I’m not being overly formal or scientific. I just didn’t understand the layout with the greatly abbreviated titles. Fun challenges ARE a purpose.
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When I look at my own status in that, I see titles such as:
Name Giver (Are those identifications? Because it shows me having 1250 of 2000, but I almost never ID below Order.)
Classy Observer (Is that observations from different classes?)
Plenty of places (You get credit for traveling to some other place to observe?)
Self pollinator (No idea. I rarely observe plants, yet I have some numbers on this one.)
Not a bug (Credit for observing Arthropods that aren’t insects?)
All Corners (No idea.)
Flower child (Observations of flowers?)
Heart of the matter (Heart-shaped leaves?)
Always On (No idea.)
Plus I have credit for 11 others that have no titles and just say Casual or Started.
Is there a glossary somewhere?
If you click on the badges and have enough qualifying observations, it explains what each one represents. E.g. self pollinator = add comments on 50 of your own observations (nothing to do with plants); all corners = make an observation in each corner of the globe (North-West, North-East, South-East and South-West); always on = no idea, I’m just a “novice” on this one so far so it won’t tell me the details yet. I guess you have to “unlock” the explanations.
Thanks very much for this info. The structure seems a bit backward, though. I think most of us set goals (or challenges) because we want to achieve something in a certain area. This only lets us know what the goal or challenge is after we have already achieved a significant amount in an area. It doesn’t feel like a game because I have not agreed to the objectives in advance. It’s more like getting eccentric commentary what I am doing by someone I don’t even know.
I guess it’s meant to be more of an exploratory game, like those adventure or puzzle games where the point is to try out various things to find out what you can pick up or do something with. I know it’s not everyone’s cup 'o tea, but I think it’s fun. In this case, you make a variety of observations and find out later what silly “achievements” you have earned, a bit like going out on an observation quest. When I go on a hike, I rarely go with a list of goals but mostly I just see what I can observe.
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Getting back to the original focus of the thread, I’ve recently found myself taking photos of Orthomorphella pekuensis millipedes each time I see them on my way to work. Usually a nice way to start my day.
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Swear to got last tick I pulled off I was high AF and just yeeted the headless sucker (guarantee you I didn’t get the whole thing) across the entire room without even thinking to take a picture.
I really should take pics of the ticks, but there’s literally nothing in nature I hate more. Mosquitos I can deal with (malaria isn’t a thing in the midwest, thankfully) but ticks? Nah fam. Absolutely not. Lyme design, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and Alpha-gal syndrome are no joke
AHEM ANYWAY
My local house wren pair gets many, many photographs, and we have a pair of Cardinals (that hubby has helpfully named Cardi-A and Cardi-B, lol) that just… are the only cardinals I ever photograph because the male of the pair chases EVERY other cardinal off our property. So yeah, he’s an aggressive boi and I love him and I hope he brings his babies by to visit sometime.
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Yes, I agree. I don’t have specific goals (meaning goals to photograph specific things). But I have LOTS of goals for my presence on iNat. I want to take better observation photos so they can be accurately IDed and thus possibly make a tiny contribution to scientific knowledge, I want to notice more things when I am outside, I want to do my part to support this mostly volunteer web site, etc. I am not at all opposed to having silly goals (previously expressed by participating in projects such as Ignore the Elephant Seal, etc.).
I am rather put off by mystery goals (as you’ve noticed) but have no desire to reduce the enjoyment of those who are enjoying them. To address my own issues, I made note of all the goals that you know the names and purpose of. I would probably enjoy this game more if we had a forum topic where everyone listed the goals they knew so I could figure them all out without the annoying “mystery” aspect.
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There is actually a thread about it - maybe that’s the place to start a list. Though some folks may consider that info spoilers?
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Not that this answers the original question, but this thread prodded me to go look at what I observe the most: Pitch Pine, with 482 observations. The first animal on my list of species is Eastern Newt, #17 on my list, with 242 observations. The first fungus/lichen comes in at #28, Smokey-eyed Boulder Lichen, with 173 observations. Apparently, I’ll photograph those three species every single time I see them.
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I uploaded an Asian Needle Ant not to just publish it but to try and get the seek AI to identify the thing. They are a common invasive species here in Georgia but the app can’t seem to ID them (BTW seek is an app made by iNaturalist for Iding species automatically)
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Seek’s model is a few years old now, it doesn’t get updated like the one being used on iNat becuase compressing it is difficult. Asian needle ants are in the current iNat model, but may not be on Seek right now. I’ll also note that Seek is designed to be pretty conservative when it comes to identifications - we’d rather it be correct at a higher taxonomic level than incorrect at a finer level, and ants are really difficult to identify with one photo, so Seek might never be confident enough with this species to ID it often.
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If the dataset is being used for classification machine learning models, then more entries for each species will make for a much more robust model.
Right now, it’s apparently the Plains Forktail. I swear, I didn’t set out to top the leaderboard.
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I just uploaded three Tripartite Sweat Bee observations on Turkey Mullein. I have been trying to capture the fauna associated with Turkey Mullein since about a week ago I stopped to look at a plant and found this amazing ecosystem associated with it. However, today was 103F and I visited a couple of patches of the Turkey Mullein just to see what activity there was compared to two days ago when I went earlier in the day and it was cooler. Interesting, today I found many of the insects in the shade under leaves and many seemed to be taking a siesta.
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Apparantly for me its Haploa clymene, which somehow has managed to become my top observed insect. Hell I saw two today about ten feet from each other.
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The garter snakes in my garden.
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Since I live where I live I can anyways not really keep a streak going for long, as the area is pretty boring species-wise. But when I am somewhere else - and be it just a parkinglot in the middle of nowhere - I want to observe something to have the little red mark light up on my map… and pretty often those are Bromeliaceae nowadays. I do know next to nothing about them, but they are some of the plants I always kind of liked despite not beeing a big plant person.
I have 25 species up to now and start to recognize some of them actually, which is a happy site-effect. And quite some are not observed/IDed that often, so it actually seems even somewhat useful🙂
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Lately, I can’t pass an Eastern Collard Lizard w/o taking a picture or two…or three or more. 
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I do these to some extent but often if I add the same species it is in a different place or at a different phenological stage in the same place. I try to post as much of a variety of organisms as i can find in the area I’m exploring and in my project areas I try to keep track of the differences from season to season and often from day to day or week to week depending on how often i get there.
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