I am the only one doing this.
Yeah. But I use the explore page and it is not convenient.
And I want to find more first or a first is a coincidence.
“independent, not affiliated”
I do not give ids just because there is a great community who has helped me. I have rarely received much, if any, help from other identifiers.
you might get more help if you’d add citation/documentation to the obscure IDs you provide. or cut back on the condescending attitude that comes across in almost every forum post you make.
Adding citations often takes too long. If someone wants to know, they can ask.
I don’t know what you mean. I am one of the few active identifiers in several groups and I cannot id everything. Somewhere I wonder why do people id unknowns when there is no end to them.
the motivation comes from taking unknowns and pushing them into the “light”
and helping push the ‘data’ to be utilized as intended 
Actually, many of us here on iNaturalist do understand! We may not mention it as a motivation because it seems so basic to our personalities, and some of us don’t realize those are labels for how we seem to work in the world.
with that being said - please come by my observations to help ID some mushrooms I uploaded.
those seem to be the ones I need help with.
Also - if you need someone to help ID and annotate your observations - let me know. I am spending a few hours in the mornings - pushing out unknowns and helping to annotate
Scientific work, including taxonomy, is a cooperative enterprise. People work together, combining their individual talents, insights and experience. To a large extent, that’s what makes it rewarding. Perhaps you will come to understand that as you get older.
You have benefited from those people who moved observations to Auchenorrhyncha for you to find.
You have benefited from all the other Auchenorrhyncha specialists who ID’d observations of common species so that the CV suggests them.
You have benefited from the users who uploaded the observations of rare and unusual species that allow you to satisfy your desire to be the “first” person to identify one.
Meaning that you benefit from the fact that others are willing to identify the observations that you feel are not interesting enough.
My comment about the process of making scientific discoveries involving a significant amount of routine and mundane activities applies regardless of whether you are working alone in your personal lab or in an institutional setting.
Most of us also need to have some source of income, to put food on the table, pay rent, etc.. If your ambition is to publish in entomology and taxonomy, a likely path is to pursue a scientific career, which will ensure that you have access to both resources (laboratory equipment, literature. etc.) and time to dedicate to this topic. It is not the only path. But if you choose some other way to earn your living, this day job will a) also likely involve some amount of uninteresting activities and b) take time away from your taxonomic pursuits; if you do not work in a scientific setting you may find that it is more difficult to access resources and networks, and thus in turn more difficult to be taken seriously or publish. So one way or another you are likely to find that you will have to interact with and potentially even collaborate with other scientists. Any work that you do will also be building on the work of others who have gone before you.
The “is it life” makes me question everything about my ID skills.
That is the easier question. It is, or was, alive. But which Kingdom ??
There are some good projects. Beach Blobs. Weird Wild Wonders. @mention clue by clue …
Kinda but that is not my primary motivation(s).
Oftentimes I skip hundreds of observations of common species which are also not identified.
???
I want to work on my own business, not a job, like my mother.
I want to mostly avoid collaborations. Journals need you to submit articles, then they review it and publish if the article is suitable.
Although that is true, only a handful of taxonomists made most of the taxonomic framework etc.
And the reason that isn’t thousands, or tens of thousands, is because many identifiers have been doing the work you consider below you, out of a sense of community spirit. You benefit from their countless hours spent generously identifying common species every time you go looking for what interests you, whether you realize it or not. This is okay. You aren’t obligated to give back to the community. But implying you aren’t benefitting from the generosity of others comes off as self-centered entitlement.
While it’s true this allows one to keep the fruits of one’s own labor, and I highly recommend it, running a business is still mostly tedious and mundane tasks, such as paperwork. It also takes a lot of people skills, if you want your business to retain customers and not fail.
One of the most knowledgeable moth experts in my area worked his whole career self-employed in drywall. He likes to say “being self-employed is great: you can work any 72 hours of the week you want!” lol
What part of what I wrote isn’t clear?
Doing science involves a lot of repetitious activity and often a fair amount of tedium. This is true no matter where you do it or whom (if anyone) you work with.
(I would gently suggest that the hours you spend browsing observations in order to find the few that you consider interesting enough to ID are precisely this sort of mundane activity that you so vehemently reject.)
Major scientific breakthroughs are rarely – I would argue never – the result of some “eureka” moment of a single person.
They are the result of many many hours of collecting data and analyzing it and collecting some more data, and analyzing that, and questioning one’s premises and starting over again.
In pretty much every case – Copernicus, Darwin, take your pick – such breakthroughs are also the result of extensive discussions with other scientists. Reading each other’s papers, but also writing letters, comparing results, exploring theories, sharing data and specimens, etc. None of it happens in a vacuum. This applies to entomology and taxonomy just as any other field.
Even if you do not engage in formal collaboration, there is still a lot of informal exchange – of both ideas and material – that happens as part of conducting science, and networks with other scientists are often going to be invaluable for accessing both resources and information. This does not mean it is not possible to do science without such networks, but most likely you will find it quite a bit more difficult. For better or for worse, reputation matters, personal connections matter.
In fact, if you live in a vacuum, you risk becoming a crank, rather than a scientist.
I suspected that was the Russell I know, and it was. It was interesting to read his perspective several years before I met him. I don’t think much has changed since then. It’s clear that iNat has propelled at least some of us to mental and physical places we never imagined before, and the larger part of that was because of sharing identification tips and tools.
On iNat, I almost exclusively identify Opiliones (a little-known and overlooked group), for several reasons
I feel like posting without identifying is just making more work for other people. I’ve been trying to keep my IDing even with my posting. I’m not any sort of expert, so it’s often more like categorizing than identifying, and I add annotations a lot, because it’s not difficult. I like looking through the ID pages because I get a sense of what kinds of things other people are seeing near me, and a better sense of how to improve my observations for other, more expert, identifiers. And I just generally like the idea of learning and contributing to things, to a community, and to science (I hope).
For bat calls it is worth me taking eh 10 minutes or so to ID them, assuming the tactful call file is include. Citizen scientists AKA public are providing data from areas where there are no formal surveys. This enhances knowledge of distributions for conservation and ecology. I do not think most who posted even go back to review the IDs once updated and corrected like the gazillion incorrect Xprize project data files.