After reading this thread, I tried a new approach and began doing ID’s in my county from oldest to newest. As you can imagine, a lot of the old observations that still need ID out there are probably “as good as it can be” due to poor quality photos or not enough photos from other angles or showing enough of the plant/tree, etc. Would it be productive to mark such observations as “as good as it can be” or just leave them for others to look at another time?
I’m not an expert in any one taxon, just a mid-level user who has learned a lot from being active on iNat and reinforcing that knowledge when I’m out and about.
I’ve also been using the AI on a lot of these old observations to see if that would help narrow down the ID to species. In some cases, if there are only a handful of choices, so I try looking at the taxon and trying to make a determination, but there are plenty that just have so many options it is tough to decide and an expert is likely needed.