# Obvious Identifications **URL:** \ **Category:** General\ **Created:** [August 7, 2022, 12:21am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/obvious-identifications/34189 "2022-08-07T00:21:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![harleywyrm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/harleywyrm/32/28755_2.png) [@harleywyrm](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/harleywyrm)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2022, 12:21am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/obvious-identifications/34189/1 "2022-08-07T00:21:43Z")
Hi, I’m a new user with a question about identifying. Is it helpful to identify in broad/obvious categories for unknown observations? Example: Someone’s posted a picture of what is clearly a mushroom, but it’s marked as unknown. I don’t know what mushroom it is, but I know it’s a type of fungi so I suggest as such. Is this helping funnel the observation towards those who’ll be able to identify it or am I just wasting time by doing this? ---
**Author:** ![anon93074988](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7feea3/32.png) [@anon93074988](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/anon93074988)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2022, 12:31am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/obvious-identifications/34189/2 "2022-08-07T00:31:38Z")
Yes, it’s very useful and funnels them to interested parties, as you describe. Keep it up! ---
**Author:** ![egordon88](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/egordon88/32/29204_2.png) [@egordon88](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/egordon88)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2022, 12:33am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/obvious-identifications/34189/3 "2022-08-07T00:33:53Z")
[https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/does-anyone-else-get-bothered-by-how-many-observations-are-marked-as-unknown-species/31896](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/does-anyone-else-get-bothered-by-how-many-observations-are-marked-as-unknown-species/31896) [https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identifying-taxa-just-to-remove-them-from-unknown/33749](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identifying-taxa-just-to-remove-them-from-unknown/33749) [https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/amount-of-unknown-records-is-decreasing/8594](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/amount-of-unknown-records-is-decreasing/8594) ---
**Author:** ![norwichtim](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/norwichtim/32/16996_2.png) [@norwichtim](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/norwichtim)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2022, 12:39am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/obvious-identifications/34189/4 "2022-08-07T00:39:03Z")
Welcome Harleywyrm! This is exactly what I do on global unknowns. Like you, I know that mushroom like specimens are fungi. There are lots of these. By moving to the fungi kingdom, people interested in fungi can refine the ID. Plants, I can recognize a plant, and often know it is a dicot or a monocot. Again it heads the observation in the right direction. Most unknowns can be sorted using just a basic familiarity with life forms. At a more local level, you might be able to narrow it down quite a bit further. Thanks for helping ID observations. ---
**Author:** ![DanielAustin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/danielaustin/32/1722_2.png) [@DanielAustin](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/DanielAustin)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2022, 12:53am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/obvious-identifications/34189/5 "2022-08-07T00:53:28Z")
Yes, very useful! Doing this brings the observation to the attention of the relevant specialists who can provide a specific ID. For instance, I have a particular interest in the spiders of Madagascar and have my dashboard set up to automatically show me any new spiders logged from Madagascar. If a user marks a sighting just as an animal, or as nothing at all, then it won’t show up in my feed until somebody IDs it at least as a spider, if not a particular spider family or genus. ---
**Author:** ![DianaStuder](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/dianastuder/32/43358_2.png) [@DianaStuder](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/DianaStuder)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2022, 11:44am UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/obvious-identifications/34189/6 "2022-08-07T11:44:49Z")
The broader groups yes. And the broad plant groups, where you have an enthusiastic pool of identifiers available. But for the [Rest of Africa broad plant categories](https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?per_page=10&iconic_taxa=unknown%2CPlantae&order_by=observed_on&place_id=97392&project_id=123926&taxon_id=47126&lrank=family) is daunting! 38K for me ---
**Author:** ![rowan\_m](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.inaturalist.org/rowan_m/32/8280_2.png) [@rowan\_m](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/rowan_m)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2022, 3:55pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/obvious-identifications/34189/7 "2022-08-07T15:55:36Z")
Yes, keep on going. There is some boilerplate text [here](https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/responses#addid) which you can copy and paste to explain to users why they should add IDs to their observations. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/inaturalist/original/2X/7/7831452cf7f0d653ff1ffd34176334b7ef1b6a17.png) [@system](https://forum.inaturalist.org/u/system)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2022, 3:56pm UTC](https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/obvious-identifications/34189/8 "2022-10-06T15:56:10Z")
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