Keep fighting the good fight. There will always be that handful of people who don’t know how the site works who get worked up about broad IDs being added, but most people appreciate the help. I get those sometimes too. Comments like “that’s hardly helpful” and “yes, I know that obviously, but what kind?” speak to some new users’ lack of understanding of the platform rather than anything wrong that you’re doing. Very few identifiers who specialize in a particular taxon are scrolling through the tens of thousands of “unknowns” looking for the handful of things they can identify- a course sort to at least separate the fungus from the bugs from the conifers is vital to getting finer IDs eventually.
I spend most of my time identifying Lepidoptera that are stuck at Order, and I always see the same few identifier names who’ve added “Order Lepidoptera” to hundreds of previously “Unknown” observations. I can usually take them down further to family or species, but I never would have even seen them if those other identifiers hadn’t popped the Lepidoptera ID on them. So they’re every bit as valuable to the ID process as the people refining the ID later.
Hey, I even get that when identifying in the Genus that I know. I send something back or just agree on Genus for their blurry/10 ft away photo, and occasionally people give the “if you’re not an expert, don’t put an ID” line. There are going to be people who put minimal effort into their observations, but expect maximum effort from you.
On the other hand, I have had people thank me and ask what they could improve for next time.
Without people identifying the Unknowns and higher taxa, the specialists will miss a lot. Please continue to identify Unknowns.
I can only echo all the others before me: keep doing what you are doing. I was in exactly in the same spot as you not so long ago: feeling desillusioned and dejected by IDing unknown, with exactly the same comments and the feeling I was doing “wrong” and being “unhelpful”. Others in the forum encouraged me to start going at the unknowns again.
My take away then and now is now that every little bit helps and is direly needed when looking at the volume of new observations coming in each year. As long as you conform to the general rules set by iNat staff, it is not your duty to keep to other people’s expectations or workflows, be they either “experts” or new users, but use the workflow that works for you and is within your comfort zone in identifying.
My philosophy now concerning identifying and observations (where you can also get “helpful” comments like “why didn’t you do/photograph/… xx??Isn’t it obvious that it won’t get identified further than that without it??..”) is that I won’t care about other people’s expectations or workflows as long as I don’t break the general iNat rules and just putter away in my own little corner. You will never make everybody happy.
So don’t get discouraged by those voices- as you can see so many others are in the same boat as you. Just keep plugging on one observation at a time.
Don’t stop! I regularly identify unknowns here, or even records that are floating around at Class or Order level, and from time to time I receive some harsh or hateful comments (some times even from other curators). I the beginning I used to get realy offended and it made me stop identifying for a while. But they are the absolute minority here on iNat, and it helps that after I learned more on how the site works I started flagging those comments as inappopriate behavior and against the guidelines of the site. This reduced even more those intances for me. So don’t give up because there are a handful of people out there that are stressed by (insert reason here). You are doing a great contribution to iNat!
I’m currently only identifying unknowns. I rarely get pushback, but I also mostly spend my time on unknowns that are not new. I’m currently working on my state’s unknowns from the year 2023. It feels satisfying to me to “clean up” data, and occasionally I find some really rare or interesting gems languishing there.
Wow, thanks everyone! I didn’t expect so many responses. I have read them all and am encouraged by them. I do try to ID older observations, which is a common recommendation here, although a lot of the really old observations I can’t identify because I can’t always tell what the photo is of. I went through a lot of those pages of the oldest observations and found I couldn’t do much there, so my policy is generally observations that were posted at least a month ago (but sometimes I cheat and look at newer ones).
You could see if there are patterns, e.g. you are getting push-back primarily in certain locations or from just certain users. Excluding their observations like some have suggested above may be a solution.
I think everyone has their own idea about how iNat is supposed to work, but agree that:
Some people just won’t be satisfied no matter what you do, and feedback often will be contradictory. I.e. as a teacher, I receive a lot of contradictory feedback in the end-of-year student evaluations. Some students want me to do A but hate B, while others want B and hate A. You can never please everyone, so I just go with what makes the most sense for me. There’s never a “one fits all” solution.
I’ve seen that, too, even if I only put a non-disagreeing genus ID on something, basically as a heads-up that it could be this but I don’t feel confident confirming it to RG because there’s a chance it could also be that. I would think that this is information that adds some expertise to the discussion by pointing out that there are other options to consider but some people react negatively to anything that is not confirming their species suggestion.
Your work is very productive! I’d argue those kinds of comments are what is not at all productive.
