Hi there! I’ve recently started pitching in with assigning broad IDs to “unknown” observations. I’ve been focusing on observations with placeholder text, and have come across a number where the placeholder text is the species name, but it’s either slightly misspelled, a synonym of the accepted species, and/or hasn’t been added to iNat yet. I’ve been ID’ing these with comments noting that my ID is based on the observer’s placeholder text. I do check to make sure that I’m not, e.g., assigning a primate species to an orchid, but these have been all over the map (geographically and species-wise….) and mostly species with which I’m not personally familiar. Because these IDs are effectively on behalf of the observer, I’ve generally been deleting my ID if/when the observer adds their own. Is that the right approach?
Also, is this sort of ID work a helpful exercise, or is it unwanted by observers? I’ve been sticking mostly to observations that are at least ~1 month old.
I do that, too. Trying to give the observer a voice. (And get the observation moving.) Theoretically that could become a problem if the observer than agrees with my ID, but that’s rarely seemed to happen. If you detect that it’s happened, withdraw your ID from placeholder.
If I see an ob with a placeholder “mule dear” when I’m identifying, and I can see the antler branching or the tail color or anything else that distinguishes a mule deer from a white-tail, I identify it to species. If the placeholder is “ahven” (Finnish for perch, and I have seen one), I probably identify it as a ray-finned fish and put the placeholder in the comment, since I’m no expert at identifying fish that look like typical fish.
I recently saw an observation that had a placeholder and an ID that was retracted. With the ID retracted, the placeholder reappeared.
I think as long as you are watching and withdrawing an ID your not super familiar with then it is fine. Plus it helps put things into their “baskets” for the people who ID more specific things.
I don’t look at unknowns much anymore, but I don’t enter the observer’s placeholder unless it is a species I know. This is connected with my personal idea of responsibility; I don’t think it is necessarily wrong if others chose to handle it differently.
I use the placeholder as a basis for an ID that reflects my knowledge at a level that is specific enough to ensure that it gets seen by a specialist. I include a comment with the placeholder text and, if it is a new user, a note about what happened and what they need to do to make sure their text gets entered as an ID in the future.
If it is something unusual I may @ mention a relevant specialist.
This is my tipical approach now, after IDing further and having to W/D because I knew nothing about a given taxon made me more aware of that. The Comment of the place holder is still important for any following people on the “idenitfy page”