It’s happened several times while I was browsing observations to ID that I and someone else ID one at the same time. For instance, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/251821839 shows a snail next to a chiton. While I was asking which, the observer identified the chiton. What can be done to make it less likely that two different people are IDing the same obs at the same time?
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One thing that took me a while to figure out was that new observations coming in from people using the phone app don’t always upload with an ID, and it may take the observer a few more minutes to go back and add an ID (or maybe to get a better internet connection?). I try to be patient and not add IDs to unidentified observations that haven’t been posted long. Those are usually the ones where I sometimes have had the observer or someone else add an ID simultaneously.
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Same here - I actually often set the date observed range in the identify filters to end somewhere at least a week before the current date to avoid adding IDs to freshly uploaded observations so I don’t get ahead of the observer having a chance to add an ID first. The only times I’ve experienced IDs coming in at the same time as mine was on my own observations when due to some technical quirk my initial ID didn’t make it through resulting in an unintentional “unknown” observation.
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I id observations that are at least a month old, to avoid that problem.
If the observer IDs something as something, that is what they want the obs to be. If the observer put it a chiton, I think it should stay this way.
However, quick IDs can let an observer know if their photos are insufficient while they are still can take more photos.
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By then, a new user could have given up on the app and left.
I’m not a new user, but it still makes me happy to find that my previous observation received an ID by the time I upload my next one. A nice compromise, if you want to avoid this problem and also avoid discouraging someone, is to ID observations that are at least several minutes old.
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I didn’t see the observer’s ID until I wrote mine.
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Fair enough!
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