What does your identifying regimen look like?

I’ll pick a “topic” – maybe a taxonomic group in a certain region, maybe all observations in a region I know well – and set my filters to show me either ascending or random. I’ll stay with it for days or weeks, just keeping the tab open all the time, until I have reviewed everything in that “topic.” Then I take a break until I think of a new “topic.”

Right now I’m working through State of Matter Life. I’m down to 176 unreviewed pages. When I’m done with those, who knows what I will do next.

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When im bored and have downtime I’ll go pore over observations of fish clades I know somewhat well, and then fishbase is my savior 9 times out of 10 from there. Friends have described me as being scarily good at identifying fish when given some sort of thread to go off of and 20 minutes give or take

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So, I have a lot of links that I choose depending on what mood I’m in. It’s much to complicated to go over them all here, but I have a link to my Euphorbia links: https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/44398-identification-links
I haven’t published the ones for the High Plains of Texas or Crotons of South Texas, but I do that and some Oklahoma stuff too when I feel like it.
There are two things I consider when designing links: familiarity and ease of identification from thumbnails. When I combine taxa of interest and region, I can end up with a lot of different links. Depending on mood, I may want to work on challenging species I need to design a key for, unfamiliar species that I just have to key, familiar species that still require some effort, or just want to wind down by hitting the agree button on the absolute easiest species to differentiate for a region.

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One place I focus my energy is looking for my taxa of interest by searching maverick and dissenting IDs. This link searches for any observation in the continental US and Canada with a consensus ID as anything but Lamiaceae while at the same time having at least one ID as some taxon within Lamiaceae:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?ident_taxon_id=48623&not_in_place=11&place_id=1,6712&without_taxon_id=48623

Additionally, I just worked through a lot of Glechoma observations in the same range by searching for anything ever identified as such:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?not_in_place=11&place_id=1,6712&subview=table&ident_taxon_id=55831

Most often just spend a while IDing all observations of a given species I haven’t reviewed yet. Less frequently I review research grade observations to catch mistakes.

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I’m on a laptop and I display 10 on a screen. Quick glance to pick out what is obvious and I can Agree. A slower look for interesting - open in a new tab, needs more work. Then look at the residue - dunno - mark as reviewed.

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I’ve gotten to be sooooo narrowly focused these days… It’s solely based on geography! I go to “Identify” and then the place is “DFW Metroplex.” In even such a small region, it’s hard to keep up!

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I tried this one out. Very useful!

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Me too! I just stick in Noctuidae in the search line, filtered for Canada, and see what shows up. Often I will enter a species name, and confirm a bunch of already Identified observations. I don’t mind doing the same group every day. Often one ID will take me 30 to 60 minutes, so it’s always a challenge. I like that. It forces me to learn new stuff. I could not do a thousand per day - it would leave me exhausted, plus I would be too afraid of making a mistake! I like being careful, as the group is so difficult.

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I’m currently really only consistent with phragmites. When I started IDing the genus there was a good 200 pages of needs ID observations and I’ve (and others of course, though I know for a fact I’ve done a lot of it because I agonized over how high the number of pages was for so long) gotten it down to only about 15 currently. But to everybody else there’s a ton of pages because my observations in that genus are… a lot. But it still feels really successful to have cleaned it up so much.

Other than that, I’m pretty much just wingin’ it.

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I identify observations about five times a day, often going through the whole observation of a taxa. Some people gets a bit annoyed because they don’t know how to turn off notifications of confirming IDs, but it definitely worth doing if no one have done it for the taxa before.
I just found a Inat first moth yesterday when I was going through some common species of Chinese moth observations :https://inaturalist.nz/observations/31835658

The taxa I ID most frequently is Cypraeoidea (marine mollusc) and I also include casual & RG observations since I am the only one who ID almost all of them and there are many misidentifications. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=needs_id%2Cresearch%2Ccasual&iconic_taxa=Mollusca&taxon_id=533752&place_id=any

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I refuse to do this until there are more options. I would only want to opt out of IDs that do not improve the community taxon. Otherwise I don’t know when to mark the community taxon as good as can be. But I think such IDs aren’t really necessary anyway. I know there’s lots of other debates about this elsewhere, but I would appreciate it if people don’t add these IDs. :)

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Main downside is you just don’t know when some of your observations get RG with such setting, I don’t know how people live with that, it’s impossible to cruise through all the observations each day.

