I suspect workflow differs greatly among identifiers. I usually start with a species with which I am familiar and work on attempting to confirm or disconfirm the species for a Needs ID. I often keep RG visible - I sometimes see a misidentified RG and will include a comment when I do offer an alternate identification. If I finish the species review, then I move up to the Genus level and look to see if any of that species is present at the Genus level. I then back on up to family or higher, adding in a place filter if there are too many to review at a higher level. I also sometimes scan the unknown at the Plantae level just to see what is out there at that level. Thus I start lower and move up. For my approach, having the user identify the plant to as specific a level as possible is beneficial. Leaving something that is obviously a plant at the completely unknown living organism level means I am not likely to see it: I have the plant filter on when looking at unknowns. But I may be alone in my approach.
I concur. No idea how to do this. And whatever system is used should reflect identifications which met with community agreement. Otherwise random identifications to run up an “identification score” is a risk. If pressed for ideas, perhaps little badges that display on the lower corner of profile picture. Or colored dots that change at specific thresholds (100 IDs, 1000 IDs, 10000 IDs,…)? Or a tagline that posts when one IDs along the lines of “identifier”, “regular identifier”, “top identifier” etc. for increasing numbers of identifications made.
I concur, but my guess is that the curators are already overloaded. Still, there should be some effort made to include identification information that helps key out similar species, certainly in the plants. Sure, some determinations may not be photographable, but where there are differences, these should be noted. In my own head I am thinking of how can one distinguish between Spathoglottis plicata and Spathoglottis unguiculata. The taxa pages do not appear to include the useful information that while S. plicata has a somewhat global distribution while S. unguiculata is considered to have a more limited range in a few islands of the southwest Pacific. This and other distinguishing morphological characteristics might help observers as they learn to identify and thus aid in recruiting more identifiers.
When I see that Canada has reached a million observations and that there are seven million needing identification, there is the suggestion that identifications are unable to keep pace with observations. One comment on another thread noted that Project Noah may have run into identifier issues, and they are only working with a total of 825K observations while iNaturalist is working with something on the order of over 18 million observations. Finding ways to recruit more identifiers seems to be potentially a critical need for the health of the iNaturalist ecosystem. The “You know you’re seriously into iNat when…” is now at 100 responses focused on observations and none on the joy of identification, a hundred-to-nothing does not seem to be a promising sign.