Should I give up identifying unknowns?

True! Although honestly that would be a pretty good comeback… lol.

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I will try. Thank you. :)

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I agree that folks should assume good intent by default. That being said, there are many cultural nuances to what will and won’t read as “insulting.”

In education especially, there’s a delicate balance between overestimating and underestimating knowledge. With no further context or social cues, being told a statement of fact is often understood as “you obviously didn’t know this” or “you should have known this.” This is more likely to trigger embarrassment and defensiveness, especially among beginners or when the comment is in a public forum.

Personally, I try to compensate for this by proactively communicating that I’m assuming good intent on the learner’s part as well. Instead of “This is wrong because xyz,” I try to frame it as “I understand how you got this answer. Here’s the part that you might have missed.”

Human communication, after all, is a science in and of itself :)

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Thanks for the link - that’s an interesting paper, especially for anyone involved in community science projects.

I used to try to “cushion” factual statements with an intro like “Counterintuitively…” or “This would seem to be the logical choice, but…”, but that seemed to provoke more negative responses. It’s interesting that I’ve had the least friction when I use completely telegraphic style (e.g. "pronotum relatively broad; elytra with raised carina). Just nothing to get mad about there, I guess!

The user who called me condescending also routinely makes snarky comments to anyone adding a higher-level ID, even when it’s an agreeing one, and is hostile to any and all disagreeing IDs. They’ve definitely made my “don’t bother” list–which is extremely short, a testament to what a nice community iNat is, in general!

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Thank you for all the thought you put into your careful replies! It’s very kind of you to think of how your words will be received.

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We live a world where some people are pedantic gatekeepers who condemn anyone for not being as fanatically dedicated to their chosen hobby as they are.

Ignore these people.

Hobbies are for having FUN. No one is paying you on here, so you are not a Professional. You are giving your time and energy to offer FREE information. Tell anyone who wants to complain about the quality of the FREE information you are submitting to go pound sand.

JMHO

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Yes, I should have a shortcut to this chat on standby. :)

Don’t stop identifying. Most people appreciate coarse IDs. Try to ignore those that don’t. Currently, many people are celebrating Christmas and New Year. Some identifiers have vacation and more time for IDs and in my experience there is a little increase in the amount of IDs. Of course IDs vary, some go through unknowns, some are searching for mavericks, there are even some that just add an additional ID to research and casual grade observation, etc. I do understand that some people then get annoyed by an increase of notifications, but neither getting IDs nor notifications is a good reason to lose temper.

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I have not read each and every comment but to add what I hope is a different perspective: some new users probably expect to get a ‘photo match’ id as is possible with Google Lens - these are the ones that will be surprised and probably disappointed to see ‘Mammal’ as the id: it’s easier to excuse a less polite comment in that light.

Without helpful comments on what to take a photo of and even hints how to do it and explanations on what the id is based on, links to resources, I wouldn’t learned a fraction what I know today. I needed Google for a while just to understand the terms used.

I started adding some observations that I do not want identified, simply because they are incomplete. I added to the comments “Placeholder. More photos coming”.

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Unfortunately some reviewers don’t see or heed comments, and sometimes they will ID while you’re still editing your submission. Especially with bird records.

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@lrussoutk I only added about 20k IDs so far and didn’t yet get angry comments, maybe because I concentrate on old observations.
My approch is to start with something like https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=unknown&order=asc&photos=true&created_on=2023-06-09&createdDateType=exact

(order=asc helps everywhere I think)

I pick the few things on the page that I can ID coarsely), when done I click “mark all as reviewed” to never see the rest again (mostly weeds and trees - there are IDers whose workflow is disturbed by someone else IDing unknown weeds as “plants” and I’m too lazy to look if I’m in their region), then press Ctrl-r to get the next batch. Once that day is done, I increment the date (this happens once every few weeks).

Before I start working I click on the red bubble in the top right corner next to my profile image and middle-click all items in the menu that appears. With each of the new pages, I look for disagreements (in all cases except one so far I had been wrong) and withdraw my error. If my ID has been refined, I unfollow the observation.
Then I go to the observations of the observer of the item because that page usually has a much higher density of unknowns than the generic URL I mentioned above, and work there (again order=asc, and check the box for “Casual”, and ignore very recent observations).

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IT’s so helpful! We need more people willing to haul unknowns out of the pile and into the right categories!

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I saw https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/260353636 a few days ago and identified it as a cockroach. Soon after, someone who IDs lots of cockroaches came by and identified it more specifically.

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