Several of my observations remain without ID after more than a year. What is the typical rate of positive IDs per year? How do I know whether the problem is my photos, a lack of interest, or a lack of knowledge?
variations of this question get asked every so often in the forum. here’s on such previous thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/do-older-unidentified-observations-get-buried-and-less-likely-to-get-attention/59633.
There aren’t that a lot of identifiers compared to the number of observers of iNaturalist. You’re observing a lot of plants, which in my experience have relatively low ID rates. You’re also observing in Europe, which has fewer users than North America (but more than most other places). While it might not get your observations to research grade faster, one thing you can do to help reduce the backlog of unverified observations is to identify observations for others.
My oldest Needs ID observations are 8 years old at this point. Simple answer is lots of people asking for IDs and not enough people offering them.
Currently sitting at 15,284 out of 28,579 observations needing ID. Moths and plants are the bulk of them, birds are cleared at a rate near 90%. It really depends on what you look at and where you look at it. I’m always happy when someone lends me an ID and I’m equally happy when I ID it myself.
I looked at all of your observations that are still Needs ID after more than a year. Of the 16, three are due to a disagreement about the taxonomy (not the ID), 3 are DYCs (damn yellow composites) which are very hard to ID, and several of them are probably just plants that are hard to ID to species from single photos. Generally, animals are IDed faster on iNat than plants (and birds are IDed faster than all other types of animals). It looks like your photos are good quality, but it might help to take photos of different parts of the plants to help with ID, like the flowers and the leaves, especially for anything that looks like a dandelion or daisy/aster or other semi-generic flower. The level of interest in such flowers is also inevitably going to be low. Since all IDing is done by volunteers, it’s just an unfortunate fact that some observations never get much attention.
In my experience it is also often rather idiosyncratic which observations get looked at quickly or by multiple people and which ones don’t. It doesn’t necessarily depend on the quality of the observation per se, though good observations are obviously more likely to get ID’d than really poor quality ones.
IDers all have slightly different workflows, and while this ensures that a large portion of observations get looked at, it isn’t systematic, which means that sometimes things just get missed. It may be as simple as whether an observation happens to be at the top of the pile instead of the bottom when a user with relevant expertise is looking at a particular taxon; or whether there happens to be a user who looks at observations in your state (but not observations made a few km across the border) or any number of other factors.
Social factors often also do play a role, for better or for worse. If you consistently upload high-quality observations, you are likely to attract followers, some of whom will look at and ID your observations because they find them enjoyable and interesting. If you help ID observations or contribute in other ways at whatever level your skills allow, people tend to appreciate that you are giving back to the community and may be more likely to spend time on your observations (note that I am not advocating IDing merely as a transactional strategy with the expectation that if you provide IDs for others you deserve IDs in return – it is more of an intangible benefit in the sense that you are interacting in a positive way with others and this creates good feeling and strengthens community ties).
25% of IDs are made by 130 users. Think about that …
Until 10 May identifiers are focused on CNC26. For Greece there are only 1.3K obs. For your preferred orchids there are only 4 obs waiting
Please help us with CNC IDs either by location or the orchid family.
You have only 53 observations that need ID. I have 3900 and don’t worry about it.
Any observation I care about, I find the key and try to identify myself (I don’t have any training in botany). If nothing else, I notice what are the features the key is asking so I know for next time what photos and measurements I need to take.
If I don’t know what a plant is, I take photos of the whole plant, flowers at different angles, fruit, leaves and stems; noting scent and anything unusual.
It can depend on what you have in your observations. I notice that my birds get identified almost as soon as I get them up into iNat. But, other things can sit for awhile.
Common plants and insects get indentified quickly. Less common plants and insects sit.
I do notice that, in wintertime (in the northern hemisphere), a lot more things from the past year get identified because people can’t go out as much and because there isn’t as much variety out there to find compared to the warmer weather. Insects are a prime example of this. They explode in numbers in spring, summer and fall.
I am still an inaturalist novice and have wondered also why so many of my observations were not reaching research grade. This forum has answered a lot of my questions so thank you. But i wish to ask a further question. As a lot of my photos are of moths i have been wondering if they are not reaching research grade is it still worthwhile posting them?
Yes - most definitely worth it. We have new identifiers / taxon specialists coming to iNat. Or someone doing a taxon sweep. It may take years, or minutes if they were birds ;~) Some may never reach RG or sp - but the obs are still interesting and useful. No ID on iNat is carved in stone. That RG at sp may revert to Needs ID at Genus, when a new ID is added. Or the taxonomy changes.
Thanks so much Diana. In that case i will keep photographing 
absolutely! unless all the moth photos are blurs in flight or vaguely moth-shaped figures in the distance, that is…
there are a lot of under-IDed moths on iNat - and a lot less moth ID experts! one thing that may help your moth observations get more traction is to add Annotations, if you don’t already. if the moth has wings, its Life Stage is Adult - and a caterpillar is Larva. some identifiers will add a life stage to their search query, for instance if they only want to see adult moths without having to sift through a bunch of caterpillars (or vice versa).
welcome to iNat!
Yes, do keep posting, as others have urged!
Last night while I was sleeping, someone doing a taxon sweep IDed a couple of my old moth observations, and another IDer caught an old fly observation.
I enjoy getting notifications for old observations that I don’t even remember having posted.
And as an identifier (of plants) I enjoy IDing observations that are 8, 10 or more years old, especially if they’ve been stuck at “Disagreement” for years.
iNat has a webinar coming up to ID arthropods. If you register you can watch later in your own time. Which is what I will do. We need identifiers, more identifiers, more iNatters to identify. More 
I do most of my mothing in Central and South America so what I say applies to that, your locale may be different.
Over the last year, there has been an influx of people both observing AND identifying moths. In some cases, entire genera have been reviewed and identified. But with 10,000 recorded species in Costa Rica alone, it is not a fast process. I find identifying moths to be very time consuming as there are often minute difference between species. By adding your observations, you help build a database large enough to make the differences more apparent when viewed in scale.
I am very surprised that every one of my observations is not identified! And when I am unable to ID my observation, after making a guess, I note that I am not sure of the identification and that help would be appreciated.
Thank you so much everybody, your replies have spurred me on.
Apologies for the late reply. I didn’t realise your replies were sitting there until know. Told you I was new​
IDs depend on a lot of elements:
- Where you are observing and who is qualified in that geographical area to ID what you are photographing.
- Your photos–unless it’s an easy ID, you’re probably going to need multiple photos from different angles. What needs to be in the shot depends on what you are observing. (If you observe a lot of plants, for example, there are a lot of helpful tips on the forum for the sort of pics you need.) Sometimes, for birds, frogs, insects, etc., you need a call or song–not a photo.
- Some things are hard to ID from photos alone. You may not get to research grade on those no matter how decent the photos or how many photos.
Honestly, a lot of this is photograph and learn in my opinion. I take photos, and then some kind expert let’s me know what I could do to improve and to get an accurate ID–and sometimes, there’s nothing more I can do. But, even if your observation doesn’t get identified to species, you still learn as you go, and sometimes, you can start identifying some of the species you love. I find that very satisfying because it means I’m getting better. Anyway, hang in there–it’s more about the journey, I think, than the destination.