Over a million identifications

Especially if you consider the discussion about vanishing iNatters. Those superfluous IDs are actually important if one or more IDers bail out of the site.

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Time for me to join the - add a third ID where I can. I have been Mark as Reviewed if it is already Research Grade.

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yes… I can be assured that any easy to identify bird I upload will get one to five regular (known) identifiers weighing in on that observation after it has made RG. I can upload 12 common backyard birds. The dead easy to identify birds will get 3-5 people suggesting IDs almost immediately. The one that is only slightly less easy (you have to look at the beak and tail feathers but both are visible in the photo) will not get a confirmation ID till someone not all that interested in fast stat accumulation come by, takes 20 seconds to examine, and adds their suggestion.

I personally am not that impressed with stats that rise from that kind of identification that surfs the low hanging fruit. Additionally, some of those folk have many pages of maverick IDs. That indicates they likely aren’t checking notifications and reconsidering their identifications. A maverick isn’t in itself a strike against anyone since there will be observations where the identification is a conversation among the community and may not be easily resolved. But 20+ pages of mavericks? again… not impressive to me. Everyone gets to use iNat in a way that suits them and I won’t quabble with this practice. But I’m also not lauding numbers that get accumulated in this way. just my two cents.

I’m much more impressed with the people who spend their time trying to identify trickier plants, flies, bees, spiders, etc and will respond when you tag them (responsibly) with tips on how to tell the difference between two species or whether that wad of webbing has anything to do with a spider. Those are the folks that rock my world! :-)

In my neck of the woods (some of these folks are location specific), some of my hero identifiers are: csledge, averybl, eknuth, cheins1, johnascher, gamelaner, bobdunlap321, guidingguida, karakaxa, heatherholm, sedgequeen, danders4, and a great number of folks who don’t have high stats but who are identifying more fringe elements that help me learn a lot about types of life that is either a mystery to me or very new to me. I love those folks working on flies and galls, as well. We can’t all be those people and I don’t think less of anyone who isn’t skilled in trickier IDs. But - stats or not - I find more value in those types of IDs on my observations than the 6th agreement that, ‘yep… that’s a Blue Jay’.

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A considered ID is a considered ID. Doesn’t matter if it’s first, fifth or two hundredth. The elitist trash talk is getting a bit much.

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I still am… a million is a looooot of time spent here and helping solidify IDs. I appreciate that for the reasons mentioned above. It is important to have guys like them … iNat would be a much lonlier place without them and much less satisfying…

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If we’re tipping hats, I’d like to acknowledge @peakaytea with the cool ID type spread because I know how it gets that way- saving a lot of other people a lot of “work”! (It’s a labor of love, but RSI is real, amirite?)

Re repetitive stress injuries, the people being acknowledged in this thread should probably share tips. ;)

(Relatedly we should be cheering top annotaters because RSI but no bragging rights on a ranking page.)

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In a way, a correct Supporting ID is way more valuable than a Leading ID since taking Needs ID observations to Research Grade are supporting ID’s, and that is critical to helping observations become Research Grade. Adding “Dicots” to an observation of “Plants” is helpful, but the Supporting ID’s that help photos become Research Grade are very important.
I used to use the “Agree” button all the time when I first started(I didn’t know better), but when I ID now I take more time to correctly ID the observation to the best of my ability.
Even with 100% supporting ID’s at a rate of 1000 ID’s every single day, it takes almost 3 years to reach 1 million identifications. That is a monumental task, even if it is just Supporting ID’s.
No one should get mad for more Supporting ID’s that are correct…Just think of Gerald.

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How do people feel about a second or third or fourth high level ID? Im talking dicot, fungi, high level. I realize if I had done that, Id have over 300,000 IDs when I worked through Alabama nonRG backlog. I didnt - i focused on moving things further along in taxon and if i couldnt help further it I passed. Only time i added same ID really was if I could confirm species to RG it. I looked at all of them but i def passed on a lot and only gave out about 12,000 IDs

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It doesn’t matter to me. A considered ID is a considered ID at whatever level it is made. That’s not the same as someone doing a ‘Like’ ID or argumentum ad verecundiam ID, but nobody can really know the difference so we should take them at face value unless we received the gift of Mind Reading over the festive period.

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No, it’s not a good thing, I have no idea if they’re experts if all they do is click agree, for me their names say nothing about their credentials, plus I don’t need five people to know crow is a crow. They don’t help where help is actually needed, not help experts in niche groups, just mass birds we all know. I won’t praise them and rather have an expert who checks and only ids when there’s a reason.

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How do you know how they have come to their conclusions? What if they have done an hour of honest research? How do you calculate that the hour they spent is worth less than the same hour spent by Professor Critter Expert? OK maybe it is more valuable to you, but to the amateur who is learning? Can’t you respect their effort too?

