North American Sinea ID and the Sorcerer's Apprentice problem

[upupa-epops]

@tiwane

However, I’m wondering if it’s possible to make ID resources more available and cultivate a group that can work on a taxon and/or area

I feel like the instructions in situations like this can often be something relatively simple like “identification is obvious in the eastern part of the range but impossible in the western part of the range”, which can easily be included in an ID comment on every observation. Often the exact geographic limits of identifiability will be a bit ambiguous, maybe some other nuances in some cases (e.g. most midges are impossible, while a handful are possible but very difficult). But it’s less interesting ID work than situations involving multiple challenging-but-possible species, which are more engaging for identifiers and can be more or less “sorted out” once effort was applied rather than the feedback loops we get here. Not to say that having more ID info out there and more people helping wouldn’t be useful.

@spiphany

@upupa-epops

So most observations can’t go to species, often not beyond family. That’s really boring for both identifiers and observers. That doesn’t make them less important of course, but it’s harder to motivate people to help with them.

This is a good point. However discouraging it might be as an observer to have one’s observation pushed back to a higher level, it’s important to remember that identifiers do not derive any pleasure from doing this either. It is far more satisfying to be able to suggest an alternative, and pretty depressing to have to say over and over: this can’t be ID’d to species.