From some comments and discussions I’ve read, I have noticed that: Some identifiers dislike being tagged, as it makes them feel like they are performing a robotic task. Many observations, even of very common species, remain unidentified for years. Some identifiers do not use or are unaware of the …

This is a great idea. Most of the time I can find access to the stuff without paying though. I don’t use it anymore, but I remember the discord for iNat did stuff like this. They used users who already had access to provide the links for the people who need access to the papers. A great idea iNat co…

I’ve never paid for a PDF of a research paper. One can almost always get it by emailing the author. I also have obtained papers through ResearchGate if the author has posted their paper, or you can request it through that platform. Books are another matter, however.

Yeah between ResearchGate, JSTOR, and open source publishers you can get like 80% of papers. Beyond that you need luck with asking academic friends or friendly authors. But yes there is quite a bit of info in books that’s nearly impossible to access, either because they’re old and out of print (and …

[image] spiphany: I’d actually prefer that there not be an agree button on the thumbnail view at all. Let’s not make the identification process slower! A lot of commonly posted species really can be ID’d from the thumbnail photo. (I agree that IDing from thumbnails makes me miss the problem…

[image] sedgequeen: I don’t want such a feature. I scan through a page of observations to ID and use the Review button to make observations go away (from me). Such a change would mix me up, for quite a while. What I’m saying wouldn’t effect this at all. It would simply be an option at the top…

[image] cs16-levi: I need to type up the name on every single observation everytime I get to one even though I shouldn’t have to review them like that because they are all incorrect You don’t have to type the name every time though. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/announcing-the-universal-me…

Generally speaking I do not think I readily approve anything that encourages bad actors or “lazy” identification. Having any kind of gamification or incentive can easily create this. Would the benefit of potentially encouraging more identifications outweigh this expected negative?

OH MY GOSH THAT IS A LIFE SAVER. I can go from 20 every 30 minutes to 200! Thank you so much good sir.

I’m not a curator, but I’m pretty sure there are curation tools for handling “every single case of Species A in Area Y should now be Species B”. Maybe put a flag on the taxon and ask the person who created it if they can shift them using the curation tools?

[image] scottdwright: [image] graysquirrel: there’s already a huge problem with mis-identified RG observations, Questions: is this a huge problem? Or has this been quantified in any way? I’ll give an example. [image] According to the latest publications, Ptychostomum torquescens is …

Should There Be More Reward Mechanisms for Identifiers?

General

paul_dennehy March 18, 2025, 7:01pm 69

You don’t have to type the name every time though.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/announcing-the-universal-metadata-tool-beta/53182

This will change your life. lol

What iNat function, feature, use or aspect do you wish you had learned earlier?

Topic		Replies	Views
The Pleasure of Identifying General	24	1052	July 21, 2024
Identify identifiers IDs General identify	126	3647	September 13, 2025
Paper about inaturalist The benefits of contributing to the citizen science platform iNaturalist as an identifier General	67	3967	January 8, 2023
Rampant guessing of IDs General	135	9097	July 21, 2021
Downsides of more identifiers? General identification	91	2671	July 11, 2026

Should There Be More Reward Mechanisms for Identifiers?

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