I started iNat a couple of years ago and I quickly set the exact same goal - make my identifications equal to my number of submissions. I’m not an expert at anything, but as several others have said, I hope it takes some of the burden off the experts by making easy IDs.
12 Likes
For observations uploaded in 2022, there are 12,085,031 Needs ID. Almost 44 million total in the Needs ID pile.
So, how are we feeling? Have you noticed any new identifiers in your regions/favorite taxa? How could the site continue to improve and better manage continued growth?
7 Likes
Roughly 1 in 10 observers on iNat is also an identifier. That’s not a good ratio. Given the explosive growth of the website, I think we have to accept that observations will take longer to reach RG, at least for many of the taxa that have few knowledgeable reviewers. If you focus on birds, you’re probably still going to see quick IDs. Plants and arthropods require patience.
Actually that ratio might be better than that, given that many of the observers are drive-by participants who submit a few records and then disappear.
6 Likes
@pisum do you have a tool to compare the number of identifications on Needs ID observations? This has probably been asked before. For example (random numbers):
- 5 million blank/unknown
- 15 million with 1 identification
- 10 million with 2
- 10 million with 3
- 4 million with 4+
You know, I really appreciate your thoughtfulness.
One way to deal with continued growth might be for volunteers to offer tutorials on what characters need to be photographed for various taxon groups, if the observer wants to have a prayer of getting an ID. I say volunteers, because this would clearly be beyond the scope of what iNat staff can handle.
For example, here in New England I often see observations that are just a photo of a tree trunk. No leaves or needles, no fruit, no overall habit, just the trunk. There are few trees I can ID to species from just the trunk, but only a very few. If in the taxa info section, say, there was information on what characters to photograph, new iNatters could read up on that, and IDers could point new people to that info.
But that is a TON of work.
5 Likes
i don’t think normal folks have access to get that level of information effectively. via /v1/observations in the API, we have the ability to use an identified=true or =false parameter, which can help distinguish between observations with 0 identifications and with >0 identifications. theoretically, you could use some combination of identifications=some_agree, =most_agree, and =most_disagree to further separate observations with >1 identifications.
if you just want to get a rough idea of percents in each of your categories, /v1/observations does provide an identification count per observation, and you can do a random sample of observations.
here’s the distribution for a random sample of n=2000 that i just pulled:
| # of ids | # of obs | % of total |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 49 | 2.5% |
| 1 | 554 | 27.7% |
| 2 | 872 | 43.6% |
| 3 | 350 | 17.5% |
| 4 | 113 | 5.7% |
| 5 | 37 | 1.9% |
| 6 | 20 | 1.0% |
| 7 | 4 | 0.2% |
| 8 | 1 | 0.1% |
| total | 2000 | 100.0% |
just to see if the above numbers are reasonable, here are the actual counts for identified=true and =false:
identifications=false at 2.6% roughly matches 0 identifications at 2.5% percent. so that seems to indicate that the figures in the first table should be reasonable.
1 Like
Thanks for the explanation! From this random sample, my impression is that our effort is best aimed at confirming (or improving) that 28% chunk with 1 observation, which represents 72% of the Needs ID pile. Of course, more enthusiastic and knowledgeable users would go a long way towards making a dent.
2 Likes
Does this unidentified number include stuff like rocks, shoes, calculators - the sort of thing that gets posted a non-zero number of times on a daily basis? Or is there some garbage collection already going on with such observations so they don’t inflate the numbers?
1 Like
unidentified in this context literally means nobody added an identification to the observation. shoes and calculators tend to get identified as human, in my experience.
the numbers above are for all observations, verifiable or not. if you want just verifiable observation numbers, below are the corresponding figures, using n=2000.
| # of ids | # of obs | % of total |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 8 | 0.4% |
| 1 | 476 | 23.8% |
| 2 | 885 | 44.3% |
| 3 | 411 | 20.6% |
| 4 | 151 | 7.6% |
| 5 | 53 | 2.7% |
| 6 | 10 | 0.5% |
| 7 | 4 | 0.2% |
| 8 | 1 | 0.1% |
| 9 | 1 | 0.1% |
| total | 2000 | 100.0% |
and here are the corresponding identified=true/false figures:
I personally upped my IDgame significantly this year and probably this also made me more aware of some amazing identifiers, yes. But at least if you look at it globally (location and taxon) it is impossible to keep up with the incoming stream of observations.
