But what is the taxonomic breakdown? I find, for example, that if I upload a bigleaf maple, it will go to research grade very quickly; but if I upload Genus Sawadaea, a powdery mildew infecting bigleaf maple, it stays at ‘Needs ID’ indefinitely.
It could be observers choosing to observe a higher percentage of taxa for which there are better/more relevant field guides.
That’s true. Probably also worth its own topic, asking why observers choose one kind of observation over another. Excluding specialists, students, and contests, my naïve assumption is that the typical iNat observation is somehow eyecatching to the observer and that the field guide is used solely for post hoc identification.
Maybe iders are the same for the whole state, but observers are different? Would make sense that N of observers that way will be much higher.
Happy anniversary to this thread for us identifiers!
Cape Peninsula - I check because I want to see my Here and Now - but with identifiers and observers almost equal at just over 1K - my input wouldn’t be ‘missed’. Nicely balanced with almost 3K species!
I moved out to Western Cape for those neglected small towns and in between rural areas. 10K observers versus hardworking almost 5K identifiers. There I can help to make a difference, especially for newbies who need to avoid - sob - nobody even saw MINE! Species jump to 14.5K so I have learnt to be cautious of new to me and ID at a higher level where I am still confident, it’s that, but which one??
And then my Rest of Africa target which still has 400 for me. When I have cleared that, I will skim Needs ID for my 3.
Africa. 32K observers. 11K daunted (me) or highly skilled (thanks) identifiers. And only 50K species to choose from.
Yeah. We need someone good at the API to delve into this in detail. Are the easy-to-ID observations getting IDed quickly in most places, but the harder-to-ID observations staying in Needs ID forever and thus inflating the numbers? Yesterday I made an observation of a shrub in the heath family with three photos (overall, leaf underside, bud), but I think it will stay at the tribe level indefinitely. Thus, it will clutter up the Needs ID forever unless I delete the observation or mark it as IDed as well as could be. I’m reluctant to do either at this point - I haven’t really tried to take it through the keys yet, for one thing.
It highly depends on number of experts and observations, I notice how easy species linger there for months with no second id if there’re just too many. Also in many cases if photo is not idable ppl won’t agree with genus and won’t mark it “as good as can be”, adding up to numbers by lack of action.
Staying in Needs ID “forever” seems much better than deleting the observation, especially since it has good photos from which an expert might be able to ID it. It could prove to be a useful piece of data to somebody eventually.
Yeah, that’s my inclination, too.
We have hundreds of Erica (no, not the spider, the heather on the hills type)
I need only ID Unknowns to Erica … then wait for awesome people to take them to species - if the pictures are more or less adequate. I am awed. Tag in someone from your leaderboard?
Well, the omni-competent tsn took a look at it yesterday and left it at tribe. It’s not an Erica; it’s probably a Vaccinium. Of course, the usual key starts with flowers, which won’t help in October around here!
Nope, no flower, no see - especially for our ericas. Not a hope.
You should be able to find keys for Vaccinium without flowers. My Southern Appalachian field guide for trees and shrubs focuses on just twig and leaf characters.
Yes - I just haven’t looked yet!
@jasonhernandez74 Let’s talk about ID-a-thons! I miss them, too. I wish there was an easy way to communicate to iNatters about an upcoming ID-a-thon, because writing individual private messages is tedious.
As I understand it, announcing a local ID-a-thon via the forum is not permitted (understandably; it’s the same for all projects), but global ID-a-thons are OK (maybe only if they include training/support for new IDers?). I haven’t explored the iNat Discord server enough to know if announcing ID blitzes is allowed there, but I assume it is, so there’s an option. But whether via this forum or Discord, the announcement only reaches a small sliver of people. Ditto for personal journal posts (plus, I must admit, I often miss journal posts by people I follow, because I rarely look at my dashboard).
So that situation is a dilemma and we’re back to writing each potential participant individually. Nonetheless, I would like to organize a large-scale ID-a-thon, preferably before February, when I’m planning a local ID-a-thon, and certainly well before late April, because that’s the CNC. Which leaves November through January. For those whose winter is in full force in January, that month would be great to focus on IDing. Maybe that’s also true for people who live where January is very hot?
I don’t know. What do you all think?
I found that out the hard way. I wanted to ask for ID help ahead of gsb22
No not allowed in the forum.
I thought the first bioblitz was announced and promoted across iNat. With iNat blog posts - which would be the effective way to reach iNatters.
Meanwhile I had … for 2 seconds … caught up with my chosen trio of Unknowns. Happy sigh!
I didn’t know that.
However - I can try here - with a friendly audience of eager identifiers, yes?
Good ID intentions - a friendly challenge - #GSB22
We are coming up to the Great Southern Bioblitz on 28-31 October and it would be wonderful to dent the ID backlog. Even better to have some identifiers from Up North primed to help with IDs then.
Choose a place from the Umbrella Project, then tackle their Unknowns please. We need mentors and support especially for observers coming to iNat for the first time. Training sessions are running across the South.
(If you follow your notifications, you can see, as I do - that good intentions moving Unknowns to the very broad plant taxa above family, is moving the problem across but not moving the ID forward) Daunted to see that @jasonhernandez74 picked up my newbie ID of Plantae from 2109 - still sitting at planty till the other day - mortified that I know it is Typha capensis, newbie error I guess
I could be wrong!
Yeah, it’s a dilemma. I’m still trying to figure out an efficient way to get the word out.
ETA: Of course, if, say, five of us hard-core IDers started a global project and each invited 10 other hard-core IDers and asked them to each invite 3 more IDers, we could probably get quite a few people involved in an ID blitz.
I’m still very new to regular ID contributions, and I know this maybe belongs in Feature Requests or something, but…
what if there was some sort of indication of the ratio of uploads to IDs on a users profile or elsewhere, as to sort-of “incentivize” more users to contribute more IDs? ie
This idea came to me from an old file-sharing community, Demonoid (god I’m so old), which would, in the forum view, display next to a user’s profile pic, a ratio of the uploads submitted to the site vs downloads from the site. This sortof indirectly nudged users into contributing uploads to the site and thus improving the quality of the community. I don’t remember if access was limited to users with lesser ratios, I think it was just a bit of silent peer-pressure to help the site, which at the time was one of the best in the game.
I personally began to feel I should contribute to the community when I reached about 1000 observations, and I’ll be honest I think it’s kindof lame when I see a user with like 10k observations and less than 500 IDs. I know everyone’s workflow and personal time to contribute to the site is different, but I feel like if you’re relying on others for IDs (extensively) you should give something back to the community.
Another thing that I think might be cool (or lame), what if it was possible to sort observations by “known” users, ie regular users with proper observations, over having to sift through "one-time " observations, less-active and/or inactive users, not that those obs. are worth less than others, but if you’re following a specific site or area, it’s a time drain when these usually sub-par (impossible to ID visually) observations get in your way.
Just a couple IDeas, I thought there was a big pile here but the numbers are far lower for the taxa I watch regularly than many taxa in many places in the US alone, I salute you IDers out there and everywhere.