Waiting for ID`s

General
21

i think most IDers do not like “Unknowns”
If some thing is marked as “unknown” it means that you your self do not even try to ID your observations.
Some times you then see pictures and its not even clear if the observation is about the bee or the flower or even both (what should be separated to different observations).

So to maximize the chances to get a ID you should at least try to ID your own observations, if you dont know it better then at least als “plant” or “animal” or what ever. there more specific you can do it your self there higher is the chance to get a good ID by an other specialist.

If you let your observations without any own ID as “unknown” you have good chances that no one will look at your observation, even for years.

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22

99.9% of my 2000+ IDs for others are from “Unknowns”. A good many of those seem to be new users.

There are a lot of easily IDed butterflies, moths, bees, wasps, spiders, birds, lizards, snakes, trees, flowers, etc. in “Unkowns”. A fair amount of them get more refined IDs a day or two after I get them out of the pile.

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23

True, “unknown” ist a good resource for any and also new people, a lot of stuff is easy to ID, even to the point, there you can get easily up as IDer on a list.
But many specialists do not have the time or interest to go through all birds and fish while they are specialist for moth and they get 100rts of observations to review.
So they do not need to identify for other users if a worm or bug is a plant or a fungi, as most could even do this them self.

Also to users it would be the best if they try to ID them self what ever they can, it will give practice and if they do it often they may get specialist them self.

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24

I suspect that the majority of users who enter observations without an ID are not doing so because they don’t care enough to make an effort, but because they don’t understand how iNat works.

Maybe they don’t know how to enter an ID or they don’t know why it is important to do so. Or they don’t realize that it is OK to enter a general ID if they don’t know what species it is (they may think it is “obviously” a bird or a mushroom so it seems silly to put such a label on it).

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25

in my experience this explains a decent amount of unknowns. I run a lot of iNat walks and workshops, and whenever I explain to the group I’m with that some kind of ID is better than leaving it blank, even if that ID is something like ‘Plants’, I get at least a few bemused looks without fail every time. For a walk I led last weekend, two people were baffled that they would do this, and openly questioned why they would even consider doing this.

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26

Is their bafflement from plant-blind, or from duh WHICH plant?

27

Maybe a better way would be to teach them distinguishing monocots vs dicots? Then they might feel it’s less “dumb” to do it

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28

plants was just an example, I get this response when mentioning a coarse ID of any taxon

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29

IMG_7986
IMG_7986558×1347 133 KB

As an example of waiting for id:
the observation was made Three years ago.
ID confirmation was yesterday.
Sometimes it takes time.

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30

Wow that’s a long name.

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31

Wait, what’s the longest common name in use on iNat? Is there a way to check?
The longest scientific name is that Llanfair Myxococcus species

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32

or - it needs to be Gall Week - and someone is trawling Needs ID galls ?

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33

I did just join ALL YOUR GALLS BELONG TO US… (and an old member of Galls, Burls and Brooms of Michigan)

although this Does happen randomly also every now and then without finding a new project!

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34

Yesterday I was confirming Queen Anne’s Lace observations that were made up to 5 years ago. I think that nobody got around to them?

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35

Exactly! Fallen through the cracks and left behind for many reasons …
I love it when my older observations are ided because I get to see them on my dashboard and find out if I can remember them as mine! (Yes…no…maybe so…memory like a steel sieve)

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36

Another possible explanation is that they were identified earlier but the identifier has since left iNat, taking their IDs with them - a problem still yet to see any progress as far as I can tell.

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37

That should at least leave a footprint, like when I withdraw an id.
A skid mark leading to that crack…

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38

That’s true - there was an ID for Difficult plant. Would still give us an extra clue to follow.

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39

That’s a great point you brought up!

40

I’ve been doing a lot of identifying by sorting by Random as a way to easily ID old observations, eg https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?order_by=random&verifiable=true&hrank=phylum&lrank=phylum&taxon_id=47120&without_term_id=22&disagreements=true

I’ve also been going through observations from, say, a month or two ago and adding IDs, eg all reptiles in California added between May 1, 2025-May 31, 2025. That gives me a fairly manageable number of observations I can look at and feel like I’m making progress on. It’s a fun way to Identify.

I highly recommend bookmarking a few different identifying flows so that you never get burnt out on one thing.

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