Is is appropriate to reach out to others on iNaturalist in order to confirm or correct an identification? A number of my insect and plant observations need confirmation or correction.
Yes, you can always reach out to other users if you want help.
4,000 of your 4,800 observations are research grade. That’s about as high as I’ve ever seen.
Consider “giving back” by helping with identifications for other users, as well.
You can always tag specific users – like this @johncebula – in comments under any observation still in need of identification. I wouldn’t spam any one user with dozens of such requests but it is certainly acceptable, even standard practice, to tag a relevant user for help in IDing an observation, or to ask them to reconsider their previous ID if you have grounds to believe is erroneous or outdated.
Building on what you said, you can always directly message an identifier with links to the observations. It only creates a single notification for them!
4,000 of your 4,800 observations are research grade
and I was concerned because I have 100 unconfirmed
Looked at my year in review yesterday and I’m at 65% needs ID on 5,000+ observations I’ve uploaded in 2023. All about perspective
wow, I will just plow ahead without worrying. for awhile I thought I was doing something wrong
As long as your observations have accurate dates, locations, and decent photos/recordings of nature you’re interested in, you are good to go. Usually the only thing “wrong” is that there aren’t enough identifiers. For example, I’m the top identifier of plants in the genus Penstemon, so it’s understandable that ~50% of my personal observations are unconfirmed, because I’m usually the one providing the second vote on a Penstemon photo.
And there are always cases like this, where I have a physical insect specimen (1 male and 1 female caught by hand) and multiple microscope angles and still no agreement: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/140088130
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