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I’m impressed with all these well-planned identification methods with saved searches!

My own system is not so organized. Each day, I start with my dashboard, which includes the recent posts from people I follow. Some are prolific observers, so that takes a while. Then, if I don’t have something else I should be doing (or if I do have things I should be doing but am avoiding), I think, “What should I ID now?” Might be a taxon, maybe from my list of taxa I like to check. Might be a place. Might be the observations of a particular person. Default is whatever shows up if I click “Identify” – like drinking from a fire hose, as someone commented elsewhere in the forum. Sometimes I pick a date six months or a year ago and ID everything I can. Sometimes I work on a project. Occasionally I select recently made accounts, though that goes slow because so many observations seem to need an explanation. Often I go for the easy stuff, but sometimes I work on a taxon that challenges me, looking up information about it.

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I typically just put in what order/family/genus I am looking to identify in the search, then pop in the location (normally a Southern Californian county or region), and bam, plenty of observations to sift, though I have been using the “Identify” tool more often as of late. I normally look closely at each observation to make sure I am not missing anything important, which is easy to do when working with things like millipedes and other invertebrates.
Otherwise I am working on going through every page of observations in one of the projects I’m in to try and get as many to research grade as possible.

Thanks,

Arthroverts

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I won’t turn off all confirming IDs. I go thru all my notifications - and turn off on a do I need to know more basis.

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I love this discussion! My approach is multifaceted; which search I use for IDing depends on a number of conditions. But my approach is pretty close to your own but more often based on observations close to home by allowing “all” on my dashboard. I do it this way because I just never set out to do IDs with the idea of doing them by species (or up the chain). I see that as perhaps better left to the pros who really know a species well enough to be confident as to what they are outside of their general area.

I’m new at this since 2016 and am far from a pro but I have learned a lot in those years and I can help a lot of folks in my area (I’d say with a lot of confidence for many species in SE Michigan). But I limit myself to two counties due to time restrains and because I visit both counties frequently (I will expand to the entire NE Michigan region or Michigan from time to time).

This approach not only gives me a list of observations from folks that I can sometimes help but it also teaches me a lot about the organisms in my area that I see in all their observations as they are posted. This creates a lot of interaction and friendships resulting in a more joyful experience on iNat and one more reason for some of us to stay active in one way or another.

I of course see all the observations of those folks I am following for one reason or another but that is not a filter.

Thanks! Lots of great ideas here!

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Thanks so much for your work with galls! I use that project often - seems like galls generally end up in the “unidentified” pile. I generally put them on the project (if in North America) and give them an identifier of arthropod unless I have reason otherwise… but I’m glad someone usually checks up on me because there’s a lot of things that can cause galls!

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It often comes up as a confirmation when folk ID at almost the same time. I’ve often posted, to find that when the system catches up, someone already answered.

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One thing I do that might be novel is look through nearby vascular plants that I haven’t observed personally:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?lrank=species&place_id=2738&taxon_id=211194&unobserved_by_user_id=arboretum_amy
Since I have observed many of the common local plants, things that show up on this link include cultivated stuff in need of marking, stuff that’s been miss-identified as something from out of range, or just cool stuff that I might want to go check out ;) I usually look at it in Explore but of course you could look at it in Identify as well.

Otherwise my routine is pretty mundane: I sort for Plantae, with the default place set to my county, usually wild ones first and then cultivated ones if I have time. I’m not fond of the “review” button and tend to only use it on observations I definitely never want to see again, not species I personally can’t identify (I guess I’m always optimistic I’ll eventually learn to ID everything.) If I am feeling pretty caught up with that, I’ll often broaden the geographic location and see what else is happening in surrounding counties. Sometimes I’ll sort for just higher plants that need refining, or I’ll go wild with the agree button on one common species, like Encelia californica.

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I tried your link out (adjusted to my name and area). It just reminded me how many species I have photographed but haven’t put up on iNat yet. :sweat_smile:

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