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 …

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.

[image] thomaseverest: So depending on how people are searching for observations, your recent IDs could bump observations to the top. 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 …

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 ta…

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 thi…

[image] david99: Observations are added to the “Needs ID” queue based on the date they are added, not the date they are identified 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.

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 …

[image] thomaseverest: or date updated with an ID or comment 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

[image] thomaseverest: but it is possible to sort by date observed, date added to iNat, or date updated with an ID or comment. 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.…

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,…

When considering IDs

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thomaseverest October 1, 2025, 6:47pm 11

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

Topic		Replies	Views
Why/how am I still getting IDs on very old observations? General question	20	797	June 27, 2024
Sort Identify observations by date updated by default Feature Requests web	15	873	March 8, 2019
How do you search for observations to ID? General identify , identification	24	820	May 8, 2025
Order by ID chronology? General	3	320	August 16, 2020
Default to showing observations on identify in random order Feature Requests identify	19	551	March 25, 2024

When considering IDs

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