I’m definitely more of a place-based expert than a taxon-based expert: I search through coastal/intertidal observations primarily from California - I made the California coastline & state waters place for that purpose so I can get most coastal observations just through using that place. But sometimes I’ll expand my search along the entire west coast of North America, which then forces me to do place x taxa searches since there’s no good coastal place for the entire west coast.
Some groups I have a harder time getting to species (e.g., red algae, colonial tunicates, sponges, polychaetes), but I do okay with most west coast marine inverts and algae. Mostly work on the Needs ID group, but I find a handful of mistakes in the Research Grade set every time I look through it so I’ll do that on occasion as well.
My general position is Needs ID for the UK, no taxonomy filters. I also (but haven’t for a few months now, admittedly) work through the same for the other parts of this archipelego, ie Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey. When I cleared (that is, no more to review) all of those in about February, I did some Casual Unknowns for the UK, and Needs ID unknowns for Australia and Africa. During City Nature Challenge, after clearing the UK’s Needs ID for the time period of the challenge, I did Unknowns worldwide that were in the project. I consider myself as a sort of first-stage identifier, that I mostly pass things onto other people who know specific areas. I mostly do the UK because I am learning more precise identifications from what I see go past, and I don’t think much of what I’ve learned to species is of much use in a world-wide context.
I believe that lots of stuff you could learn from iding UK observations could be used for Europe at least at family level, but very often at species level.
Unknowns, to put observations into broad taxonomic groups. This often results in a lot of Angiospermae and Aves identifications.
All Arachnida (class), to identify to order when I can: Araneae, Opiliones, Solifugae, Scorpiones, etc.
All Araneae (order), to identify observations to family when I can, especially Salticidae, Thomisidae, Lycosidae, Philodromidae, and Tetragnathidae.
Occasionally Asia + Insects, Spiders, or Birds, mostly for East Asian observations.
I already follow the most prolific observers for South Korea so I’ve bookmarked a search excluding those users so I can see everything else posted within the country and identify those when I can.
I’m a specialist (as the name Sedgehead suggestions) in the genus Carex. I try to capture all Carex in Arkansas and some in surrounding states. For example, Tennessee includes higher elevations than Arkansas so gets less attention than other states. I lose interest and skill if I get too far from Arkansas so I don’t worry about longer distances. However, I’ve been to China (four trips since 2014 and 25 weeks total). Since I notice fewer observers there, I sometimes will take a look at a specific province or the country and just see what I see that I know. I have a wide background with an original interest in birds and experience editing thousands of research papers from China. Sometimes, I home in on a species or genus such as Carex eburnea, Silphium (two species), or Echinacea paradoxa and just try to “clean up” the records, perhaps created by the AI suggestions of the website. For example, a Silphium in Europe or South America is probably cultivated or mis-identified. My main point? I don’t waste too much time on groups I’m not familiar with but do observe (dragonflies) and if my photos are not great but I know the species (birds) I’ll report it anyway. So, from both observations and IDs I may get into almost anything. One last, example? I spent several weeks in the small town of Jinjing north of Changsha in Hunan Province, China in the last two years. So, out of curiosity, I may look at anything in Hunan just to learn for the next trip. Motivations change. And if I’m bored, I may just bring up the website and do general IDs, suggesting to new users they should say “bird” if they don’t know the species, for example. . . . educating other users, ideally politely.
It isn’t exactly a filter as I have to check them one at a time, but I have stopped doing identifications where the stated locality does not match the pin in the map. It cuts down the number of identifications I do by about 70%. I did raise this issue a while back in the forum and most replies suggested it was fine for there to be a discrepancy, just go with the pin. But to my mind the location data are as important as the taxonomic and I don’t want to be part of producing misleading records.
One bottleneck for me is the lack of a list where I can save observations that isn’t my “favorites” list. I often run across observations that have enough photos and I think I can ID it but I don’t have the right book/website/guide/etc available at the moment. I’d also like to be able to share a list with other botanists who are active in my region so we can collaborate on these tougher observations. I started a project that I can add observations to manually but it’s not the greatest solution.
I generally use the “In the past week” Account Creation filter so I can add general IDs and comments to new users’ observations. I’m stronger at identifying things in California, but there are a plethora of much better identifiers here, so I focus my time on new users worldwide and help them get acclimated and feel welcomed (I hope).
“no particular restriction” is a filter, no? At any rate, I unvoted, hope it worked. How many people use specific filters vs how many use the default would be interesting, particularly in light of the “casual= second class observation” controversy.