Ratio is good, but that means less than pure id numbers, if a user with 200 obs does 2000 ids it’s good, but if person with 10k obs does 15k ids it’s more valuable.
You can filter for profiles older than a week, that’s not completely it, but at least part of those “fast” profiles will be filtered out.
2 Likes
No names. But someone who is a professor of ornithology, and has (swamped us with) MANY proud obs of their own. Has achieved the grand total of 40 IDs for others. Not impressed. Could do very much better.
3 Likes
Is that so? Nature talk is completely swamped with “herping in X County” and “moths in the Northeast” (U.S. of A. always just being implied), but you can’t advertise a regional IDathon?
3 Likes
But, to be fair, the About for Nature Talk says - not for IDs, go to iNat for that.
I always thought of it more as “not for asking people to ID your linked observation” rather than "not asking people to do IDs in general " but I guess the two are similar. I don’t know. When Blue and I did the IDathon she always did the advertising and she was a forum moderator so I assume she would know.
2 Likes
Tagging people in a journal post is the fastest way I know. Although you do have think up the list of people to tag, rather than just waiting for people volunteer. The Discord group would be best for making a general announcement, especially if a mod wants to put it on the announcement channel. I always feel awkward there though. The platform doesn’t suit my brain’s information processing style, so I don’t use it much, and consequently I imagine when I do say anything everyone looks at me thinking, “Who are you?”
1 Like
Surely a local/regional IDathon would be just as fine to advertise as a local/regional bioblitz then? Or would it be totally out of line to say that there is an ongoing European Mycoblitz that could use some extra eyes?
1 Like
exactly. meanwhile, no names, one of the few folk helping with bird IDs in the west side of South America has ID’d over 525,000 observations and not uploaded a single observation, this I applaud.
3 Likes
Okay, now I don’t feel so bad about not having more IDs under my belt. (I have more IDs than observations, not that I have a whole lot of either one, but now I feel more like I’m actually contributing.)
2 Likes
No you can’t (as a separate post), because I wrote a post about it, both for observers and iders, and it’s closed now. Add it to Friday post, as I do.)
2 Likes
The text in my comment above (680 ?) was rejected politely by tiwane.
Humungously grateful for enthusiastic and competent identifiers.
But I think it would also be good to encourage (not force!) identifiers to upload a few obs of their own, so they get a practical feeling for the workflow. Where the problems lie on the observer’s, and the identifier’s side. So we could understand each other better. Why do / don’t you …?
2 Likes
Reading through this thread and similar ones, I have been surprised to see that iNat users are being classified into observer and identifier camps.
People will enjoy iNat in whichever way they please. However, I personally am experiencing that both observing and identification require skills. And those skills are complimentary.
Perhaps more people are both than it seems from the forum discussions.
2 Likes
We don’t do that, people play their roles in each situation, you can be both and most are, but when you refer to what a person does you need to call them, and there’re also clear experts with 0 observtions and users with 0 ids.
3 Likes
Yeah, I suspect if you were to plot ID/observation ratios it’s probably a continuum on some sort of bell curve: Most people do a little bit of both and there are a few outliers on either end of the spectrum who focus solely on either IDs or observations.
2 Likes
850 obs, 69K IDs for others.
When I am hiking / gardening I am an observer, but on iNat I look like an identifier.
2 Likes
Remind me that making IDs is worthwhile, please. I’ve been IDing elderberries in New England and there are still 1,292 to go (many of which can’t be IDed to species, but still).
Maybe I just need a break.
3 Likes
Choose another slice to comb thru.
After the IDing for #GSB22 is done, I have volunteered myself into this shiny new project
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/monospecific-plant-genera-in-s-afr
Be careful what you wish for, it may come true!
2 Likes
iNat wouldn’t function without people like you!
Take a break, or st least change species if the elderberries have you down. Southern California only has one elderberry species, but boy do the taxonomists love to argue over its name. The iNat about page has 21 synonyms… and a recent newsletter from the Jepson Herberium just announced they’re now going back to the original name it had decades ago, after all that arguing.
4 Likes
Thanks for the good work! It certainly can be frustrating. However, every one you identified is one more record that can be used for research. That’s more important than how many are still “Needs ID.”
Switching iNaturalist tasks (or even leaving the computer for a while) may help.
5 Likes