# Let's Talk Annotations **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Created:** [March 9, 2019, 1:43am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627 "2019-03-09T01:43:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![annkatrinrose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47774/32.png) [@annkatrinrose](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/annkatrinrose)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2019, 1:34am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/101 "2019-10-26T01:34:00Z")
I also have noticed that with the recent update the order of annotations for flowering plants has changed. It used to be phenology first, but now it’s sex first. I’m not sure why - it’s still life stage before sex for insects and it doesn’t even make sense in terms of alphabetical order since P comes before S. I wished it would be relegated to second place again since it applies much less frequently than phenology. ---
**Author:** ![Star3](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/star3/32/73028_2.png) [@Star3](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/Star3)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2019, 6:03am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/102 "2019-10-26T06:03:32Z")
Oh, thank you! I was wondering if I’d imagined that the order used to be the other way. ---
**Author:** ![vynbos](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/vynbos/32/121_2.png) [@vynbos](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/vynbos)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2019, 11:03am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/103 "2019-11-04T11:03:55Z")
Suggestion: Termites and Ants: It would be handy to be able to filter all the adult obs to see just the alate (winged) stage. If the larva is the grub, then all workers, drones and queens are adults. So to achieve this, can we have an ‘alate’ stage added to Formicidae and Termitoidae? ---
**Author:** ![amzamz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@amzamz](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/amzamz)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 8:29am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/104 "2019-11-06T08:29:17Z")
… not really a suggestion for a new manual annotation: However, for Lepidoptera (and perhaps other taxa), could the automatic ID algorithm be used to **automatically** fill in “caterpillar” or “adult”? I guess it is easy to recognise, and most observers don’t bother to use the annotation. ---
**Author:** ![bouteloua](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/bouteloua/32/1180_2.png) [@bouteloua](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/bouteloua)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 12:03pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/105 "2019-11-06T12:03:41Z")
there’s this topic: [https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/use-computer-vision-to-annotate-observations/3331](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/use-computer-vision-to-annotate-observations/3331) ---
**Author:** ![marina\_gorbunova](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/marina_gorbunova/32/31454_2.png) [@marina\_gorbunova](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/marina_gorbunova)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 11:43am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/106 "2019-11-06T11:43:23Z")
I know it’s something usually done through flags, but i think it better fits forum. English annotation for plant phenology “budding” wasn’t clear not only for most users, but for those who translated it too, in Russian it’s called “почкование” that’s clearly is not about flower bud specifically, this choice of word always got me confused (I didn’t know what original version was). Now I know it’s about flowering and should be called something like “Бутон(ы)” as I can’t word it as a process in Russian. Probably there’re mistakes with other languages too. ---
**Author:** ![bouteloua](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/bouteloua/32/1180_2.png) [@bouteloua](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/bouteloua)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 1:24pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/107 "2019-11-06T13:24:47Z")
> [@marina\_gorbunova](#): > > English annotation for plant phenology “budding” wasn’t clear not only for most users, but for those who translated it too, in Russian it’s called “почкование” that’s clearly is not about flower bud specifically, this choice of word always got me confused (I didn’t know what original version was). Now I know it’s about flowering and should be called something like “Бутон(ы)” as I can’t word it as a process in Russian. Probably there’re mistakes with other languages too. Yeah, a long-known issue: > [@tiwane](#): > > Plant Phenology (which, I know, many botanists have argued should be Flowering Phenology) > [@ribes2018](#): > > Please clarify if budding refers to leaf buds or flower buds. Could that be made clearer by adding leaf budding or flower budding to the Attribute choices? Any update @tiwane on if this will be clarified to mean flower budding? ---
**Author:** ![carrieseltzer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/carrieseltzer/32/38544_2.png) [@carrieseltzer](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/carrieseltzer)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 2:00pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/108 "2019-11-06T14:00:23Z")
> [@marina\_gorbunova](#): > > Now I know it’s about flowering and should be called something like “Бутон(ы)” as I can’t word it as a process in Russian. To suggest a different translation for “budding” in Russian, if you create a Crowdin account you can find the terms to translate here: [https://crowdin.com/translate/inaturalistweb/38/en-ru#q=budding](https://crowdin.com/translate/inaturalistweb/38/en-ru#q=budding) ---
**Author:** ![marina\_gorbunova](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/marina_gorbunova/32/31454_2.png) [@marina\_gorbunova](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/marina_gorbunova)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 4:21pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/109 "2019-11-06T16:21:59Z")
Thank you! I asked the curator of Russian plant community here on iNat and added the translation “Бутонизация”. It will work for flowering budding, if there will be a split, for leaf budding “Набухание почек” should be used. ---
