I’m thrilled about this! I’m so happy someone is ready to get stuck into them.
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The Cape’s fynbos seethes with daisies. We see many species of A Nother Yellow Daisy on each weekly walk.
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When I don’t know a group (for example, plants), I will sometimes identify Unknown observations from new users to a very high level as a bit of a teaching aid. Unknown observations do tend to get lost, so a new user has a better chance of more detailed information if they stick in at least a higher ID. I don’t know if it actually does work as a teaching aid (I do leave a little comment - a tip), but I have seen an Unknown go from Flowering Plant to a finer ID in an hour or so.
Personally I prefer to ID from Family (Noctuidae). “Butterflies and moths” is far too broad. As a rule, butterflies confuse me, and many moth Families give me the heebie-jeebies (hello, Geometridae!). I suppose I could go through higher level observations to pick out the Noctuids, but there is lots of work available for me at the Family level already.
I suspect it depends on what people like doing. Certainly any advancement in the identity of an observation is usually worthwhile, but it’s not where I prefer to spend my time.
Edit - here is an example where my ID to Order went rapidly to species - Limber Pine (Pinus flexilis) from Division No. 15, CA-AB, CA on August 15, 2018 at 11:48 AM by Bruce Homer-Smith · iNaturalist.ca
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= DYC (damn yellow composite)
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It helps other people when they have active filters i.e. only show plants. If things are unknown, these will be missed as I can’t imagine as many people include unknown into their search.
For my preferred group of insects, I do separate searches for the Family, Sub Order, Order, Class and finally unknown. When I am looking through the unknown I will generally add the insects that I see to Order, or if I am in a rush to Class, as I know doing this will save time for other Entomologists and I would hope that they do the same.
As a result of this message, I will now include Sub Class as I have no doubt missed things in there :-)
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I find that often I can often refine it to a point where it catches the attention of an expert in that field and sometimes its updated to species fairly quickly when I do that - so I feel it is often helpful.
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I feel that narrowing down from Plant to fern, moss, flowering plant etc is helpful -not just for advancing the individual identification but for better info on how many observations are being made in these different broad groups.
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I often will narrow my search to flowering plants since I don’t know much about the others. So having someone else separate mosses, ferns, conifers, flowering, etc. is very helpful.
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