So I typically ID things at a very broad level, from plants, to monocots or dicots, or fungi to badisiomycota etc. I can ID some things better but I personally feel better after clearing a page or two of broad IDS.
My question is do others see the observations in the age of my shift or their first post? Like if I ID a plant down to Monocots does it show up to the “experts” of that group as a recently added or does it default to its OP date?
The date of the observation stays the same, but it is possible to sort by date observed, date added to iNat, or date updated with an ID or comment. So depending on how people are searching for observations, your recent IDs could bump observations to the top. But no one will get a dashboard notification that a new observation has been added to a group they follow like they would if it was originally posted with your ID.
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If I understand your question correctly, the answer is no. Observations are added to the “Needs ID” queue based on the date they are added, not the date they are identified
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The great benefit of adding a lower but still broad category is that we identifiers sometimes search on that category or a higher one that includes it.
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As a specific example of this, my usual search for things to identify looks for all plants in a specific region, in ascending (oldest to newest) order by date posted to iNaturalist, so if you identified an older “unknown” observation in my region to anything in kingdom Plantae, it would get added to the top of my ID queue.
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Your newly identified obs will only jump to the ‘top of the queue’ if a taxon specialist clears - all the fungi here every day. Then your ID will bob up in today’s batch in waiting. And that is good! that is the intention. You will get notified as the obs works its hopeful way to RG at sp. If the taxon specialist has just begun to tackle a monster that will take weeks, months, a team - then they will see your ID in sequence where they choose to sort their dates.
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Or if someone sorts by ‘updated’ date, though I’ve started doing that for some disagreements and feel like I really don’t understand how it works (some clearly have just had new IDs added, but lots don’t have any obvious update - maybe an added annotation or a deleted ID can do that?). I mention this because of the number of times I’ve moved something old down and have very quickly seen new IDs added, so someone’s clearly noticing them as a result of the additional ID.
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Sorting by date added (in descending order) is the default for the Identify page, but there isn’t one defined “queue”. I often sort by random, for example.
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My default is by Date Observed. Working from today for the batches I can keep up with. Starting with the oldest for the abandoned in limbo ones.
The default by Date Added, gives me weird batches when someone adds photos from a long ago holiday / expedition / former home. That is more unpredictable for IDs. Hard work.
Oooh. I have just seen the option. How handy!
Is it new? I’ve been taking a break from iNat for the last couple of months and I swear that option wasn’t there before
Looks like this has been around for a while. But only in Identify.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/sort-identify-observations-by-date-updated-by-default/557/12
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I didn’t realize I could do that, I imagine that is helpful for specialists. I’ll probably just chomp away at the older “life” or kingdom IDs, slowly pushing them on. One by one, everyonce in a while I get a fun one that gets ID’d all the way down. You got one recently here in NM.
I have seen it happen a couple times, I shifted a plant into angiosp. and the next day someone had came along and ID’d it to an “unknown to me” species or genus.
That would be a dream. I just recently added fungi back into my “might be able to push past kingdom level and I got almost 10 pages of fungi and lichen before I reached my first blurry bird photo.
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Yeah, I also like to sort using ‘Disagreements’ and ‘Date Updated’ and it works okay, but noticed the same thing—many records that haven’t gotten a new ID in months/years showing up near the front of the queue. The reason is that apparently any manner of change to an observation counts as an update, such as annotations, DQA votes, and (here’s a big one) being added to projects.
The projects one is significant because of those scripted projects like the ‘yellow box’ unknown or the pre-maverick one, for which observations are automatically added (on what kind of schedule, I don’t know), but the observation has not been interacted with by a human in any way.
I’ve thought about making a feature request that would ask to limit the ‘Date Updated’ field to ID/comment updates only, since I feel like that would be the main use-case for that field. As it is now, it’s still kinda useful, but not quite what it could be in my opinion.
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I think we run the Pre-Maverick project every 6 months. There too I hope that 2 against 1, or 1 against 2 - with fresh eyes, might improve the ID. https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/dianastuder/77588-meet-the-pre-mavericks
And the yellow label Phylogenetic projects run steadily, a bit every day. In theory that is useful info for Updated, since the identifier can use that as a suggestion to consider (it uses iNat’s CV). https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/jeanphilippeb/73398-phylogenetic-projects-for-unknown-observations
But would need to check with @jeanphilippeb ?
@jonsense could you tweak the URL to ‘without those projects’ ?
Ah, I didn’t think of that! Though, I don’t necessarily want to exclude those projects–they are actually the things one would be looking for when sorting disagreements by date updated–it just kind of defeats the purpose of sorting by ‘date updated’ if the ID/comment isn’t the thing that’s been updated. (Plus, aren’t there, like, hundreds of those Unknown projects, one for each of the broader taxa? Or is there an umbrella project I could exclude that would exclude them all?)
Also want to note that I don’t dislike those projects at all–they’re quite useful! I’ve used them in the past, and they can surface a lot of identifiable stuff.
Yes, that’s it.
I start now a new run of the Pre-Maverick project.
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To be able to get my observations there, if I were at the same continent, I would have to be able to upload the observations very soon. I am not usually able to do that during the season. Usually there is a lag of a few weeks.
I meant, it is easier for me to ID, season by season, which - buds, flowers, fruit - can I expect ‘now’. Definitely not expecting people to upload everything now at once. I have months of backlog myself.
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I’ll sometimes filter for a taxon i’m interested in, so I do appreciate broad IDs a lot! They often help me to find what I’m looking for, even if there is no species level identification.
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I used to just sort by new posts more than 2 days old while doing broad IDs (some people will upload with no ID or a very broad one then go in and add a species ID the next day), but I started sorting it by random recently. There are a surprising number of clear, good observations that are like 5+ years old which no one has ever looked at, and while it’s definitely less activity than on 2-day-old posts, I definitely still see a good amount of species/genus IDs get added shortly after I add mine.
Not sure if some taxon specialists just have reviewed all the posts in their order (?!?) or if they are also sorting by random or old or something, but anyway it feels pretty good to be the one to revive an observation that may well have sat another 5y binned in Insecta. So, adding an ID to an old obs may not float it to the top but it still does help visibility (I didn’t know about the date updated sort! That’s cool, but idk how many know about it).
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