Thank you, makes more sense now 
Well, that is something IDers can do.
Last year indian/asian Argiope were a huuuge mess and CV was pretty unreliable due to that situation.. some IDers cleaned up all those wrong RG observations and it was so satisfying to see how CV seemed to react almost in real time and does a quite good job on those Argiope suggestions now
Well, for special identifications, an occasional thank you is appreciated. 
When I identify something that hasn’t been on iNaturalist before, it makes me very happy, probably more than the discoverer. It’s also great every time I learn something new. I love exchanging ideas with other hardcore nature enthusiasts about interesting species with uncertain IDs. That’s actually reward enough to keep me going.
I’m unemployed because I have depression and some comorbidities. That’s why I’m poor. Nevertheless, I use my time every day to learn new things and help others, but I would really appreciate the opportunity to access scientific papers that are normally behind a paywall.
Unfortunately, I can’t afford that luxury, although it’s essential for some identifications and also for my curatorial work. Fortunately, many papers are already available for free, for example, on ResearchGate. Sometimes I have thankfully received paid articles for free, for example from the authors themselves.
Perhaps one could somehow make papers generally available to curators for free. That would be absolutely fantastic. Maybe this could also attract new, productive curators, because I’m always struck by how much work there is to be done, but a lot of it just gets left undone…
Another thing would certainly please me and many other identifiers: I regularly spend far too much time trying to manually mark observations of cultivated plants or domestic animals as cultivated. It’s not only time-consuming, it’s actually just annoying. I don’t want to offend anyone and have finally uploaded a few such observations myself (all marked), but in reality, this is mostly data garbage that unnecessarily takes up storage space and resources.
We live in strange times. We humans are responsible for the largest mass extinction in millions of years, but at the same time, we live in the age of discovery! New species are discovered and described every day, and these are by no means just inconspicuous creatures that can easily be overlooked or confused. Many species are discovered in Southeast Asia and South America, for example. Every now and then, however, there are completely unexpected discoveries in otherwise well-studied habitats, such as the recently discovered entirely new genera Ovicula (North America) and Petrolamium (Europe):
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1608701-Ovicula-biradiata
https://novataxa.blogspot.com/2025/03/petrolamium.html
Ultimately, the greatest reward for me as a curator and identifier is to contribute to the timely discovery of new, little-known, or rare species and their long-term protection and conservation. Not for the sake of humanity, but because these creatures are all part of this wonderful planet and have a right to exist!
It’s important to me that the biodiversity data on iNaturalist is permanently preserved and secure. I want the data to outlive me and perhaps still be useful in the distant future. I’m very concerned about this at the moment, given the current administration in the USA…
The CV, like any computational tool, is only as good as the data it is given.
I’m glad that your spider clean-up efforts have a positive effect on the CV!
Unfortunately, with bees, it seems like each CV update only means that it is making different wrong suggestions than the ones it did before. It is incredibly frustrating, precisely because my efforts seem to have very little effect – I can correct a hundred IDs today and next month I will still be doing the same thing because the proportion of wrong IDs will not have noticeably decreased.
The wrong CV suggestions are exacerbated by user error (e.g. the first broader CV suggestion is more likely to be correct but users will often pick something wrong from the more specific lower-confidence suggestions instead), but here, too, there is the problem that if I educate one user about why they should be cautious about using the CV suggestions for bees or even give them pointers on general bee identification, next week another new user will come along and I have to do it all over again. And it seems to be increasingly common to get users who are using iNat for some pollinator project and manage to upload a few hundred observations with bad CV IDs before they even see the feedback from IDers asking them to crop their photos, put all photos of the same individual in a single observation, be critical of the CV suggestions, etc.
So changes to the CV training that would make it better at handling difficult taxa would be at the top of my list of things that would make IDing a more rewarding experience. As would better onboarding for users to help them make better observations and use the CV suggestions in a more conscious, thoughtful manner.
How do you always manage to find these situations? 
Do you have a list of id projects to work on? I’d be happy to help, right now I confined to Latrodectus.
The same way I found my current project - I got tagged by a fellow IDer and got stuck when I realized what a complete mess I was sucked into 
.. and that with 2 or 3 likeminded IDers it was possible to fix it
10 posts were merged into an existing topic: Recommendations on improving the AI algorithm?
So that’s why all my observations are still stuck at Lecanoromycetes… :(
As it is currently, I’m more than happy with an ID at family- or genus-level. And in Europe there are still a few very dedicated and active IDers.
