Should I give up identifying unknowns?

[tiwane]

@spiphany

It’s possible that such observations show up for people who are subscribed to a taxon, but this isn’t a function I have used.

Subscriptions only use the observation’s taxon at the time of upload. So these won’t appear for someone subscribed to a taxon.

@spiphany

I do know that some identifiers manage to keep up with certain taxa to the extent that they have either reviewed all “needs ID” observations and merely need to check every few days to catch any that have newly appeared in the pile (e.g., honeybees in Europe), or they sort oldest first so that the now-no-longer-unknowns end up at the front of their list.

I basically do this for stuff stuck at Arachnids every day:https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?order_by=random&verifiable=true&hrank=class&lrank=class&taxon_id=47119

@clockwood

I started copy pasting something like: “I don’t know what this is, but I’m putting it in this broad category so that people who can ID it can find it when they search that category for things that need ID” and my typical reactions to identifying unknowns have gone from “no s*** it’s a plant, what plant is it!!! if you can’t ID it then leave it alone!!!” to “thank you for your help”

Just a heads-up, you can use a text expander rather than copying and pasting. Much faster!