Shouting into the Abyss - Why do some "easy" observations sometimes go unidentified?

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Whilst I am perfectly aware that the iNat Forum is not a place to seek help with identification, this is just about the general concept of uploading something you think is so easy to identify yet nobody does.

What I want to know is, am I the only one who sits shouting at the computer screen?

For example, after uploading 20 photos of birds and only 19 of them are confirmed immediately but the one that isn’t confirmed is one of the easiest and most distinctive? Sometimes it can be weeks or months later when it gets a confirming ID.

Discussions on the general concepts please, no links to specifics, this isn’t a “please ID my observation” thread.

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Haha :slightly_smiling_face: - It’s sometimes odd, isn’t it? And if the ID doesn’t come within a few days, it can often take quite a while. If you’re actually mostly uploading birds, try to feel fortunate - other taxa often wait much longer (as you probably know).

And perhaps another way to look at it - it’s kind of fun building up imaginary lives for the folks ID’ing, to explain why a given observation was ignored. Or when I’m actually photographing things - how can I make this photo more alluring to those identifiers? I’m not sure whether you dislike shouting at your computer (it can be fun), but if you want to cut down on it, you’ve just got to develop a better story to explain away your pain, good sir! :grin:

One thing I’ve enjoyed doing - in my profile, I link to my “saddest, most lonely unconfirmed observation,” and it’s especially satisfying whenever that one gets ID’d.

To directly answer your question (because surely it wasn’t rhetorical, lol), I can confirm you are not the only one who sits! While I don’t have much hard data regarding shouting at computers whilst sitting, I suspect you’re not alone. :joy:

Edit: Maybe get a cat and talk to it about the situation? Could be I’ve done that before… :upside_down_face:

Edit 2: Or seek solace in the tomes of Albert Camus?
(“There is no love of life without despair about life.”)

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Thanks, I do happen to upload mostly birds, but also a lot of fungi, so I know the pain of going unidentified. But I can live with the fungi as I know that it’s never going to achieve GR status without microscopy or Devine intervention.

I do have the use of a couple of dogs to talk to from time to time, but I’m not allowed to take them out and get them dirty or it will be their parents shouting at me. Neither of them will sit still long enough for a photo, never mind by a pretty flower (can you tell I’ve looked at your links yet?)

I did recently upload a very dishevelled fungi observation and tag it pareidolia in the name of whimsy, knowing full well nobody would ever ID to species level :-)

I’m not a big fan of cats, especially those belong to neighbours, who frequently visit the garden and leave “evidence of” piles in the middle of the lawn (the cats, not the neighbours I should add).

Off to Google Albert Camus now, cheers!

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How many birds do you ID for the other people shouting at their computers?

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I am continually amazed at how many easy-to-ID observations sit at Needs ID for weeks, months, years, and yet my notifications are filled with identifiers adding the fourth, fifth, sixth ID to observations already at RG - and I’m talking mostly about plants here!

Now, my bias is to ignore RG observations and work only on Needs ID, but I can understand why people add a third agreeing ID to an observation; that helps ensure a RG observation stays as RG even if one of the identifiers deletes all their own IDs. More agreeing IDs than that seems like a waste of a good naturalist’s time (feel free to present evidence to convince me otherwise!).

I will say that it’s likely that two things contribute to what you’re seeing: First, at least for the northern hemisphere right now, it’s summer and everyone’s out making observations of their own, rather than making IDs.

Second, I get the impression that many identifiers, including me, start at the newly added observations for their area and work backward in time. When I do that for everything in New England, I run out of time or enthusiasm around page 20. Sure, IDers might filter for Birds or Lepidoptera or Plants, but they rarely filter for single species or genera. I just went and filtered for Needs ID American Robin observations in New England now, and there are 20 pages of them, with 30 observations per page. Now, I bet lots of the older observations are of eggs or empty nests or young nestlings or maybe feathers - observations that are hard to ID, in other words - but I bet many of the first few pages’ worth are easily identifiable.

And, of course, we always need more identifiers. Even in summer, there are days when it’s too hot to go hiking or the contractors are here to work on the house - perfect times to make lots of IDs!

