I’m not a wiki contibutor though and writing a wiki page scares me :) So I would like some user-friendly form to submit, hense the ability to provide tips directly
Nowadays wikis provide visual editors, or you can create your item in a familiar format and presumably there’s an online converter to wiki. Or probably just give Gemini your text and tell it to give you it in wiki format…
OK yes I see it can be nominated by clicking the dropdown, but not by checking the box like you can with a new ID, which is a little confusing.
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You can directly link to the ID tips tab for a taxon page like:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/218647-Donacia-cincticornis#identifications-tab
as well as any other tab (a feature I requested a couple years ago that was implemented 
and now has a new use).
This is also an easy way to educate users about this new feature in relation to
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This is entirely guessing on my part, but this tool seems to be iNat’s response to the massive controversy that sprung up from the “tool in the works” that they announced a while back (That would use comments/clarifications to generate ID tips directly on the identify page).
Since presumably they still have the grant from Google to develop a new GenAI tool, I would imagine that the way they could use it would be to wait until this new tool has matured a bit, and then add a function that translates and summarises the upvoted ID tips while still showing them below, sort of “generating” a wiki-style summary while still allowing easy access to the original information.
I am not adding a value judgement to it, but at the very least an automatic translation of the ID tips to the user’s interface’s language would make the information more accessible to everyone. (I know most browsers already have it included, but most people use the mobile apps)
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I was one of the initial testers for this new feature, I assume because I add so many comments with my IDs. It’s true that mine are usually very repetitious (e.g. practically the same comment for thousands of the ferruginous tiger crane fly, Nephrotoma ferruginea), but I hope that the ID tips on the species page will become a go-to for people. We’ll have to see how this evolves in practice. Once it gets going, I think it will be loved by most.
I eventually found the page that explains how to use the ID Tips, but it took some work. It certainly belongs in the ‘how-to’ section, but I think adding links or mentions in other sections might spread the word faster. I think it would fit well in the ‘You may like to read’ section in ‘How to make an observation’, but as a short, modified reference to explain how to look for helpful comments when identifying your mystery thing online, rather than the full-on explanations in how to nominate, vote for, etc. on the How-To page.
I hadn’t thought of all the comments that aren’t eligible, as they’re replies to questions. For one thing, I didn’t realize that one could search for comments! (Should obviously read more ‘How-To’s’!). It would be worthwhile making those available somehow, but I have no idea what the programming requirement would be. I think the suggestion that identifiers add those in once, then nominate their own ID tip, it could be voted up the list as planned.
I also didn’t realize, or it hadn’t sunk in, that only species tips could be nominated. That may just have been too large a step for the first go-round, as I’m sure the developers would have considered it. I do notice that the ID tips says ‘these currently appear only on species or subspecies’ pages.
Regarding links: referring observers to a paper is certainly a good idea, but where to find the specific info in that paper is often expecting too much. For many taxa, the characters the identifier sees at a quick glance are the product of looking at tens to thousands of these particular plants, fungi or animals. Often, there are also reliable characters that aren’t mentioned in the literature that identifiers notice and use. Then there’s the dreaded specialist terms in publications that can’t be quickly understood. I’ve been identifying flies for a few years now, and I still run into terms that baffle me. I will happily cite references, but generally only as a back-up to a specific comment. That way, the observer knows where the information comes from, and can read it at their leisure if they want.
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I’d like to include Id tips made in a user’s journal, there are some pretty excellent ones with infographic and what not.
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French and German too. Is “обратнояйцевидный” “obovate”?
Why does it sometimes say ‘View Full Conversation’ and the previous one I have to click on mossynewf to get to the obs ? Rewarding to be able to pick over the comments, and retrieve the useful and informative ones from the 2 taxon specialists. Apple moss is the eye candy I will ID. My only specific moss ID. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/587677-Hypodontium-pomiforme#identifications-tab
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these are observations with at least one other comment
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ID tips are useless in front of a good, comprehensive identification guide. Probably added this because they just wanted to avoid guides*. A species wiki for each species would be better than a Wikipedia page on the species page.
* It’s an opinion. I have seen enough criticism on guides that say that iNat and especially iNatters who do not want to do the effort are certainly not interested in the development of guides. Most of the local guides are better off as lists. Guides should be strictly for identification guides and FWIW the introduction is terrible; Guides ideally should have nothing to do with local fauna, even if it is the Serengeti, or your local park, we need identification guides for new identifiers. Those are way more useful. We need to inform all those users who have made “useless” guides without any additional data etc. to just make a list instead. There is a big problem here.
ID tips can cover species with observations on iNat, while guides can cover any species. They can include illustrations from papers and what-not. There are several factors that give guides a win over identification tips, if iNat tries to improve them.
