I know it’s redundant, but I just wanted to thank again all the expert identifiers. You’ve slogged through lots of ambiguous or malformed observations, made your best guesses, dealt with really atypical photos, and some of you (a lot of you maybe) are feeling some fatigue. But everything computer vision can do is because of the efforts of you and people like you. The computer vision guesses may not be perfect, but everything they can do, they can do because of your efforts, and they hopefully help you focus your time on the most interesting edge cases. So thank you, redundantly, for all your hard work and dedication. Even if you were to retire now, your meticulous efforts will pay dividends for many years to come. Every success of iNat we owe to your involvement and dedication.
One thing many identifiers don’t realize is that their notes, explanations, ID’s, and comments might guide people in the far future, long after most of us are gone. I think it’s beautiful how scientists, and hobbyists, and many others in between have the opportunity to identify together, to learn together, and to overall contribute to the community!
In case people want to quibble over the word choice: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-does-it-mean-to-be-an-expert/19521/
Identification etiquette thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identification-etiquette-on-inaturalist-wiki/1503/
Old related thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identifier-appreciation/25153/
General ways to help on iNat thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/ways-to-help-out-on-inat-wiki/1983
And don’t forget to donate (tax deductible) 
Thanks, we do what we can to climb the ever-growing pile!
Agreed. I have a so many favorited observations which hold interesting conversations and information from identifiers, some from before I joined. You never know who else might be reading those journal posts, comments, explanations, etc.
As a full-time college student, I don’t identify as much as I used to just because of the workload I have to manage; it only makes me respect many of our identifiers more for being able to contribute so many IDs apart from the work they already do for a living.
I love that the site allows “learning by doing” with ID’s, and gives an avenue to engage with experts. On many occasions I have noticed something new, asked about it to the experts on iNat, and had papers I wasn’t familiar with sent to me.
Thanks for that! I was interested to put my name into it and discover that I average 79.68 IDs per day, and 21.97 Annotations.
Thanks! That’s interesting.
I know I definitely appreciate when you help me with my observations. I guess it doesn’t happen as often now that I don’t live in VA, but you certainly taught me a lot. So, not just because the computer learns. Because other users learn.
:-)
I am very grateful, too. Expert identifiers and amateurs alike, hundreds of people have put in their time to help ID my observations. I have learned so much here, and my interest in nature has deepened profoundly now that I have a better idea of what I’m looking at. Thank you all.
Agreed! Thanks to all of you!
Thank you. This was really nice to hear. I hope you’re enjoying your new home and learning lots of cool new ecology!
And thank you to identifiers willing to become ‘maverick’.
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