Greetings everyone! I’ve been curious for awhile to see a numerical value for the ratio of iNat users (or at least those active in the Forum) who have more observations than identifications compared to those with more identifications than observations. I strongly suspect that most people have far m…

I’ll soon overcome my Identifications with observations once I start my field technician position. I need to do more identifications and learn to ID the local species better. I’m always paralyzed by my hesitation to confidently identify without a thick stack of reference material next to me.

I would say that the most frustrating thing about the ID tool is that you can’t blow the photos up as big as you can when it’s just an observation. I have characters like tiny roughness on the edge of the leaf that I look for, and often I have to back out of the tool and go to the original observat…

I am primarily an observer, as i love underwater photography and sharing what i see while i dive. I am currently learning how to identify primarily marine species right now in order to be able to contribute with some IDs of local species.

I figured the zoom function was based on the upload image quality. I agree that the details in photos are critical for IDs - I often click on the photo to blow it up, use the one zoom in click, and then force it to zoom in even more. It’s kind of a pain, but you get used to it. To compensate, I try …

Agree. There are a small, but significant number of users who seen to identify observations after 3 or 4 ID’s. More power to them, but if I see and observation is at research grade, I leave it alone (after a quick glance to make sure it is correct!).

Currently, I’ve ID’d a lot more observations than I’ve made, but I’ve only been contributing observations actively for about 6 months. I expect that, when I work back through >10 years of photographs that ratio will approach more like 1:1.

I never noticed that control! Thanks, that helped a lot.

I have a lot more identifications then observations but that is only because doing ID’s is easier and I have a lot of time at home that I don’t have out in the field. If I could go out more often and see more stuff, that would change. A lot of them are basic ID’s as well such as “spider” or “beetle”…

Poll: Are You Primarily an iNat Observer or Identifier?

Nature Talk

kiwifergus February 6, 2020, 7:33pm 66

Above the brightness controls is an “open in new browser window” button, and from there you can click the image to zoom in further. You also can use the browser zoom (ctrl + or ctrl -) to step zoom more finely.

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Poll: Are You Primarily an iNat Observer or Identifier?

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