-related in some way.