I strongly oppose this idea. You can’t foster growth in areas with low activity if you create a catch-22 where everyone’s uploading observations, but no one’s able to ID them (making them verifiable) because they aren’t allowed to do so until verified by others, who are also all unable to ID. I have a hard enough time getting my plant observations IDed in southern Indiana—imagine what a barrier this would create in countries with low iNaturalist activity overall.
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The best IDers often do not have observations
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Places like Alaska must have many, many observers who are just passing through as tourists or whatever and have little local expertise. Having a local identifier is a tremendous service that helps turn their enthusiasm and curiosity into knowledge. When I contribute to iNaturalist outside my home area, I’m super grateful for the local expertise to put a name to things I see. Thanks for doing this!
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What about a ‘thank you’ button? This may help with people wanting to show their gratitude without clicking the agree button. I wouldn’t want it to become an obligation in any way, but it may give a venue that would have a small footprint on the actual database.
As for a waiting period on new people and IDs, some of the most knowledgeable and valuable IDs I’ve gotten have been from experts with few to any actual observations. I’d hate to discourage that in any capacity.
I do get overzealous in trying to keep my number of IDs well ahead of my actual observations. My area (southern IN) doesn’t really get a lot of people looking at it, so I feel I should contribute, even it it’s to just ID things to very general categories like ‘fungi’. I admit this is also due to my habit of storing up photos and then flooding iNat when I have a chance to crop and upload them. 
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The idea of a probation period has been raised before, and because I can see the same old “I don’t like that idea because” arguments starting up here, I’ll just briefly outline some of the ideas that were discussed:
Probation Period
A period of time or number of observations that need to be achieved before certain other activities become available, such as making identifications.
Release From Probation
For recognised expertise, the probation period etc can be waived or released, so that they can make IDs as soon as they join. Perhaps release can be done by curators, iNatters with a certain number of IDs/Observations, or even perhaps just by an in-account request process which staff review and act on…
Mentor Accounts
The possibility that new accounts under probation can have mentor accounts assigned, which effectively releases the new account from probation. The theory is that the mentor account will have the ability to undertake certain actions on behalf of the new account should they become absentee (such as correcting IDs, responding to questions, etc.). This idea would be good for situations where tech savvy iNatters are helping those less savvy with computers, assuming of course they are helping them to learn, and not just doing it all for them. Potential for sock-puppet abuse though.
Weightless IDs
Initial IDs of new users display, but are ineffective towards Community ID (CID). Perhaps only for the first 50 or so, or perhaps only while under probation (and they become weight bearing IDs once released from probation)
Again, the idea is to explore different options… nothing here in the forums is likely to be implemented unless developers and staff see merit, and something as significant as restrictions on use would likely get considerable investigation and design/testing before being forced on the community. The more ideas we can throw onto the table to play around with, the better are the chances that staff/developers will find a model that works for everyone.
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To maintain the credibility of iNat as a botanical research tool of any kind, there should be a more rigorous process for any observation to reach RG. I monitor the vast majority of Castilleja observations and a few related genera as they come in. I rarely comment on other organisms about which I don’t feel qualified to comment. I’ve found many cases of misidentified plants reaching RG after being confirmed by someone’s friend or a similarly inexperienced observer. This is a real problem that needs to be addressed. I would suggest as a start sending a notice to ALL users and to new users as they enroll that they should avoid confirming ANY observation unless they are certain and have gone through some effort to eliminate other ID options. And if they are “pretty sure” but not 100% (as is often the case for a single-image observation), that should be clearly indicated in the comment section. Maybe there should even be a new category for “best guess” that would point a direction to the poster without assuring research grade. That’s basically what I do in such situations. Comments are essential in these cases.
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Thanks to everyone who gave feedback re my reputation comment. With respect to @carrieseltzer’s prompting to stay on topic, I won’t respond to these specifically.
My observation is that I don’t think that there’s much that can be done under the current system to stop this kind of behaviour. As someone who has designed and used IT systems extensively, I recommend using the technology to nudge people in the right direction, rather than trying to tell them after the fact, which is why my comments have been in favour of system changes.
In the meantime, I never completely trust an RG observation, and don’t use them blindly. Where I see errors, I correct them, so hopefully over time, the older misidentified observations get weeded out and corrected. For the most part, I haven’t had much luck messaging people to stop agreeing to everything - the attraction of the leaderboards is usually too great.
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Just out of curiosity, how do you message them?
I’ve used both comments within observations, as well as direct messages. I usually try direct messaging first. Occasionally that works, and turns into a productive conversation (sources, hints & tips, etc.), but often I don’t ever get a response back, and the person just continues to do the same things.
I don’t do either very much now, as I’d rather just fix what I can. Usually with my correction and tagging an expert or two, it gets back to at least a “Needs ID”, if not the correct RG ID. species.
