Method for adding annotations to my own observations

General
1

It took me a while to think of this method so I thought I should share to help others.

When IDing other people’s observations using the Identify module I don’t usually add annotations to other people’s observations because it slows me down. But I would like to add annotations to my own observations at least. As you probably know it’s not possible to add annotations during upload. It always seemed like a pain to open all my observations to add annotations so I haven’t been doing it much.

This is what I did today after I was done uploading all the observations I planned to for the day. I opened the Identify module and limited it to my observations and observations added on the exact day of today’s date. I included Research Grade in addition to Needs ID. The I clicked the checkbox to show reviewed observations instead of unreviewed ones. After all these settings I could easily go through all my observations uploaded today. Add my annotations, then right arrow key, and repeat. I’m going to try to continue to do this from now on. I probably won’t have time to go back through old observations though.

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2

Thank you for this. After Anne Katrine Rose (sorry sp?) pointed out that most flowering obs are not annotated as such - I need to go thru almost all my own obs! Your workaround makes that easy.

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3

Don’t forget to use the keyboard shortcuts!

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4

There are keyboard shortcuts for annotations? Please share

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5

Oh I see they showed up when I switched to the annotation tab

|p then n|Add Plant Phenology: No Evidence of Flowering annotation|
|p then l|Add Plant Phenology: Flowering annotation|
|p then r|Add Plant Phenology: Fruiting annotation|
|p then u|Add Plant Phenology: Flower Budding annotation|
|s then f|Add Sex: Female annotation|
|s then m|Add Sex: Male annotation|
|s then c|Add Sex: Cannot Be Determined annotation|

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6

A lot of plants are annotated incorrectly as well.

The other day I was looking at the St John’s Wort genus (Hypericum) for observations marked as “fruiting” and most of them were actually flowering, not fruiting.

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7

There can be flowers, buds, and fruit all at once on the same plant and not every photo in the observation may show all the stages annotated. So you may see a photo of a flower annotated as “fruit”. I found this frustrating when trying to find photos of fruit.

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8

Another thing I found that really helped me go through my observations and others was to use AutoHotkey to somewhat automate it. Because some of the keys for the keyboard shortcuts are far apart (eg L>A for life stage adult), I set one key to press L then A, one for L then N, etc. It makes going through so much simpler and less strain on the hands

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There can be, but if you look at the observations you see that is not the case for many, if not the majority, of them.

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That - is why I keep whining for - annotations on each photo.
Not going to happen in a hurry. Meanwhile iNat photos and annotations are not so useful.

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12

This is the URL I’ve bookmarked for this purpose: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?reviewed=true&quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&user_id=tiwane

Replace “tiwane” with your own username after user_id= to see your own reviewed observations.

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13

I’d like to know the shortcut for lifestage, if anyone knows it.

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If you click on the keyboard icon at the bottom left while on the annotations tab you’ll get a list of shortcuts available in this context :-)

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15

thanks!!

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16

What are annotations?

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Here’s an explanation: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/annotations

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18

I didn’t know that. I often add observation fields during upload.

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Marathon. Over 700 obs annotated.

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20

This must be another feature that is not on the iphone app.

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