I have 3 filters:
With those really long lists - I peel off the ones from today. Then sort ascending and peel off a slice of older obs. Two different sets of sorting skills makes a change.
I’m inadvertently a specialist IDer with 7.5k IDs of Potentilla indica alone. It was at the top of the diagnostic key and very common - easy pickings! I like to pick a specific plant species (or genus) and then deep dive in it, learning the keys for it and the look-alikes.
I generally look at the links I have saved in my journals for the handful of species I’ve adopted (Potentilla indica, Potentilla norvegica, all 2 Mazus species in the US, Waldsteinia ternata, Waldsteinia fragarioides), in the scope of the USA or North America. If I want more variety, I’ll look at genus or tribe level to pick out my fav species from obscurity.
I’m also working on going through all Potentilla observations in the USA in ascending order to pick out my favs. Just got up to 07/19/2023!
It depends on what I am looking to identify. If it is unknowns or easy to ID species, I will search all of North America. For butterflies I mostly stick to Ontario, where I live. Otherwise, I usually leave it at Canada. What species I choose to ID depends on my mood. I have no idea how I pick them on any particular day.
I do a lot of bumble bee IDs so I just filter for bombus usually in the northeast or a wider area but never past the Midwest.
I also ID greater celandine, I will filter for that species in the entire US
I also ID milkweeds and I filter by genus Asclepias all over the US too.
I also try to ID unknown species but I will usually just stick to either PA or northeast area.
I have a few ways to narrow it down.
Every few months I choose a genus of plant I want to learn about and really get into the differentiating features of each species and once I feel I have enough knowledge I will then ID all the records that need ID. If there’s a species that often gets identified incorrectly I’ll then go into all the verified observations and check those. I’ll subscribe to those in my home state.
I also just go into a geographic region I am comfortable with and ID whatever I’m confident of in that.
I have some friends and colleagues that I’ll always try to ID for, skills and knowledge permitting.
I think there are no wrong answers to this question, but here’s what I do:
Sometimes, I will ID by starting at a taxon map instead. I will look for outliers where an incorrect ID seems likely and eliminate all those incorrect IDs first.
But it doesn’t really matter how. As long as you ID within the groups where you are competent at identification, its all contributing!
I’m not sure I’m going to anymore. Wow, those are frustrating.
In the Asterales project, it was image after image of generic leafiness. Really, folks, if you’re uploading as unknown, generic leafiness is too advanced for you. Start with flowers or fruits. You’ll know you’re ready for generic leafiness when you can upload it as something narrower than “Flowering Plants.”
But the Cucurbitales project – that one was mind-blowing! It was almost all Begonias, the vast majority of which were uploaded as unknown or at best “Plants.” I never would have predicted that a yellow square project would be so overwhelmingly dominated by just one genus! I’m probably on a leaderboard by now; people are going to start tagging me on their Begonia observations, and I’m going to need a copypasta saying, sorry, I only know how to get them to genus. I mean, Begonias, on the whole, you can’t mistake for any other genus.
Not one Cucurbitaceae, which was why I had wanted to do Cucurbitales in the first place!
I’ve been working on a Yellow Square project that seems to be Poales ID’d as Plants, mostly. I’ve managed to shift about 60% of the observations I’ve reviewed from the hopeless limbo that is “Plants” to the hopeless limbo that is “Grasses.” So many unidentifiable sterile grasses! However, some have gone elsewhere – sedges, rushes, insects, etc. Some of the observations were actually identifiable to genus or species, too.
A whole project of misclassified Begonia? That would be very odd.
My main focus is on insects of Southern Africa
(1) I filter for the region Southern Africa, often via project Biodiversity of Southern Africa and just look through the first 20 pages or so - by doing this I also pick out some unknowns or plants or invertebratae that I know or do broad IDs such as a plant genus or only ‘Spiders’ or ‘Bracket fungi’ etc.
(2) I then filter for Coleoptera, Diptera, Neuroptera, Lepidoptera and finally ‘insects’, sometimes even also ‘animals’ if there aren’t many insects this day.
(3) I visit the projetcs I have created for ID purposes: Bombyliidae, Tabanidae, Pentatomidae, Rhiniinae and Isects newly identified
(4) I track the identifications of users who are ‘experts’ on certain taxa - this is mainly for me in order to learn identifiying new taxa and also to agree to their identifications whenever I can verify. (Many of these IDs would otherwise hardly get the second ID - I also consider this as sort of appreciation for these expert identifiers - what would iNat be without these people)
(5) Now and then I do other things, such as filter for ‘Eristalinus’ in central and South America in order to help them with their aliens.
(6) When I read an interesting paper, I’ll also search through iNat trying to find the species illustrated or described in a paper - if it is a very good paper I even go beyond Southern Africa to the whole of the Afrotropics or just an African country.
(7) For fun I also visit some other projects or do the ‘explore’ thing.
I generally sort by birds and mammals for my state, or the whole U.S., Or anything for local parks that I’m very familiar with. I mainly only ID local plants unless I’m familiar with the non-local plant I’m trying ID. For anything non-local, I make sure I have the ID is close to 100% probability. I’m pretty much clueless on fungi… 
I love this thread and have enjoyed reading through it! Thank you @lynnharper!! It is interesting and fun to see how we all approach things differently (geographically, taxonomically, time-bound, projects, filters, mood-based, randomly, etc).
I’m not prolific-prolific, but I enjoy IDing. I try to have 2-3x IDs in comparison to my observations, and I have about 8K IDs currently. My primary focus has been marine gastropod eggs. There aren’t that many, but they also aren’t as well documented. I’m very confident in a few species and can get most eggs to at least family level. I will dive into all iNat observations and the literature to track down examples to confirm IDs. It is slow going, but fun. This is coupled with a massive annotation effort of gastropod eggs. It has been vey gratifying to see many Gulf of Mexico marine gastropods ID-able by CV these days.
Occasionally I’ll dive into a geographically limited species (usually marine gastropods) to clean up, with a template note on my clipboard and references to WoRMS.
I’ll also dive into unknowns worldwide or unknowns in Florida, where I grew up. I completely agree with @sedgequeen’s sediment - especially WW:
I like seeing the tremendous diversity of organisms people post …
and can 100% relate to @larry216 's experience of irresistible attraction of the rabbit holes:
…a “What the heck is that?” reaction. I then go down the rabbit hole, …
I really appreciate all the work of the Lepidoptera identifiers (on this thread: @paul_dennehy, @jrcagle, @audrey_turner, @juliereid, and more I missed, sorry!) - pulling a Lepidoptera out of the unknown abyss and see it ID’d is always satisfying!
@kevinwilliams & @tristanmcknight - thank you so much for the velvet ant and robber fly IDs! I love photographing them both when I find them, but I know nothing about their taxonomy :D
Compared to many iNaters, I am hardly a prolific IDer, but, I do put some time in most mornings.
Basically, I have three ways of finding observations to look into and add something to the ID if I can.
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