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They make thousands ids a day, they certainly don’t spend an hour thinking on something. Taking @mmmiller example, not only the easiest species get id, but also the common angles of them. Those people id around the world where they can’t be local experts everywhere, but with amount of time they have, they certainly could learn to help with more complicated cases. But checking needs id won’t bring you to #1.

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Well, then it would appear that the simplest joint solution to the snobbery of ID gamification and the snobbery of of ID quality scepticism is to remove ID leader boards. Issue resolved. Remind everyone that nobody is special. Those that can’t live in such a world will leave. Not a bad thing.

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It is not easy to find your mavericks! Till @kueda on the forum offered an URL which I have bookmarked and clear each day.
https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications?user_id=dianastuder&category=maverick

Would be good if iNat itself had a popup nanny as the forum does.
You have … 10 mavericks
20 … please resolve
30 … no more obs or IDs, till you do have done your homework!
(Curator to check and clear observer if their ‘mavericks’ are due to taxonomists, shuffling the deck, again. Or legitimate disagreement)

I unfollow obs I have IDed, once they reach Research Grade (then I don’t care how many birders pile on) And also once the ID has settled beyond my skill set - I aim to lift Unknowns to where competent identifiers can filter for them, then my share is done.

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Like you, if the best I can for Unknowns is Dicot I don’t. Effectively they stay in my broad planty Needs ID … What I couldn’t clear yesterday, is still there, waiting for me, tomorrow.

@anon93074988 please don’t remove leaderboards. I use them constantly. Chose the taxon level. Set the location. Keep rising up those 2 till I get a useful list with some familiar names. Active and helpful? I will tag you. Lots of tags from me every day, so I work very hard to spread the load across as many competent people as I can.
@fffffffff is a frequent choice for doubtful insect ish, or maybe not??

And a PS if you look at your own distribution https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications?user_id=dianastuder
Mine is 34% leading. yay. But. I work thru a mountain of Unknowns each day where I am always first That, being first, has no value against any other ID.
Only 24% supporting so I am obviously an exceptionally competent identifier! Not. This only reflects my Move Unknowns On workflow. (And it’s already got its 2 IDs, next)

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It depends.
I am not going through plants (I don’t know nothing about), already suggested at Plantae plantifolium and add my Angiospermae. That would not make much sense to me, as I do not plan a large plant-IDing-effort… To another person it might be usefull and I am fine if they feel they want to do that. I don’t see the harm.

But I will agree with e.g. family or genus level, if…
a) I am the first one agreeing at all
b) I am the first of the active spider people in the region to add my ID, as I think this might be valueable to someone (at least that is how I feel if someone I know has some expertise in those taxa leaves a mark)
c) I am quite sure it cannot moved further at this point… in this case I recently started to also mark them as “cannot be improved further” to get them out of the pool
d) I checked and know I cannot do more and don’t want anyone to tag me on that one again… so they see I have seen it

I will also add a broad ID in those cases (e.g. because the picture is to blurry to do more)

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I do add Dicot to an Unknown if that’s all I can do. I even just add Plants if my patience has run out, because I think a plant observation is much more likely to be looked at by a botanist if it’s IDed at Plants than as Unknown. But I think it’s fantastic that you take it so much farther right from the beginning! I can only aspire to being so competent someday.

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I have added URLs for planty to my daily workflow.
When I started some obs had been languishing for FIVE YEARS.
But in other places with more botanists active on ID duty, they tell me it works.

Maybe. I will tackle. This 4K next ?

Personally I think the leaderboards are an incredibly user tool.

  1. They allow you easily find experts to tag. No you don’t just take the top one, you start at the top and read profiles until you find someone who may be able to help. I’ve done that many times for a lot of observations. Removing that would make it much harder to find people who can help.
  2. Using leaderboards you can easily see how much consistency a particular dataset has of identifiers. I think if a dataset is going to be used in a study, being able to show that all observations to be used were ID’d by a specific group is a good thing.
  3. For those of us who do have a competitive mindset, it motivates to ID more. To give myself as an example, I know a lot about identifying Bombus, and I am competitive. Give me a competition and I will hurt myself to beat it. Take away the competition and I will get bored.

To say that because some people use the leaderboards improperly therefore everyone is them improperly and we should get rid of them doesn’t make sense. I have seen people incorrectly use a chainsaw, but I don’t go around saying that everyone is using a chainsaw incorrectly and we should get rid of them.

Lastly, considering how often we lament that there aren’t enough identifiers, why not have a spot where people can see how many ID’s some of these guys put. A quarter million, half a million, a million ID’s is impressive.

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I wouldn’t mind adding that for new users, and maybe have it as an optional setting in your profile, but…

Currently I’ve only got two mavericks, but I have had as many as three pages worth at once on occasion when cleaning up datasets. These are all me adding a maverick ID to an incorrectly ID’d observation. In these cases, I don’t necessarily want a block to come up.

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