In most circumstances, broadly IDing unknowns is very helpful to everyone.
- It puts the observation in front of specialists and helps move it to RG faster
- It’s IMO the best way to learn about different taxa and become better at IDing
- It helps the observer learn too. If they identify a hymenopteran as “insecta” and you move it to “hymenoptera”, chances are the observer will ID the next hymenopteran as “hymenoptera”
If they are at least polite, explain to them that broad IDs help move the observation on. Otherwise: Ignore these people. Or stop IDing for them… If they don’t want broad identifications, they should have made more effort IDing their observations themselves. The only one being unhelpful in this situation is the observer writing their comment. (I once got a really sarcastic “I asked which type of mouse it was. I knew it was a mouse”. It would have taken that person less effort to not write that comment… I have no clue why they did.)
I agree with botswanabugs.
ID’ing to the courser level helps bring it to the attention of experts who do not necessarily have time to search through the unknowns.
I also ignore comments like that.
I also often refine the filter to show ascending order so that I get the stuff that has been around for a while.
It is very helpful! I try to do it also and get the same responses every now and then. I always explain that it is helpful to identify the thing as far as you can and that it makes it more difficult to make use of the observations if they are marked “Unknown”. If I notice that there is one user that has 10 or 15 observations that are unmarked I will leave a comment on one of their observations explaining this and send them a direct message with a more in depth explanation. Both of these are usually pre-written and slightly altered for each specific individual’s observations. I’ve heard people suggest that an identification should be required to upload an observation, but the staff don’t seem to be in favor of it based on what I’ve read.
If one doesn’t have any experience with iNat, one might approach it the same way as other social media like Facebook, where uploading a photo with a comment like “Anyone know what this is?” would be a normal way of accessing the hive mind. And from this perspective, if your friends respond by telling you “it’s a plant/insect/bird/mouse”, you might think that they were being smartass or making fun of you instead of being helpful. Because you don’t realize that there are hundreds of thousands of observations on iNat and people find them by searching for their taxa of interest so you need to provide an ID even if it seems obvious.
hence this gem from the memes thread:
I had one person send me a message which was titled: “Don’t ID birds on my post”. The entire body of the message was, “At least look at what they are first. Weird”.
Because I also ID a lot of Unknowns, I have no idea what in particular I did to upset this user, but I suspect I just added “Birds” to some observation of theirs with no ID, where I didn’t recognise the bird.
It is easy to be discouraged by things like this. But don’t let the occasional unpleasant person get you down. I bet their bird got IDed quickly once I made it a “bird”!
I saw that on an ID John Ascher added and the person who posted the observation said he was wrong. It was an obvious ID too, she was totally wrong. I just had to chuckle.
I am starting to think there should be more policing of users’ behavior if this is now common occurrence.
As the site it is now, the main resources in short supply is … identifiers! So we should really treat anyone who does any kind of honest improvement of IDs as well as we can. I mean if course, everyone should be welcome here - but if we lose a few random users who just came for an ID, it’s much less of a problem than if we lose identifiers.
I appreciate anyone who identifies unknowns. I have gotten some feecbacks, from those who identify and they end ub being very snarky and instructive on how not to use iNaturalist and what not to do. I use iNat to learn. I hate social media and I do not comment. I ended up deleting the entire observations for their lengthy comments on how identify a species, and how not to. I felt discouraged and mistreated. You see, I use the app “on the go” and I collect observations even if I do not have much time, and hope to come back and do more identification. So maybe there could be a setting that allows this type of observations. With respect to the intent of this app, one can list a multitude of good reasons from research to just simply learning. I feel, that snarky feedbacks, instructing me where to go and what not to do is from those observers who think the use as data collection, and performance. I would like to emphasize dicovery and exploration. If we have kids use the app they will likely submit everything under Mom’s account, So before anyone gives lengthy comment do not assume. Or, just avoid commenting. There are millions of reasons why a species marked unknown. Once in a while I go back and revisit. So, this is what I see. Once I am more confident, I will ID but I am not there just yet.
There is an open request for draft mode - which would suit your workflow.
Not long ago, I IDed something as Fabaceae because I saw pods. Someone else came along and IDed it as some genus in Brassicaceae. I changed my ID to Brassicaceae, which also has pods, but with a septum in the middle.
This is so true (I am also a teacher and struggle with mixed or contradictory feedback from students)
Any Chironomids (a type of fly) that are stuck as unknown I will literally never see to be able to ID them. I will only see them if they get chucked down the taxonomic rungs by people who ID unknowns.