Seriously there is not much left as a reason to identify. iNat needs identifiers, probably, but it does not want them. it is not designed for them. why you identify, what is your motivation, i’m curious to know. really, identification is a deep skill, especially for specialists
Adhd hyperfixation heaven.
Okay but really I like seeing my impact. I like to see the numbers of unidentified/unreviewed observation pages go down. Occasionally I get tagged in an observation to look at, or im thanked. The more I identify, the more I learn, I love learning. I could list a dozen things that make me spend another hour or two on the identify page, but ill leave that there.
Edit: I wanted to add that I’m disabled and unemployed because of it. Its small and simple but Identifying makes me feel like I’m contributing and being helpful in a field I’m otherwise struggling to find a way to join.
But I disagree with you saying that iNat doesn’t want identifiers, I think that generally people appreciate identifications a lot. Theres often webinars and ID tips being sent out. This months nature notice had a segment about identifiers and talked about a specific identifier.
Why would you say It doesn’t want Identifiers or isn’t designed for them? /genq
Mostly the chance of finding something unusual/interesting in the big piles of unsorted miscellany, which still happens occasionally.
Of course iNat users love identifiers. I’m guessing they mean that iNat as an organization doesn’t want specialist identifiers - given their reluctance to accommodate (or even acknowledge) feature requests by high-volume IDers. But those issues have been discussed extensively in other threads and don’t need to be rehashed here. :)
i have a lot of downtime at work where i am stuck at a computer, IDing is more fun than reading the news - and benefits a global community science project!
Actually, this is precisely THE reason that I identify. It is a deep (and deepening) skill that requires patience, multitasking ability (I have several tabs open at the same time for research, observations and notes), attention to detail, communication skills (adding comments, tips or suggestions) and extensive absorption of detail!
I’m not sure why you think identifiers are not wanted or ‘respected’(?) on iNat but personally I am not here to support iNat so much as support the users who use iNat.
I’m not a specialist by any means…rather a generalist in nature and ecology. But it is through identification that I have experienced becoming a specialist.
In no particular order:
- Learning of the existence of species in my area
- Practice
- Helping observers
- Helping scientists
- Helping to improve the CV’s capabilities
- Enjoying looking at nature when I’m too ill to go outside (or it’s too hot)
IDing is really fun for me! I’m a specialist and primarily work with one genus of butterflies. A lot of the species look extremely similar, and I’ve found that the CV makes frequent mistakes with them. The average person probably wouldn’t be able to ID them correctly without knowing the specific characteristics to look for.
I also think iNat is pretty well designed for identifiers. There are so many different filters and ways to narrow down observations that it makes it really easy for me to find exactly what I’m looking for. Since I know the genus well, I can catch and correct some of the CV’s mistakes, which helps clean up the data and provide more accurate information for scientists using iNat data. I also like being able to give back to the scientific community through something I genuinely enjoy doing. iNat needs identifiers, and I feel like the work I’m doing is genuinely needed and appreciated by the community.
I don’t always have time and as a generalist in the extreme, I do not always have the knowledge, but I do like clean catalogues:) So sometimes I go bananas for a certain thing and then clean out the entire history of 40+ pages as best I can. Sometimes I’m in an area for more than two months and I get bit bored seeing the same thing, then I have the time to learn and apply that knowledge (if there is a decent internet connection of course). And sometimes I’m just plain bugged by something that is wrong. Overall I do feel that there are so many people teaching me something wondrously new almost every day, and that the few ID’s I can do and passing on of knowledge I’ve gained is a tiny little service to others who might not have the time or the knowledge.
Apart from my usual list of URLs I check, currently working to help clear 2 projects
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/monospecific-plant-genera-in-s-afr 88% RG 4% Casual
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/eerste-river-plant-communities 80% … 81% RG with 5% Casual
A generalist across the web of life, there is ALWAYS a new wonder full
Purple bubble trees in the sea off Cape Verde with only 7 obs. 8 months at Life. @mention 2 taxon specialists. And that is why I ID (I prefer to keep the paper trail tidy, so I delete my @mention comments once they have served their purpose)
Ditto.
It burns time, and helps me learn more.
- To help the accuracy of distribution records on iNaturalist so that it is a more valuable resource.
- To hone my own field ID skills, learn key characters, and learn new species.
- BUT MOSTLY to interact with and help other iNaturalist users, especially newbies and young users, to get them on track for a lifelong rewarding adventure.
I found a niche. There are a lot of bird audio recordings in Ohio and the surrounding states that go back a few years that need to be identified. It’s fun to hear them in the winter. I can’t recognize them all, but I can do some. And, since you can download the recordings and clean them up with Audacity, I’ve learned to use that app better for my own recordings.
It’s a fun way to learn what else is out there. I’ve got my personal experience seeing what I see in a season, but identifying lets me feel like I’m vicariously discovering thousands more organisms that I would have otherwise missed. I learn new taxa every day, discover new locations with interesting species I wasn’t aware of, and even find local places I want to visit myself.
Heck, this spring someone posted a bunch of plants I’d never seen from a location 15 miles from my house. I went and checked it out and it turned out to be a publicly accessible wetland that no one in my personal circle of local naturalists knew about. We’ve been moth-ing there this season now and finding insane records of species we had no idea were in this county. And all because I was identifying plants from my county and said “what on earth are all these and where are they coming from?”
