Hi all - High school photography teacher here. I’ve been obsessively using iNat for about six months now. I’ve logged 2,445 observations, 846 species, and made… 0 IDs. As a photography guy with absolutely no experience (nor certainly, any confidence whatsoever) in taxonomy, I rely entirely upon iN…

[image] porroglossum: A last note if you’re not sure of an ID is to leave it at a higher level like genus or family (even if you have to manually type it in and it doesn’t pop up from the AI/Computer Vision). This is something I wish more people did on here, as most bryophyte observations get to…

You can always tag someone, just please don’t just tag them with @yayemaster for example with no context. I’ll always help if you tag… @yayemaster can you ID please? Or something along those lines.

I didn’t start identifying things until I had entered a lot of observations over a couple of years. I only know birds and common dragonflies of Ohio, and they get identified very quickly here. I do feel some responsibility to identify things. It’s not a requirement of this website. But, it is very h…

I’ve only once had someone object when I tagged them, and it was an IDer who said something like, “Everyone stop tagging me!” in their profile. I was new to iNat and hadn’t looked at their, or anyone else’s profile. So I learned to always look at someone’s profile before tagging them.

Also - check that your identifier is still active. Top of the leaderboard, but haven’t been here for 3 years … try the next one? PS the best people to @mention for help, are the ones you meet going thru the same taxon / location batch as you. That ticks all the boxes - taxon - location - active - i…

I see you mostly photograph arthropods, and you’re on Martha’s Vineyard. WIth a rudimentary search (Explore Arthropods Dukes County MA) you can find a few top identifiers and check their profiles. If they seem to also be local (they may not be – some people identify flies worldwide, for instance),…

You can do higher-level IDs. I spend about half an hour each day looking for unidentified observations, or obs identified as Life or Plant or such, and refining them. If it’s a plant, I tell if it’s a monocot, a dicot, a fern, or a conifer. If it’s an animal, it could be a spider, a winged insect, a…

[image] tiwane: When I tag someone I’ll usually add “what do you think?” or something along those lines, just to make it feel more human. But in my experience, a lot of identifiers don’t seem to really care, so I’m sure I’m a small minority. For me, it is not so much annoying as confusing, es…

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone say this yet here, but it’s a good idea not to tag people as soon as you upload an observation. Give it some time, and only if it doesn’t get identified after some reasonable period, say a few weeks, tag in a relevant identifier.

Tagging etiquette and ID Responsibility

General

bouteloua August 22, 2025, 7:57pm 17

Check out https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-get-identifications-for-your-observations/26429 and the related topics linked there as well

Topic		Replies	Views
Excessive use of tagging? General	70	3247	August 20, 2022
General consensus on etiquette regarding recruiting IDs from specific identifiers? General identification , etiquette	47	7339	February 3, 2021
Requesting an I.D General	18	1601	May 19, 2024
Waiting for ID`s General	50	1607	October 25, 2025
Patience is a virtue General	44	1541	February 3, 2021

Tagging etiquette and ID Responsibility

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