**Author:** ![tiwane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/tiwane/32/54612_2.png) [@tiwane](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/tiwane)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2019, 7:11pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/110 "2019-11-06T19:11:01Z")
Yes, I just need to make an issue for this change. Will do so now. EDIT: apparently I already made an issue… [https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/2326](https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/2326) ---
**Author:** ![marina\_gorbunova](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/marina_gorbunova/32/31454_2.png) [@marina\_gorbunova](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/marina_gorbunova)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2019, 9:16pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/111 "2019-11-10T21:16:30Z")
Just found out Pteridophyte and Bryophyte have a gender choice, but no mention of reproductive cycle, what’s the cause of that? ---
**Author:** ![sedgequeen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/sedgequeen/32/1928_2.png) [@sedgequeen](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/sedgequeen)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2019, 10:49pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/112 "2019-11-10T22:49:42Z")
The gametophytes, which are the life stage most often seen and photographed, are either male or female. ---
**Author:** ![marina\_gorbunova](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/marina_gorbunova/32/31454_2.png) [@marina\_gorbunova](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/marina_gorbunova)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2019, 5:46am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/113 "2019-11-11T05:46:53Z")
It’s not a question about why is gender here, but why it’s the only thing there. ---
**Author:** ![sedgequeen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/sedgequeen/32/1928_2.png) [@sedgequeen](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/sedgequeen)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2019, 4:18pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/114 "2019-11-11T16:18:32Z")
Sorry. I misinterpreted your comment. ---
**Author:** ![tiwane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/tiwane/32/54612_2.png) [@tiwane](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/tiwane)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2019, 10:47pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/115 "2019-11-11T22:47:29Z")
> [@marina\_gorbunova](#): > > It’s not a question about why is gender here, but why it’s the only thing there. Mainly because we wanted to start off a small number of annotations which were applicable to large numbers of commonly observed taxa, so we went with a few broad ones and got caught up in working on other things (mainly dealing with the continual growth of iNat). > [@amzamz](#): > > … not really a suggestion for a new manual annotation: However, for Lepidoptera (and perhaps other taxa), could the automatic ID algorithm be used to **automatically** fill in “caterpillar” or “adult”? I guess it is easy to recognise, and most observers don’t bother to use the annotation. This has been discussed [elsewhere on the forum](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/use-computer-vision-to-annotate-observations/3331). TL; DR: if it’s going to happen, it’s not going to happen anytime soon, although it’s a cool idea, and the more annotated observations we have to train a hypothetical model on, the better, so it would be great if people can continue annotating observations. You can use the Identify page to do that pretty quickly, I made a tutorial [here](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/using-identify-to-annotate-observations/1417). ---
**Author:** ![gancw1](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/gancw1/32/2089_2.png) [@gancw1](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/gancw1)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 11:53am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/116 "2019-11-12T11:53:42Z")
Has anyone suggested the position of the organism photographed - ventral, lateral, dorsal etc. ---
**Author:** ![marina\_gorbunova](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/marina_gorbunova/32/31454_2.png) [@marina\_gorbunova](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/marina_gorbunova)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 12:57pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/117 "2019-11-12T12:57:33Z")
That’s too much for annotations (at least for now), observation fields are better. ---
**Author:** ![karoopixie](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/karoopixie/32/69882_2.png) [@karoopixie](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/karoopixie)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 1:43pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/118 "2019-11-12T13:43:44Z")
I think perhaps photo annotations - [https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/photo-annotations/937](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/photo-annotations/937) - would be a better place for these kinds of labels? We don’t have this feature yet, but it is on the cards apparently. ---
**Author:** ![sedgequeen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/sedgequeen/32/1928_2.png) [@sedgequeen](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/sedgequeen)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 5:41pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/119 "2019-11-12T17:41:12Z")
Now that I am (belatedly) getting into the annotation thing, I find myself frustrated because it seems I can mark an observation as male OR female, adult OR juvenile, but it’s not unusual for an observation to include two or more individuals, male and female, adult and juvenile. I’m just leaving those unannotated for now, but I’d much rather be able to choose both states. ---
**Author:** ![marina\_gorbunova](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/marina_gorbunova/32/31454_2.png) [@marina\_gorbunova](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/marina_gorbunova)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2019, 6:18pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627/120 "2019-11-12T18:18:00Z")
It won’t happen as curators say 1 obs = 1 individual. Though there’re fields for sexes, at least I saw some for male presence and their number. [Previous page](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627.md?page=5) [Next page](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627.md?page=7)