As for the leaderboards, I don’t usually rely on them - at least note without checking the person’s bio. Also, the longer you use the site, the more you build up your own list of experts for certain taxa and/or locations. However, as much as I can just ignore them, I don’t see the point in having a feature that is at best worthless, and at worst counterproductive.
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I agree that smaller changes to the system may sum up to make a difference already. I agree with the proposed “Thank You” button; such a feature was recently activated in the English Wikipedia, with great success.
In addition, what about providing users with a list of “Own IDs needing review”, listing all observations where the current community ID is different from the ID suggested by the user? Such a list, coming across as a type of “to do” list, would encourage the user to correct themselves (or to discuss their reasoning) to keep the number of list entries small. Such a list would make it much easier to revisit observations where necessary, and to learn from mistakes. As a result, the Overzealous Identifier will learn from their mistakes, which is all we want.
Another idea: The “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” option appears to be underused, and was quite obscure to me for long (I did not understand that this will move an observation to “Research Grade” in certain situations). This could be made more accessible. What about setting observations to “Research Grade” automatically after at least two or three IDs point to same broader taxon, even when not at species level? This may work against the common impression that identifications above species level are worthless.
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I have never understood what this feature does or how to interpret it, or what its consequences are. Where is that explained? Thanks!
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Not sure where it is explained, but if the Community ID is at Genus or higher, it becomes “Research Grade”, at lower levels, it becomes “Casual”. No notification is sent to the OP, like all of the DQA votes, so a comment about it is courteous.
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My understanding is it is for when you are sure that the observation cannot be identified any finer than it’s current level based on the information included in the observation.
Eg. 1, there are some flies that can only be ID’d to species visually by their genitalia (and then, sometimes only on the males), and that genitalia cannot be viewed without a microscope. In the absence of those close shots, a genus-level might be the best the ID could get, so the answer to the question “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” could be no.
Eg 2., I’ve heard there are some animals (cicadas, if memory serves, but it could have been grasshoppers/frogs/birds too) that can only be distinguished to species by their call. If the observation does not include audio, then when it is still at a higher level taxon the “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” could be no.
Eg 3. I think there are some organisms that I’ve heard can only be positivly ID’d to species by DNA (some fungi, I think). Minus that evidence, it may never get to species, so the answer to the question “Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved?” could be no.
As Tony Robledo has opined (and I kind of agree), it’s not best used when you think the pic or audio is “too poor” to get an ID, because you never know what an expert may be able to discern from even the blurriest/noisiest photo or most garbled audio recording. I’ve seen iNat Identifiers give some amazing IDs (with explanations!) for features they noticed in some very low quality evidence.
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As comments above have already stated, I believe the iNat ”identify” is a great way to learn, I use it for that purpose often (if you take a look at my identifications, you’ll see a ton of IDs of birds from the South Pacific), and I believe that for a lot of ”overzealous” identifiers (myself included) do it for the purpose of learning! However, doing that can still effect the data if you don’t do research. When I’m trying to learn using the ”identify” tool, I spend a couple hrs beforehand studying the birds/butterflies that I’ll be IDing, and while I’m IDing I always have 2 or 3 guides open to make sure my IDs are good. Now if everyone did this that would be great but I have seen many times people just going through and clicking ”agree” without putting much thought into their IDs. I’m not sure how to correct this but I think just reminding them that their IDs contribute to science and that iNat has a very high standard for data and IDs like theirs can mess up the system would go a long way.
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Thanks, big help!
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How about a way to flag an observation as needing further review? So that when we personally do not have expertise in that area, we can still indicate to others that there may be a problem?
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You could check yes for "Based on the evidence, can the Community Taxon still be confirmed or improved? " in the DQA which would mark it as “Needs ID” then add appropriate comments to your concerns about the ID. I tested it on one of my observations with 4 species agreements and an Order in agreement and it switched it to “Needs ID”.
Not sure how many would agree that it is an appropriate use of the flag, but I feel it would be applicable.
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I think that is exactly what it is for. It is a vote situation too, so others can “overturn” the flag if they feel it has got to a stable enough ID, and vice versa if you have flagged it “as good as it can be = yes” they can vote the other way and say it still needs attention, the majority flags ruling out.
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I don’t know the answer but am also frustrated by inexperienced users blindly agreeing with the first ID they get. Especially new users in a group. For that reason, if I’m not totally certain of an ID, I usually give only the genus (or whatever the next taxa higher is) in the ID and put a comment saying, maybe this is G. whateveri or maybe it’s an Asclepias.
I do sometimes run across things that are completely misidentified and I slap an ID on them that’s as low as I can honestly do. iNat asks a question about whether you’re just not sure about the ID or are sure it’s wrong. If you pick a taxa too far away from the current ID, the wording of the choices doesn’t quite fit the situation because it looks too far down, so I pick the one that that means, I know this is wrong.
I like the “best guess” approach. I would find it useful.