Several topics recently have touched on the idea that we need more people doing IDs. It’s been said that the number of observations is overwhelming the ID process, that expert taxonomists are hard to recruit, and that identifying can be a burdensome chore (a perspective that isn’t likely to help wi…

I would like to see the goals you describe met (recruiting more experts, getting more mid-level users to spend more time ID’ing, and making people more aware of the value of their IDing) but I also think there is a missing piece of the puzzle here, which might be more important than all of these goa…

[image] nathantaylor: helping get the Euphorbias to the correct subgenus/section nathantaylor this is a complete side-step from your suggestion, but in reading it I thought “I wish I had a better feel for the subgenera of Euphorbia (or Carex or Hypericum or…)” and it occurred to me to check w…

I love your suggestions about what identifiers can do to help people learn. I do try to do this some of the time, and if the recipient displays any interest, I do it more. I’d like to hear others comment on whether the current system encourages sloppiness. I’m thinking of a colleague who’s a biol…

[image] nathantaylor: I’ve been considering creating a journal post on my Euphorbia project to see if anyone would be interested in helping get the Euphorbias to the correct subgenus/section in exchange for a targeted training period to helping them learn the groups and many of the common specie…

I guess if anyone is interested in a little Euphorbia training session, send me an iNat message saying that you’re interested, and the discussion can be continued there so as not to distract from the focus of the discussion here. Depending on the amount of interest, I can put together a journal pos…

[image] janetwright: She accepts the first computer suggestion that looks reasonable but always checks back to see how that went, and learns from the correction. Is that sloppy, or just one style of learning? I think this would depend on what “see how that went” means. If someone is just loo…

[image] nathantaylor: I’ve been considering creating a journal post on my Euphorbia project to see if anyone would be interested in helping get the Euphorbias to the correct subgenus/section in exchange for a targeted training period to helping them learn the groups and many of the common specie…

[image] janetwright: She accepts the first computer suggestion that looks reasonable but always checks back to see how that went, and learns from the correction. Is that sloppy, or just one style of learning? I think any action that is followed up by an assessment of it’s effectiveness (with …

A few of the really great identifiers on BugGuide have already made their way over here and I love to see them working on both sites, though I can only imagine how much work they are putting in. My one worry is that I left BG because it got particularly gatekeeper-y several years ago and I’d really …

Recruiting more identifiers

General

alexis_orion May 31, 2019, 5:39am 245

There is another topic with things like this:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/help-me-identify-non-experts-welcome/2915

Topic		Replies	Views
Identify identifiers IDs General identify	126	3650	September 13, 2025
Why not empower recognised experts? General	132	10129	August 3, 2020
General consensus on etiquette regarding recruiting IDs from specific identifiers? General identification , etiquette	47	7346	February 3, 2021
Paper about inaturalist The benefits of contributing to the citizen science platform iNaturalist as an identifier General	67	3968	January 8, 2023
Overzealous Identification General question	113	15450	September 6, 2019

Recruiting more identifiers

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