I’ve got a bunch more coming, most of which are probably also impossible to ID from photos alone. But I just don’t have access to the required chemicals or a microscope when I find cool new lichens and I don’t find cool new lichens in the places where I have a microscope or chemicals…
Do you have any I could help on and a reference of where to begin? Also, how many pages do you do per-day?
Hey folks, just a reminder to keep posts here on the topic of “Should There Be More Reward Mechanisms for Identifiers?” Side conversations about specific identification projects, details about possible improvements to functionality, etc., should be taken to separate topics or private messages to help keep this topic on track. Thanks!
If we’re restricting conversation to the question in the OP, well, @bouteloua answered that in the third reply, quoting an official statement that gamification feature requests will not be considered. Others have stated that badges and other empty gestures of thanks (automated emails, perhaps) are not desired by identifiers.
So what reward mechanisms might be desired by identifiers? How about all of the feature requests and improvements mentioned in those side conversations, that might actually make the identification process easier and more productive?
We identifiers are at a disadvantage when feature requests are being considered. Changes that directly impact observers affect millions of people, while there are only a few thousand of us who are active identifiers. Perhaps those feature requests can be weighted to take into account the millions of observers we are indirectly helping?
Totally agree! I’ve lost track of how many outstanding feature requests (and pre-request discussions) there are that would make life easier for identifiers (and curators). For that matter there are very few areas of iNaturalist where improvements wouldn’t at least indirectly improve the identifier experience.
That said, trying to brainstorm them all under the umbrella of this or any other single topic would end up being counterproductive by burying valuable ideas in a virtual haystack, making them pretty invisible to the staff who might find them worth implementing.
Much more likely to be visible and productive would be to “revive” and further the discussion on existing feature requests and other focused topics (like improving the user-facing implementation of CV, for example), and start new focused topics for additional ideas.
Knowing how long Staff’s wish-list of renovations and improvements already is, and has been for many years, and that they have had to prioritize them for the overall best interest of the site given limited resources, my own perspective has evolved to trust their best judgement, knowing how involved and responsive they already are (all being regular iNat observers and identifiers themselves). While there is always room for improvement, the tools they have already given us are pretty amazing.
But of course that shouldn’t stop the rest of us from discussing and advocating for our favorite improvements and ideas.
Too true. As a guy from india, so many of the regular species here are un-ided. Idk what to do about it though. I id what I can, but I can’t confidently id anything except birds and a few lepidopterans.
We have 7 comments in this thread about Notifications.
Step by step improvement there would go a long way!
We need practical improvements for identifiers on iNat.
10 posts were split to a new topic: How to better introduce new users to computer vision suggestions?
I think a simple click-though popup box after adding an ID using the CV saying something like “Do not rely solely on Computer Vision suggestions when submitting this ID. You should be able to independently confirm your identification and be able to defend and explain it, citing evidence if asked. You must only add identifications at a taxonomic level that you are confident of (for example species, genus, kingdom)” would do wonders in nudging people away from carelessly submitting CV-based IDs.
Maybe it could go away after the first five times you click through it or so.
I use CV all the time, even for taxa I know very well, simply to make sure I am not spelling something wrong, or using the wrong common name, and to make sure there are no look-alike organisms I have forgotten or didn’t know about. It’s one of the ways I learn about related species. Seeing a pop-up like that would be really annoying, and it would make Identifying less rewarding, unless, as you suggest, you only saw it a few times and then it stopped.
What’s the point of offering CV Suggestions there, if people are simultaneously asked not to use them except if… they don’t need to use them in the first place? Is CV simply a glorified autocompletion macro?
Anyway, I think suggestions for better onboarding (through nudges and popups and whatnot) were briefly considered in the distant past, but never touched upon again ever since. And I fear that anything turning users away from CV use is a big no-no, considering iNat is built around it.
That could work.
But.
It needs a - do not show me this again X
The CV can be used like a guidebook to point you in potential directions. No one is saying you can’t use the CV as part of the process of coming to an ID. Just that it shouldn’t be your basis for an ID.
(The fact that there seems to be forum confusion about this iNat guideline seems to be all the more evidence that this needs to be pushed in front of user’s screens)
“This turns users away” could be said about any other existing guideline, as well. If a user isn’t interesting in learning how to identify organisms, they are free to upload unidentified photos for others to ID.