I don’t understand it either, but some people seem not to like it. I’m always grateful for identifications at any level on my observations, as long as they are made with care.
If I see an observer profile that says do not ID my Unknown observations, I’ll probably avoid doing so. I know of one person who does not appreciate higher level IDs, and when I come across observations by that observer I move on.
@gittapap – I often give hints or instructions about how to identify plants or take more informative photos. These comments are not intended as insults in anyway. They are intended to teach. In some cases, the observer welcomes the information.
I’m sorry if I give information you do not want. Please do consider that I mean well, even if you do not need or what this information.
Keep on keeping on! You are absolutely making a great contribution to the goals of the iNat community. There are some great suggestions herein that you may find helpful to improve your overall process, but fundamentally, you’re doing good work! Don’t be dismayed—refer back to this thread whenever someone send you a not-so-nice message, where you’ll be reminded of your virtual support system and some potential types for responding (if you choose to respond at all).
I’ve had this happen a few times lately too, and I was feeling the same way. I suspect that a lot of newer users think that once a post has an ID on it, it’s more likely to get ignored, or less likely to be seen because it’s no longer considered unidentified (I thought so too when I first joined).
But like others have said here, I would stick with it anyway because it can be helpful even it’s not obvious.
For example, last week I added an obvious broad ID to an observation that was left unknown. I was apprehensive to add it because the observer had thousands of observations and IDs and likely knew what the organism was, but nonetheless it had been about a day and it was still at unknown so I ID’ed it.
Once they saw my ID, they were very kind and responded “Oh thank you! I don’t know how I missed that one”. They did know what it was, but had just forgotten to add an ID after uploading it.
That interaction was a much needed reminder that while a few people can be snarky, most people are kind, appreciative and assume good intentions
Provided your identification to a higher taxonomic level is accurate and not wrong, identifying to a higher taxonomic level is obviously helpful.
(I admit, however, that I have sometimes wondered why people identify monotypic groups to higher level. E.g. there is only one species of Ichthyosaura; if you can tell it’s an Ichthyosaura you also automatically know it’s an Ichthyosaura alpestris - so why identify it only as Ichthyosaura?)
I think that is probably lack of confidence, or just not knowing. I often find koalas that have been identified only to family. But there are no other members of the family, just one genus and one species.
I suspect that a large portion of these cases, if not the majority, are from someone starting to type koala into the species bar, and then clicking the top option without paying attention
As a person who identifies unknowns globally, I will say that even if I think the group is monotypic in my area, I don’t feel safe assuming that is true everywhere. Also, jumping to the species level is “riskier” because if the observer just agrees with you, it’s already research grade, but could be wrong, whereas if you leave it at the genus, if they agree with you, an expert will still need to confirm it.
Is there some way to prevent the observations from such a user from popping up in my searches? I tried muting them, but their observations still appear, and I have the memory of a goldfish so I will soon forget and then annoy them a second time by trying to ID something else.
You can mute or block or Not User …
Or pull up a recent batch from that user, and Mark All as Reviewed (which is what I do).
That’s smart!
(Given this, do you still think it would be useful to know who has marked an observation as reviewed?)
Useful would be if I could see
Mr Spider has looked at this (it won’t matter to me why he didn’t add an ID, not my business)
But then I need not nag him to look at it (again!) please?
So why not let him decide? Just because he marked it as reviewed at one point in time doesn’t mean he may not be willing to look at it again. (I mean, just because someone has ID’d an observation doesn’t mean they may not revise that ID later – why should “reviewed” be any different?)
If you mark observations as reviewed without looking at them just because you it suits you, why not consider that other users might also use “reviewed” in their own particular ways that have nothing do to with whether they might consider IDing it in the future? Why assume it expresses a desire to “never see this observation ever again” rather than “don’t show me this observation right now because I want to remove it from the particular set I am currently working on”?
I admit that on my own observations, I am sometimes guilty of that, because I use CV quite a lot for things I don’t understand - and if it’s pretty sure with something that looks reasonable, I’ll take it without investigating whether the genus isn’t monotypic.
I wouldn’t obviously go around and just putting CV IDs on other’s observations without my own insight, but I am pretty sure there are people who do just that.
But it is easy for someone to do a taxon sweep - whether that is their taxon, or because it came up as a target. We did ginkgo.
Is there a way to just look at unknowns in the app? I haven’t yet seen a way to select ‘life’ without seeing all the observations that are identified below life as well. I basically only use my phone but I wouldn’t mind jumping into this work.
I have not figured out how to do this on the app, but hopefully someone here will know how!
There’s no harm in identifying unknowns! I do it too, and I tend to make mistakes. But it’s pretty helpful, and those who say otherwise… er… idk about them. If you’re not sure about the species, but know what kind of animal it is (for example ‘deer’ or ‘moth’) then id to that level. It might narrow the species down, and draw attention to the observation. Plus it’s good experience too.
If its Unknown, and you can ID it to any level that is helpful! I have gotten a few snarky comments on some IDs, I ignore them rather than replying with “Well if you are such an expert fix my ID!” 