I may have lost some modesty/crossed some guidelines here, pardon me for that, I have not noticed anything wrong in what I wrote yet, so do inform me if you see anything.
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ID tips may be useless for you, and for your purpose. They have value for other iNatters and for other taxa. More so the more we use and apply them. I remember ‘someone explained how to ID that’ and now I have a good place to start looking, without trawling endless bookmarked URLs. And a better place to put the useful info in the first place.
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Guides are more comprehensive, can hold more data.
Better for taxon specialists, maybe. But I prefer to approach IDs from the Unknown, Disagreement, Pre-Maverick side. So I will not look at a guide. I have some field guides for what interests me, but taxonomy shifts and an online resource (like iNat) is better for that.
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I strongly disagree with this statement. I think the two are intended for largely different audiences. The average person who is just starting to get interested in nature often struggles to understand full descriptions of organisms, and pick out the few parts relevant to what they actually saw.
Tips are often addressing an observation without every possible feature showing, and that’s a good thing.
Someone who found a leaf on the ground and wants to know what kind of tree it came from, doesn’t need to read through technical descriptions of that tree’s flowers, fruit, bark, wood, growth habit, and role in ecology, during which many of them will start to gloss over things and miss a key point about the leaf itself.
Likewise someone who’s already gotten the genus right often just needs to have one trait that separates species X from species Y brought to their attention. Not everyone has the reading comprehension skills to read two nearly identical descriptions, and pick out the few differences for themselves. But if they see a short simple statement like “Definitely X not Y, because of the hairy stems.” they have a much easier time applying it to what they’ve found.
This part I agree with! Especially as the taxonomy used on Wikipedia doesn’t always match up with that on iNat.
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Am I missing something? I skimmed all the comments above, but I didn’t see anything about how to CITE or LINK TO an ID tip. If I know of a good tip (mine or someone else’s) that’s in the Tip file, I’d like to be able to cite it when I’m making an ID, to send the observer there to see it. How can I do that? (I don’t want to just say “see ID tips” because I don’t know what all is there besides the one I want to reference.)
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Quick question I didn’t see addressed before: if I nominate someone else’s identification as an ID tip, does that person get notified that their ID was nominated (or later upvoted)?
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Taxon specialists are very much needed. So many species with a single observation never reach RG.
We need Identification sections. Look at these two pages on two similar species -
https://www.inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/2653250
https://www.inaturalist.org/guide_taxa/2653252
They will not have to check the descriptions if we can make such guides available.
I and my co-author have pinpointed the differences. We are making sure that misidentified specimens which are on the only public resource for this tribe (yes, only one popular resource with images for most species, that too with misidentified specimens. We dig for images of types, old descriptions and what not and prepare these. We had to sort tons of neovulturnus just to fix the blunders). Look at https://idtools.dpi.nsw.gov.au/keys/leafhop/penthimiini/index.html - The Neovulturnus hackeri? That is actually vultuosus, and the real hackeri? that is literally the image there for N. montanus. There has been considerable confusion due to these. You need to double-check whether the descriptions match. My suspicion on misidentifications started when I noticed that the images of vultuosus and and hackeri were showing the same species. I jumped into type specimens, descriptions etc. and got it. I have tried to avoid using its images before double-checking the id with the described or types if available.
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Tips aren’t really a thing in their own right. They aren’t stored separately anywhere. Everything is based purely on identifications. When you nominate a tip, or vote for it, your input is associated with a specific identification. So what you’re effectively saying is: this identification is helpful because of the comment it has attached to it. The API calls these “exemplar identifications”.
So what you actually need is a link to the identification. On the Identification Tips page, you can right-click on the identifier-name above the tip/comment and the context menu should provide an option for copying the relevant link. However, if you’re on an observation page you need to right-click on the date above the identification instead. Needless to say, this isn’t very intuitive, and it could certainly do with some improvement.
@tiwane There’s a weird bug here: the date above the tip also has a link, but it goes to some completely random identification instead of the one associated with the tip. I’m not sure what the intention was here, but ideally the links should work exactly the same way as they do on observation pages: i.e. the identifier-name should link to a profile, and the date should link to the identification. It might also be nice if a copy-icon was inserted next to the date (similar to what was done for the lat-long in the location details) and/or a “Copy Tip Link” option was added to the drop-down menu.
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In those examples I do see what you mean - the identification paragraph at the top is short and to the point, much like most tips we include with an ID, and should be easy for anyone to understand.
However I’m still not convinced the same format would work for all species. Especially with plants, where what they can reasonably be confused with tends to change a lot throughout the growing season.
It would be great to have both in my opinion - guides like those you’ve linked to available for more/all species, and a tab for tips gleaned from ID’s.
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