Identifying isn’t a burden to take on, it’s an exciting learning experience. If you frame it as your solemn duty, you’re going to end up frustrated and burned out. You don’t want to be one of the people who comes to the forum angry and exhausted after forcing themselves to add IDs against their own will, expecting some sort of praise/recognition in exchange for the misery they needlessly put themselves through. Do it because it sparks joy, and when the fun stops, stop.
It might be hyperbolic, but it honestly sometimes feels like self-described “identifiers” on the forum treat their time identifying as something akin to military service: “I’ve put in two tours of duty identifying 100,000 wasps, it was pure hell, but I did it because it needed to be done for the benefit of the community! If it weren’t for us identifiers putting in time in the trenches, you civilian ‘observers’ wouldn’t even have an iNat to use! We’re the ones making this whole operation run, and we deserve recognition and thanks for our sacrifice and service!” I’m sure no one really means it that way, but as an outside observer reading the grievance threads, that’s how it comes off. If we really “need more identifiers”, as seems to be the conventional wisdom on the forum, framing it as a fun pastime rather than a cross we bear is a good start. lol
Personal note: I might be on the site’s top 100 identifiers list, but I try to avoid calling myself “an identifier” here, as I’ve found that most of the statements on the forum that take the form of “identifiers want ________!” don’t speak for me at all. Unless the statement is “identifiers just wanna have fun,” which I can get behind.
I barely identify, as time triage (feeling overwhelmed) is a constant pressure in my life, but I add annotations whenever I see them missing, and I want to appreciate something that was shared several times above:
The idea that you identify for the community. Not to support a nonprofit which may rely on power users to do the heavy lifting. To support other humans who love nature, and who want to learn!
That is a very powerful motivation! It is bigger than iNat, or any other platform that came before or after. Some iNatters say they feel more comfortable in nature than they do around people, but as a species, we are social creatures! I’m inspired by your desire to help others, and as a bonus, you get to learn a lot as well!
It reminds me of Russell’s topic: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-inaturalist-has-transformed-my-career-as-a-scientist/
An edit, 11 days later: This should go in the “iNat Milestones thread”, but it’s too embarrassing (it’s too minor) to put it there: I did some ID’s! Becca @GothHobbit posting about 18k IDs gave me a little push, Here’s a related concept from positive psychology: slow progress is still progress!
Credit: Kate Smith on Instagram
A lot depends on how you are approaching identification. If you’re not overly worried about being systematic, then it might be OK. Being focused on a particular small group (like a single genus) may also mean that you don’t notice some of the shortcomings.
To answer the original poster’s question, I identify observations on iNat because I export the observation data to an external database/atlas. It happens to be a regional butterfly atlas. Essentially, I’m quality control. But it’s a bit like drinking from the proverbial firehose, and it can be difficult to keep up. I sympathize with the original poster - there is a lot of room for improvement in the tools that identifiers use to keep track of their work. I find myself adopting different strategies to “work around” these shortcomings. I often find myself making choices between “how things really should be done”, and keeping my head above water. At a certain point, I found I had to opt for self preservation over scientific rigor. The result is that what I’m doing is sub-optimal from the point of view of data integrity for the world as a whole, but it works well enough for my needs, and I don’t have to spend too much time on the platform.
If iNat provided better tools, maybe I’d continue to do things the ‘proper’ way. As time goes by, you get better and better at shrugging and saying “not my problem”.
As others have said - I ID because I get to learn more species and what is being found in locations I might be going to; and because it is just fun (usually) for me.
I also find going through the ‘unknowns’ or a few specific genus / species in my area that I know well, to be oddly relaxing at the end of the day or if I am having trouble sleeping.
It also just feels fair to me to help ID. I make quite a few observations, and hope others on the site will ID for me. It kind of feels ‘right’ to me that I should return the favor to the overall site by ID’ing when / where I can.
I feel the same (though I am nowhere close to anywhere on any top 100 identifier list), I identify pretty much solely for my own enjoyment and enrichment and as a way of cheap digital tourism to some cool places which I will never personally be able to visit all of them.
Like any pastime, I think identifying as a pastime should serve you at least as much as you serve it. Otherwise, I feel that burnout is inevitable, just like with any other hobby.
I don’t have as many ID than a lot of people here have, but I identify for my own enjoyment and to satisfy my own curiosity. It’s relaxing, engaging, and it helps me to sleep. I like to key out plants to learn them (and knowing that maybe, on some species, it may help people not need one in the future is very motivating !)
On my county scale, I like to key out the plants observed by people, I get to see beautiful flowers and to help refine the data very locally. It’s very rewarding to see local fellow iNatter gain in IDing skills with the feedbacks (when people are interested in learning ofc), and to help better map out species. Plus I know what plants to look for in next outings !
IDing whole genuses on a larger scale is very rewarding too, as people keep observing, lesser observed species gets more and more attention from observers, and it’s always motivating to help curating data in less covered areas !
It’s a good outlet for my obnoxious-know-it-all tendencies. Keeps me from going around sharing the names of plants in person, to people who don’t care.
More seriously:
To encourage people in my county and level four ecoregion who have taken an interest in nature, because there is far too little of that around here.
To keep my own skills sharp when it comes to identifying plants I only rarely see in person.
Because sometimes I learn something new in the process.