I just visited a town of under 500 and took some cool pictures, should I kust lie about the location to the nearest big city or just leave it.
Just leave the accuracy as good as possible, and have patience.
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Whatâs your account name? I can ID your observations if you want.
Changing location will mean that your observation will be marked âCasualâ grade for location inaccurate.
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I took a picture of some type of bass, so i called it basses, waited a month and got nothing, changed the location to nashville and got an Id immediately, is there anything wrong with changing it?
Wait a year or 5
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An accurate location is important for your observation. Some species (even some of our Southeastern U.S. bass) require a pretty well-established location. Sometimes identifications are quick, other times they are slow. But remember, none of it is set in stone. A new hybrid between two different species might make it difficult for experts to give an exact species-level ID, or differences between two species in nearby waterways might only be genetic (making location even more important) instead of by visible differences. Years later, someone might also correct or resolve some of these differences as more is learned about the species, or as it is âsplitâ into new species with added research. To get good identifications, it just takes time.
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You might get an incorrect ID by changing the location. Some species are easy to ID to genus, but have many similar looking species that are hard to ID when their ranges overlap. Thatâs often a reason that observations donât get IDâd, because the ID requires seeing subtle or hard to photograph species.
A better approach is to tag someone thatâs experienced with fish ID and ask them to take a look at your observation.
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Please donât use an inaccurate location. If youâre using an inaccurate location, itâs also the duty of other naturalists to tag it as such which disqualifies it from research grade. There are a lot of people who will eventually ID stuff taken in rural locales. Just be patient.
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Do not deliberately falsify your data, please.
Currently on iNat only a small portion of users are active IDers. (Most of them donât limit their IDs to their city, btw, so living in a small town shouldnât affect this much.) That means that IDers have a huge amount of observations to go through. It may therefore take a while before they can get to your observations.
The first thing, Iâd recommend is start IDing yourself. Everything helps even identifying an unknown observation as a bird, or a beetle, or a fungus, or a moss. And it is quite rewarding as you learn a lot.
That way, other IDers may get to your observations just that little bit quicker and you may also receive IDs as a âthank youâ from people for whom youâve identified.
If youâre really curious about one observation, but it hasnât gotten an ID in a while, you can tag people. But here itâs important to check their profile for 1) what taxa and locations they do their IDs in 2) whether they want to be tagged. Leaving a polite comment with the tag, will probably also increase the odds.
Also, you shouldnât overtag that means waiting a bit (2 weeks, maybe?) after uploading an observation, and not spam-tag one user, or tag 50 users under one observation.
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there are some nice suggestions here https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-get-identifications-for-your-observations/26429
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I have used number 7 a number of times and have had quite a bit of success. Most of the top iders are happy to help. Those that arenât just ignore your requests to take a look. I donât do this unless the observation has been up awhile without attention. Know also that some species will just never reach research grade. Many bugs and plants seem to fall into this category.
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When I am ID-ing on iNat, I filter for the entire state of Ohio, which is where I live. I would bet that there some people filter to county or even country, depending on their effort, expertise, and the amount of observations in that region.
Sometimes identifications take time. Iâve had some supposedly difficult observations that are identified in seconds, while other âeasierâ observations literally take years. If you need a faster ID, consider looking through the top identifiers in your region for the taxa you are interested in, and tagging one or two of those users.
As others have said above, if you link your account here, Iâm sure some Forum users may be able to help you out.
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I know. Some of my obs from several years ago are still at a very coarse level of ID. Then suddenly they get noticed and identified. But not all. Sometimes itâs just how it is.
I often just browse ones with no ID what so ever, and try to put them to at least kingdom level if nothing else. Quite often I get to tribus or genus level. Some of them are years old, but once they get any level of ID, they tend to be picked up by more proficient ID:ers.
As mentioned earlier, some species are so similar between each other, that itâs really hard to identify them accurately. This is the case with aphids, for example. I discussed this on my observation once, with a biologist specialized in aphids. According to her, if you get to genus-level with aphids without a microscope, you can be happy. She said it feels like sheâs more often than not throwing aphids into a blender, and then DNA-sequencing them for a positive ID. Also said, that she finds herself wondering on occasion, why on earth she chose aphids as her spec and not something easier, but she says she still finds them very interesting. 
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Itâs nothing to do with the size or population count of where you live. Iâm in a village of 483 people, moving my observations to the nearest city (listed as 12 miles away and population of 2,126) would take them out of the true environment.
Post with the truth, always add the best ID you can, even when the best you can is animal, plant, fungi⊠there are several that id at the unknown level and even a boost from unknown to insect will help it get to the next ID. Iâve done this with observations that sat idle for years and see them get IDed from there quickly.
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iNaturalist observations are used for scientific research where having the correct date and location are essential. Please do not falsify this information!
Identification is often slow because the number of new observations is so large and the number of us volunteers who identify is so low. Use the methods @bouteloua suggests and please be patient.
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Looks like several of your observations are also missing dates or locations entirely, which makes them much less likely to be identified. Make sure that all of your observations have a date and location recorded and that the date and location are accurate. This is especially important if youâre taking a screenshot and then uploading the photo- the location and date often become messed up.
And please- remember to mark captive plants and animals (gardens, farms, pets, zoos) as not wild.
Accurate dates and locations and marking captive organisms is very important for identification and research. Falsifying information is unlikely to actually help you get an ID. If anything, youâll be more likely to get an incorrect ID, or to have your observation marked as casual and hidden from the eyes of identifiers.
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Correct time of day is important. I once found an observation of a bird sound and called it an owl, partly because it was close to midnight.
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In a lot of taxa, there are just too many observations for identifiers to keep up with, and that will only gets worse over time as iNaturalist tries to continually expand its userbase. Summer is an especially bad time, where identifiers are trying to keep up with an absolute fire hose of observations.
- Do not falsify your data by putting an incorrect location on your observations.
- Do try to post clear photos from multiple helpful angles that are cropped to preserve the level of detail in the photo. Also keep in mind that sometimes even the best photos are hard to identify because sometimes different species look the exact same.
- Do accept that sometimes things just wonât get identified because none of the identifiers (who are doing this for free in their spare time) can get around to it.
- Do be judicious with your use of @ mentions. @-ing the entire global identifier leaderboard for a taxon is poor form. Tagging one identifier on a half-dozen observations in a row is spam.
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