Likely it has been already written.
iNat is growing and this is good.
There is a pretty large percentage of beginenrs who do not know how to photograph an organism to make it identifiable. As observers grow, the number of unidentifiable observations grows in percentage.
It seems that identifiers are not growing at the same rate as the observers.
Identifiers are often also specialist for a certain kingdom/group of species.
Many observations depict very common species. Maybe are many identifiers not so much motivated to identify very common species?
Personally, I find much more satisfying to identify a species that is rare and/or challenging.
EDIT: many users are unable or do not even bother to try to confirm an identification or to revise their wrong one.
When you notice that there is no interest in participating to the community it’s one of the worst sides of iNat that, in these cases, looks like just an “identification factory”
I’d say otherwise, common things, if not stuck at highest levels, are usually ided very fast, but anything that needs more knowledge in group stays unided for years.
It would seem there is also a pretty large percentage of beginners who have not so much as invested in a field guide. I see some really easy IDs left at family level – easy for someone with a decent field guide, that is.
Now, maybe it’s because my interest in nature predates the internet, but when I see an unfamiliar organism, my first thought is to go to a field guide. If it’s a plant, and not in the field guide, I next think of going to a flora and keying it out. Asking an online community is pretty much my last resort after all else fails. But then, that’s likely because there were no such online communities when I started out, so I had to learn it that way. I wonder if platforms like iNaturalist have caused newer people to reverse it? Go first to the online community?
pretty much. if a millenial or gen-z has a question, the Internet is the very first place we go.
for those who have been trained in proper research skills and methods, this works very well.
for those who have not been trained, since they do not confer with reliable resources or an expert, results… vary.
Well, unfortunately that is what happened to me. There are plenty of field guides in my house, and I used to use them sometimes, but now I just put my pictures on iNat and let someone else do the work. I realized I actually do more research when IDing other people’s observations than my own!
Thank you so much for this response! just wanted to add that the majority of interactions I’ve had on iNat are positive… and the generosity has far outweighed the bad attitudes. I have developed many iNat friendships through mutual interests, and many of those are based on informal mentorship. That’s the beauty of the community part of the platform.
Thanks @astra_the_dragon! I’m glad to know other people find a similar approach works for them.
I agree with all your comments and caveats. For people trying to figure out which group to start with, it can be good to start with some species that you’ve seen personally and that interested you enough to figure out an ID. If you already know there are a couple of related species that grow/live in your area and have a little knowledge about how they differ, that’s really good place to start.
But don’t feel like you need to keep restricting yourself to local species you’ve personally experienced. As you get more familiar with Genus X, you can really contribute by expanding to provide IDs in other regions.
Silver surfer leaning towards internet first, because so often ‘it’s not IN the book’! Way too much biodiversity here to pack into my short row of field guides.
(and then, they keep shuffling the names - which is not a problem online, but it is in a printed book, now spattered with pencil notes)
OK, I need some bucking up, some cheering on, some hope that there is an end to all this identifying.
(I do know that last request is never going to happen, however!)
So, it’s the time of year here in New England in the USA where my thoughts turn from “where can I hike today?” to “let’s tackle identifications today,” if only because it is cold and wet and gray outside. But even though I’ve made over 30,000 IDs in my three years on iNat, I feel like I’ve barely made a dent. I wander all over the place, metaphorically, in my IDing: I look at the new observations for my area. I look at random days in the past. I join in on various group efforts like #IdentiFriday and ID bingo. I pick a common and easy plant to ID (something like Marsh Marigold or Chicory or Sweet-Fern) and push every observation in New England (and sometimes beyond) as far along as I can. I label the endless stream of completely un-IDed mushrooms as Fungi (or something better, if iNat has an ID it’s reasonably confident in). Etc., etc.
But I’m discouraged. Maybe I should go for a walk today, even if it is cold and wet and gray?
Yes. Go for a walk (dress appropriately!). There are days when we identifiers get discouraged. So get outside, take a break, and come back to it tomorrow. Every observation will not be identified - we just do what we can.
Well, when I started here inat was so tiny I literally personally reviewed all plant observations in all of New England. Maybe all observations period. I think the thing now is one person isnt gonna be able to do that sort of thing any more, so if you did get through all the unknowns it would mean iNat wasn’t growing any more or use was declining which doesn’t strike me as a good thing. It’s always going to be an active and messy database as long as it exists, i think. But yeah when you get sick of IDing, go ontside or do something else. I am in Vermont and yeah it is very very rainy, been raining most of the time for the past like 30 hours, been well over an inch, no signs of stopping. Good for the water table as some areas have been quite dry, but not good for doing outdoor explores. Maybe there are some amphibians moving to their winter spots or something. It’s always fun to walk by a stream this time of year as the water is coming up and the leaf rafts are getting pushed around by high water, it’s kind of like a second spring when it gets wet later in the fall.
I’m in north-central Massachusetts and my sump pump has been going all summer; usually it only runs in spring. (What is “usual” these days?) So, yeah, it’s been a rainy year - which does mean I’ve seen tons of little bitty Wood Frogs this fall, so that’s a good thing. I’m not worried about the water table any more; I’m more worried about rivershore and coastal plain pondshore plants that never get a chance to emerge and flower in years like this.
OK, the consensus (all two of you) is that I should say the hell with IDing today and go for a walk instead. I think I will go do just that.
Wow, yeah Vermont had a very odd summer precipitation wise with pretty serious drought in pockets on the northern border and heaving rain and flooding on the southern border (and beyond down to where you are). We are in Montpelier and ended up right on the edge with around average precip. Our sump pump is going off this morning. The water table has been pretty high in our tiny wetland but that may have less to do with precip and more to do with a large multi household well near it being discontinued this summer.
I’m in Winnipeg, Canada, and we had a drought all summer. No rain at all! It’s wetter now - some snow today - which is a good thing.
Edit - I’m still going outside - never miss a day!
Another Silver surfer. I like online better as well. Field guides don’t or can’t contain as many species or as much variation within species as most of the websites I use. I’ve learned tons about bird variation by using Cornell online Birds. Field guides are useful, but have their drawbacks.
I agree with what’s been said; if you’re tired of ID then take a break. Sometimes I can cheer myself by IDing an organism I particularly like (I love yellow flowers, for example, and it’s no coincidence that I’m top identifier of Encelia californica and in top three for several other yellow-flowered plants) but sometimes there’s just no getting into it. Remember you aren’t obligated to ID, you don’t owe IDs to anyone, and if you’re doing IDs it should be because you’re enjoying it.
I’d say it’s therotically possible, we just need more campaigns for more ids, because problem is mostly in bad iders to observers ratio and not just amount of observations left, big chunk of them should be voted out of needs id, so someone can dedicate some time to checking oldest uploaded observations to filter out those completely unidentifiable. As I remember from stats page, there’re 20k of active users, imagine if even 1/4 of them made many ids each day (or most days).
I’ve been trying to do a page of the “explore” of either Texas, New Mexico, or Colorado herps that need ID’s every couple of days after work (night shift) and man it gets discouraging.
Particularly Texas, I think there’s still over 30 pages @ something like 100 per page?