But if you look at it more locally, it can be fun to see progess, maybe teaming up somewhat… I think that is also what keeps some of those amazing identifiers in the game. It´s nice to feel that one is not alone and people are willing to share information and grow on it. For example, I think overall the arachnids of Europe have a quite nice IDers community at the moment, which has not always been the case (and with always I mean the 2,5 years I am here and could even judge it… so a recent-ish improvement there). A lot of old observations get their first IDs now beyond the one of the observer, as those spiderenthusiasts work through different taxa step by step
7 Likes
A steady trickle of skilled new identifiers, especially for my Rest of Africa. My IDs are often Hook-Line-Sinker then withdrawn - but - it gets them out of Unknown and then pointed in the right direction.
2 Likes
I think the quality of the photos has a lot to do with identification. I find that if I try to help and identify some species I thought I knew, sometimes I just can’t because of the quality of the photo. Even a species I see every day like a Northern Cardinal. Not to mention that I am cautious because I am prone to making identification mistakes even on my own observations even for species I thought I knew. Maybe that’s just me. But it’s why I am slow and cautious about helping with identification. Besides the fact that I lack expertise, of course.
1 Like
If I review a photo that I think is a particular species but I’m not 90-100% confident, I add a comment that I think it’s that species. The observer can then use my suggested ID or not. But I often refrain from slapping an ID on it unless I’m certain since many users will just follow that and then it’s Research Grade based on a possibly shaky ID.
4 Likes
Locally I see the dwindeling number of identifiers linked to the country iNat is based in, there’re many people that are afraid they will get cut out of iNat and rethink if they should spend their time here, both iders and observers (seen by compared stats of this and previous year), also global growth this year became too much of a burden, out of 14k uploaded this year 4k are in need of id, from the whole last year number of needs id is the same with more uploads, these stats are so good actually by having local iders in one of places I visited, which could be seen as a plus you ask about, but this region has much less uploads than one I reside in, which means with future growth (if it will get back to old numbers) they won’t be able to id the most of observations, and to say, most of regions don’t have local iders at all.
3 Likes
I’m not sure that I understand what you are saying. Why would they be cut out of iNat?
Why other sites block local ips?.) Plus some major website were blocked from this side too, not without reason, one that iNat doesn’t fit. I can’t talk for others’ politically-charged decisions, why and how people can be cut out from iNat have many probabilities, the answer I can give is that people are just anxious about that, this plused with growing certain moods results in less observations (100k less verifiable observations done this year vs 2021, while 2021 had +300k to 2020 in the same dates).
3 Likes
I’ve been contributing more to the “needs ID” list lately by going through RG stuff and knocking a lot of incorrect identifications back into Needs ID.
For newer observations I’ve pulled back my ID range mostly into my own county, so it’s a little less overwhelming in numbers - I still can’t keep up though…
6 Likes
For my three places - Cape Peninsula I can and do keep up with.
But Western Cape has exploded to almost 500 (I’m trying!)
And then not getting to Rest of Africa’s almost 3K at all sadly.
2 Likes
A lot of my time March-July was sunk into looking for a new place to live and then moving, so I wasn’t even trying to keep up my usual IDing. The needs ID queue of my county went up a couple hundred pages, though I was pleased to see the other 3 local identifiers have worked on it at least some. Unfortunately by now I have missed the window to catch up, because even though my area has a lull in plant observations during the depths dry season, the students are back in school now and cluttering the queue with their tedious observations.
4 Likes
I’m the top IDer for LA County for 2020 onwards, mostly from common/easy IDs and moving stuff out of Unknowns. That continues to freak me out a little - I don’t know nearly enough for … anything!
I continue to appreciate the specialists that I can reach out to for ID help (yourself among them). Guides like those made by yourself and truth-seqr are great help also. There’s a niche I’ve been on-and-off trying to fill in just listing out ‘here are some common and easily IDable species in the area’ that I think wpuld have helped me as a beginning IDer - increased dayjob workload has kinda stymied me there.
I’ve seen more people ID, I think, especially people who are prolific observers.
I feel like more is needed at every expertise level from very beginner IDers helping with the floods of student-in-duress IDs, unknowns, dicots, etc to specialists.
I do feel like “sorting unknowns into plants/insects/birds helps them get IDed by experts!” feels like false advertising in a way when there are so many things that stagnate at “dicots” [edit for clarity: At least in LA County, as a way to recruit identifiers, I think this message might not be as effective because many of the people hearing this message will have seen their own observations not be progressed past their broad ID. There isn’t nearly as much “expert” bandwidth as there are observations (true here as in many places). And I personally do not feel like it is true enough in this county that I feel comfortable advertising it.]
I also notice that there are a good handful of experts in neighboring counties (jrebman, arboretum_amy, emfer, cwbarrows, and others) whose IDing ranges overlap substantially in taxa but not at all in geographic range. I wonder if using different IDing ranges could help cross-pollinate some knowledge?
5 Likes