ETA: Well, I went back to the Needs ID American Robin observations and in fact, even the most recently added observations are mostly eggs or nests! So I picked a bad example - the birders are clearly on top of their identifying game!

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Does not apply to me, But. Taxon specialists, when they are doing a taxon sweep, use adding an ID as - been there, seen that obs.

I use Reviewed, if CID agrees to RG already.

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It is because it is the most distinctive imo. After IDing the 1000th specimen of any species I get aggressively bored … :wink: … just kidding. But there are so many interesting observations that sometimes I tend to skip the easiest species, thinking that someone else will jump in.

Many of those IDs are from people who are not that experienced and are happy to recognize a species, no matter the number of IDs. And then there are natters like me who simply enjoy identifying no end and therefore don’t care at all wether an observation has 5+ IDs already … if I did the identification work, then you’ll receive my ID. I guess you have to live with it. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Strangely enough, I’ve never come across a bird observation with an audio track of the uploader shouting at anything despite IDing several thousand birds… :joy:

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Brilliant

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I definitely don’t think that any time spent on iNat is a waste, far better than watching TV (nature programs excepted). I do tend to just go for the “needs ID” observations when I have some spare time, usually the more obscure things as the easy ones mostly disappear fairly quickly if you have a filter set. What does amaze me though is some of the pictures people upload and expect to get an ID of a blob that is 2 pixels high and/or wide.

I must congratulate you on getting to page 20 of anything, I rarely make it past the first 3 before something else commands my time and attention… well done :+1:

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No not at all. I specialize on Bombus, when three people who know very little about Bombus all agree on a species, isn’t it better to have someone who actually is very familiar with the taxa come in and confirm? Also, I’ve run into a lot of RG records that were wrong. Even common “easy to ID” species. On the bee side, we spend a lot of time double checking each other’s work. All of us make mistakes, even the experts, so more ID’s is never a bad thing.

Further, I’ve run into several new identifiers that agree with taxa they are trying to learn more about. There’s a couple of new guys that have started some interesting discussions because they were reviewing RG stuff.

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Oh, you’re right, that makes sense - thanks!

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It’s good to know that not everyone has exactly the same motivations as I do! ;-)

ETA: And this goes for @neylon, too!

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That’s great if you have the luxury of having sufficient IDer capacity to check each other’s work.

Many places and taxa don’t. When a large portion of observations in a given taxon/region have clearly never been looked at anyone knowledgeable at all, it doesn’t seem like adding a third or fourth agreeing ID to observations is the most effective use of IDers’ time, particularly when the agreeing IDs are being added to those few species within the taxon that are generally ID’d correctly even by non-experts. And yet there are plenty of experienced specialist IDers who seem to prefer to do this.

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“One thing I’ve enjoyed doing - in my profile, I link to my “saddest, most lonely unconfirmed observation,” and it’s especially satisfying whenever that one gets ID’d.”

I’m going to second the “brilliant” comment on this, AND I’m going to take this opportunity to tell you that your avatar picture gives me a good laugh every time I come across it. :grin:

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have you tried tagging a local expert in these un-ID’d observations?

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Pressing “A” is no slower than “R” in Identify and adds some value compared to “R”. It can also be useful is IDers are later going to check all the observations that they have IDed, etc.

Edit: That said, I think there is a valid question about the most worthwhile way to choose searches that determines the pool of observations that an IDer is looking at. But, as others have noted, if I’ve looked at an observation in the ID pool and done the ID work in my head, I’m pressing “A”.

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95% of your observations were confirmed immediately and you’re not satisfied? Plenty of people on this site would give their eye-teeth for a response rate like that.

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What’s the rush? If the photo is adequate to ID it to species, and especially if it’s a bird, it will get an agreeing ID soon enough. If months go by and still no agreeing ID, you might want to look at the record again to see if something is not quite right.

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You bee folks are a fantastic lot, and are prolific IDers, so thanks!
I have some sense of who among you are experts, like yourself, so if you make an ID different from my own (amateur) one, I try to always withdraw my bad ID.

Those bird IDers certainly are a speedy lot. Sometimes birds get IDed within seconds. Probably many of them subscribe to various taxa, so they see them more quickly and easily than by using the Identify mode.
I always assumed it was because there are so many ardent bird-watchers. Not so many bee-watchers out there…

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