I once posted an image taken by my phone of the image on my camera screen because the camera didn’t have wifi and I was in the field. A guy gave me grief and I replied “You’re no fun - this is not social media, and I’m posting to show people what I saw, not to …etc” Then a moderator told us both off and deleted both posts. I was surprised. People can be rude but there must be a way to either report them or tell them to not be rude without it being considered rude.
It seems that many of the replies here are about how to live with trolls. I’d say report them or tell them off. It can be done without being rude. They have no right to tell you not to ID someone else’s observation - it’s how iNat works, is it not?
I prefer a third option - just ignore them.
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Did you upload the original photo later?
It is hard to ID from a back of screen photo of your camera.
Is that the ‘grief’ you got ?
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I can ignore people if that’s what is best. I just sometimes wonder if my (admittedly often flawed) attempts at ID are causing more harm than good. I wonder if there is a scenario where that is true and I should listen rather than ignoring.
I think the official guidelines are to flag (if rude), then ignore.
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You should not give up. It’s because people like you that i can learn more about nature in general. Even if just a family, a superfamily, a order etc… Alredy it’s relly helpfull, not only to learn more, but also to give a north.
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Do you have auto-upload turned off in the app? You can then choose when you want to upload your observations, rather than them getting auto-uploaded as soon as you have internet.
You could also put a comment on your profile that you don’t want IDs on Unknowns, which some regular identifiers will take note of (but many will not see)
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Pretty sure I’d be unable to resist replying with something like:
“If you know it is a fungus, you ought to ID it as a fungus :) Cheers.”
And then straight up ignoring anything after that.
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I have a hunch that I know who you mean. I don’t mess with that one either.
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Only.
If your ID was wrong.
And you ignored notifications as the ID moved.
Ultimately, even if your ID is wrong, and stays wrong - 3 against 1 will take it to RG.
The one who loses, is the one who chooses not to learn from their mistakes. That is the most rewarding part of IDing on iNat. Yesterday I tripped over fireflies - there are larvae (tick - look like larvae, can be annotated as such) But there are also ‘larviform adult females’ - I will not be annotating in future.
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I guess what people like that with instructional comments are trying to do is help user at least get their observations out of unknown so that they can be identified.
I think it’s exciting especially for kids to know what exactly they are observing and even if they don’t or can’t ID it they can always mark them as life or plants or animals that way someone else can ID it for them 
I have a 10 year old and he has his own account and he loves posting observations and later finding out what they were.
Some people I’m sure can be snarky but most people just want to help.
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I agree that most people want to help! I love this site and love the process of learning. I think there should be room to make (and correct) mistakes as we learn.
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Give a finger and people want entire hand. Me personally, I would be very happy if someone identified more precise taxon
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If the comments are just advice on how to ID a particular organism, the commenter is trying to help. Such a comment should not be taken as “snarky,” especially if it conveys only facts.
I once got called “condescending” (in a very condescending way) for adding a correct genus-level ID with a note that the taxon the observer chose was not found on that continent (“Genus XXXX is not found in North America”). There was absolutely nothing emotional or judgmental about my statement; it was just a fact, and I was adding it to show why I disagreed with the OP’s ID. But that unkind comment rankled for days.
The fundamental thing is, if no explicitly insulting language is used, assume good intent.
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This and also sometimes assume differing levels of language capability. (My English may be better or worse than your English may be better or worse than his or her English, etc.)
Lengthy comments on how identify a species, and how not to are actually wonderful gifts from Identifiers. It may help to read them as informational packets. (They do not know you and you do not know them, so they cannot possibly be personal.)
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Sometimes identifying unknowns to help them get identified quickly doesn’t actually work. This observation came up in my notifications today:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/50443077
I added “Lizards” to it 4 years ago, and someone has just IDed it to species. I have no idea why it sat unloved for 4 years, but perhaps it is not surprising that the poor observer never did another observation!
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True, sometimes things move quickly after the initial ID, but often they don’t. I spent some time lately adding IDs to stuff that’s been sitting in Plantae for 5+ years. It seems to depend a lot on the workflow of identifiers for the region.
I appreciate having pools of “Plantae” or “Tracheophytes” or “Dicots” to look through as a follow-up once I’ve gone through my local “unknowns” to pick out what I can ID further. Once you get tired of ID’ing unknowns or the snarky comments that may come with that, you may be able to find some more easy-to-refine IDs by limiting to kingdom, phylum etc. levels in the identify window.
Just noting that you can use a text expander to quickly include basic text that explains why you are adding your ID. Much better than copying and pasting text.
Remember that IDs are often like a relay race, you can take the baton as far as you can and oftentimes someone else will find the baton where you left it and take it further. Identifying “unknown” observations is helpful, and you can mitigate poor reactions with just a little text.
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Yeah this is the problem with the Internet. We can’t infer intention or tone unless there are emojis accompanying the comment or exclamation marks or all caps, unfortunately people can sometimes be easily offended and think the other person’s being mean or condescending because they don’t like what they said.
I agree with you we shouldn’t assume anything and be thankful for any help we get.
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I still don’t understand how getting coarse identifications on unknowns hurts the workflow of anyone who uploads unknowns to ID them later. The observation is still “needs ID”, so where is the harm?
I also disagree with the suggestions to state “do not ID my observations” in the profile. Inaturalist is NOT your personal diary and the state of an observation is not solely in the “jurisdiction” of the observer. I do not ID often (because I find it extremely taxing on my decision making brain circuitry), but when I do, it’s generally because I find an out-of-place species in an area I care about and I do not want to have the species list being wrong.
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