If you come to the small area of Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, let me know, and I’ll identify lots of your stuff!!! :-D
This is a testament to the growth of iNaturalist – in the not too distant past, I would really try to tackle many of the plant observations made in the southern United States, with an emphasis on the state of Texas. Now, there is such a tremendous influx of observations and observers, I’ve tremendously narrowed down my ID’s to regional! Granted, I’ve missed out on a lot of cool observations made all around the world, but by spending such time on ID’ing in my geographic area, I’ve become quite comfortable with the local flora and fauna.
I am in complete awe of the taxon experts that tackle that group from around the world… When I get tagged on some plant from Madagascar, all I can say is “Well, if it were in Texas, I’d put it at least in this plant family…” :)
I genuinely enjoy ID’ing – the entire community benefits, but selfishly, I learn the most from it.
(although… don’t get me started on the mass of student observations… whew.) ;)
None of the leaderboard whinges will stop me IDing across Africa. But I do withdraw IDs which I added to help move an obs to skilled identifiers, once my support is no longer needed. ID not deleted, but withdrawn with a PS comment.
PS for the low-hanging fruit
Obs I have Mark as Reviewed Next where I could have added a broad ID, but chose to move on to something more interesting.
That would have given me another 136K IDs. (Slowly approaching a quarter of a million altogether) Given the hours I spend on iNat every day I hate to think how long even routine Agrees would take to reach a million. My RSI finger throbs just thinking about it!
I see identifiers thru my blinkers - the ones I tag, who come back with helpful comments to support their IDs. Or gentle queries to push back against (you are wrong because …)
I think you need to change the username to your own to see the observations that you have reviewed but not IDed, but I could be reading the search URL wrong.
I’ve often wondered how many hours per day some of these top-of-the-leaderboard users spend here. I identified ~67000 last year, which is more than most but far less than some. I can’t even imagine the logistics of doubling, tripling, quintupling that volume. Not unless iNaturalist starts paying me.
Replace my name with yours - to see how many ‘low-hanging fruit’ you could have added.
If that was your intention.
The ones that trigger long thoughtful discussion are so much more rewarding.
But I suspect VERY FEW are actually targeting low hanging fruit. That is a game that would quickly lose its appeal. Perhaps someone who is still finding their way on iNat. How does this work?
most of my IDs are probably supporting ID’s because I’ve been working on older observations of Texas herpetofauna with occasional forays into other stuff. Supporting IDs are good.
The few, the proud! ;) If someone’s mission is to be part of a team that helps get every observation as much id’d as it can be, then starting with the easiest ones = low hanging fruit - of course that’s a good place to start. Since it is easy, it can be done at high volume. Sometimes, high volume easy tasks can be relaxing as well as rewarding.
Maybe as relaxing as video/tv watching? I don’t really do those but @joe_fish maybe it would be at the instead-of-watching level of time expenditure for some folks?
The amount of effort to get so many ID’s is commendable in itself, I just hope it isn’t an addiction for anyone (has serious iNat addiction ever been discussed?)…
I tend not to care about people adding the ‘superfluous’ ID’s, except that getting a notification for the 5th ‘agreeing’ ID is disappointing when opened :p
The one (minor!) concern I do have though, is in the use of leaderboards to find expertise to contact for ID help. For example, a newer user finding BorisB at the top of Coleoptera genera leaderboards can be assured of good help in ID-ing if they contact him. But if the top of the leaderboard(s) is someone who is always just adding supporting ID’s to which they don’t actually have the ID knowledge to know why they’re correct, it could create problems for the CV and ID quality.
But of course it’s not so easy to distinguish someone who agrees a lot because they know vs someone who agrees a lot because it’s easy, so I wouldn’t just cast aspersions because of the behaviour itself. I try to always check profile pages to see that the bio reflects the input (your profile bio is important!), some people are high ID’ers but very clear about why in their bio page, which is great.
This thread has also made me realise that I should still add agreeing ID’s for ‘easy’ genera I focus on because my ID adds more ‘weight’ to those where they just picked the top CV recommendation or just ‘know’ it’s an easy one. Added to the whole accounts disappearing risk too. Thanks!
Go for the low-hanging fruit! Get lots of easy observations out of “Needs ID” and into Research Grade! I think that’s very helpful.
Of course, I may think that because I do a lot of it. Oh, sometimes I work on grasses or sedges or other challenging species. Sometimes I pull out reference books or e-mail experts I know. Other times, though, I want just a little semi-mindless ID work, the iNaturalist equivalent of playing solitaire or doing jigsaw puzzles. I like to think it all helps.
As long as identifiers have a little knowledge or are willing to learn from and correct their mistakes, it’s all good!
Who would unfollow their own observations though? The problem is with them, you expect notifications to bring new info, not confirmation of already confirmed by many.
I find it more like a visual (photos/colors) + tactile (keyboard clicking) stim…I can certainly pass hours without realising it. I probably logged easily over 100 hours in the past few months IDing and I had no clue until I sat down and calcuated assuming I only spent 30 sec per ID made (and I clicked through MANY more!). Whoops? Or not? I dont know yet. Better than many habits though so I count it good.
A million ID’s at 5 seconds per ID winds up being over 1,000 hours spent ID’ing–basically like working 20 hours a week for a year+
I’m probably never hitting that and that’s fine. I’m very glad some people that know what they’re doing can though!
And again, I’d encourage people to go ahead and be fine with supporting IDs. I’ve put up probably a dozen plus supporting IDs to Pitouphis catenifer and Thamnophis marcanius today and bumped them to research grade. All of them were easy to ID, and posted in 2019 and had been languishing since. I’m dealing with an AC separation and bursitis so I’m kinda sidelined from going out much but I figure I can keep going through old herp records (except Aspidocelis, those give me fits).