I don’t know maybe it’s different per region or genus but there is definitely plenty of community.
I can attest to Neylon and others in the bumble bee community, every time I’ve tagged them (and I’m fairly new, I’ve only been on for about 3 years) they have all come to my help and one of them, Kyleprice1, even. sent me a very detailed guide to help me ID bumbles.
On the specialist bee side of things to tockgoestick, morcutt and others have been super helpful as well not only ID’ing my observations but pointing out what to look out for to help me ID.
I say ask questions, interact with those ID’ing your observations and tag people.
I know when I’m trying to ID and I’m not sure I will tag people I know are experts.
I also agree with Neylon new people shouldn’t tackle old pictures. In my opinion they should instead help with unknown IDs bringing them to a general ID.
I would point out that while location specific ID tips might be available for many large animals, like mammals or birds, one of the major ID challenges for more speciose groups like plants or fungi or insects is that for many areas, there isn’t actually a list of which species occur there, because no one knows. I run into that issue frequently with plant ID, and that’s when being able to get a key or guide for the entire genus or family suddenly becomes extremely useful. Unfortunately, those often aren’t available either.
Yes, that is a good point. What I would envision is that the very first guides don’t aim for comprehensiveness, but focus on covering the basics instead. I think this exercise is really about figuring out how to rope in beginners to tackle the basics of identification. For different taxa it might play out differently, but I could imagine that for fungi or insects it is possible to identify some specific taxa that are regularly observed in the area, and to provide some guidelines as to how to identify these. I think there is no need for this to always be at species level. In fact, based on your comment I think it might actually be quite useful to have both a local guide with some markers of commonly seen insects or fungi, but to also have some very basic guides to identifying insects or fungi, that help people get started in general (I for one would love to learn the basics of how to tell Wasps and Bees apart, or how to make out Katydids from Grasshoppers. These guides no doubt already exist, but having them in one place would go a long way for new people to feel confident they can dive in.
In any case this whole structure certainly would have shortcomings, and would not lead to species-level identification by beginners for many of the more numerous and complicated taxa. However, bringing in beginners to help out with simpler identification would yield a lot of benefits, including a) taking off some of the load of seasoned identifiers of initial classification of observations, b) growing the total number of identifiers which makes the community more robust, c) providing a gateway for people to become more advanced identifiers, and d) connecting people more intimately to nature as they learn more about it.
I also feel that there is a strong community behind iNaturalist but indeed it varies by region and taxa. However, I feel that the presence and accessibility of this community could improve a lot. For an outsider, the ‘community’ of identifiers mostly exists through @ mentions and discussions inside the comments of observations. I believe that for quite some beginners, this is not as inviting a structure as it could be. I might of course be wrong, but the numerous posts here about how only a small number of identifiers is responsible for the vast majority of identifications, and how the number of identifiers are not growing in line with observations, makes me think that exploring ways to improve beginner-level accessibility to this community is worthwhile. Also, from the perspective of being an inclusive community I think it’s worth exploring new options.
Yes. But. iNat asks us to ID to the level where we are confident. Potential new observers also have to bring - time, interest, willingness to learn, enthusiasm!!! If they start there - they will find their village / tribe on iNat. It is social media, but with nature.
It is a lifelong learning curve. Plus, with the way the CID algorithm is ‘rigged’ it is easier to improve an ID from a taxon which is broad and correct. Because of the more than two thirds rule, and Ancestor Disagreement - Unknowns can march briskly to so many people have agreed with the wrong ID that we haven’t got a hope of getting the ID back on track ever. We just don’t HAVE so many competent identifiers.
We need second tier identifiers to work thru the broad categories.
Start with what interests you and what you know. Then grow.
I agree with this, though I don’t think the proposal needs an exhaustive list of guides for it to be of value. I think basically having some ID materials/resources points IDers towards working in those groups (groups without any resources wouldn’t get attention from new IDers that were already unfamiliar). In an ideal world, if the availability of ID resources encouragers new IDers to jump in effectively and other IDers/users notice this, it could encourage experts to create/curate ID resources and lead to a virtuous cycle!
But more realistically, one thing that could help with this is if any ID resources could be assigned to a place that then cascades to places below them (much as statuses can already do on iNat). Let’s say there’s an ID guide for bumblebees in New England - it could then appear in an Identification Center page for any location in New England. Now the ID guide would have more species than any specific location in New England would have, but it would be a great starting place if any more specific resources for that location weren’t available. This would help address the issue of groups with fewer IDing resources by at least getting something in the hands (er, screens) of IDers.
By engaging in Wikimedia editing, everyone can have a say in what’s on the About tabs. There are still many less common taxa without Wikipedia pages, and Wikispecies is a great place to compile links to primary references. Creating stub articles and pages isn’t difficult and “gets the ball rolling” on capturing information relevant to IDing. In short, until something like an Identification Center comes to fruition, Wikimedia, and adding links under More Info are the two most readily findable options for directing iNaturalist users to IDing information. Journal entries can also be “on platform” but need to get added under More Info to be findable, I think.
I too was frustrated by the scattered nature of relevant information for identifying lizards in the Amazon…so I made my own ID tips library. I felt it important to be totally contained with the .org of iNaturalist, which is why I used the existing resources in projects and journal posts.
“adding links under More Info” - can you explain what you mean by this, Michael? (As I’m being thick and don’t understand where ‘more info’ is to be found)
Would this be somewhere you could only share information about one species, though? It wouldn’t be somewhere appropriate to compare and contrast different the features of different species?
FYI everyone, there are a few past feature requests suggesting expansion of taxon page functionality to accommodate and centralize more identification information and resources:
If I may jump in here: On the website, for any taxon (species, genus, etc.), go to the “About” tab and you’ll see a list of “More Info” links on the right side of the web page. Some/many of those links in the list are generated automatically, but down at the bottom there is a button to “Add Link”. I don’t think you need to be a curator to do this. The page which comes up is fairly self-explanatory. It is important to make sure the link is placed at a good taxonomic level, i.e. if it is a link to info on just one species, that can be placed on the “More Info” list for just that one species, but if it is information (e.g. the revision of a genus, subfamily, or family), then the link can/ought to be placed on the page for that level.
I think you’re onto something great! As someone who recently started taking IDing for others more seriously as of the last several months, it can be truly daunting to try and dig into ID resources decentralized on the web and the fear of making mistakes can be even more off-putting. Talking to more seasoned identifiers can also be quite intimidating before you get to know them and I feel that may put off less experienced users from dipping their toes into the identification pool. Having an ID center with curators and users, both experienced and fresh, who can share and create guides and tips on identifying their taxa of interest would be absolutely incredible and I hope something exactly like this can be implemented in the future!
Thought-provoking ideas – regardless of the implementation, I agree with you on the need of better support to onboard and train new identifiers. Thanks for posting this.