Ids should be spread through observations and not stacked on one or two. If I have a hundred of unided but easy Larus argentatus, maybe seeing 7th id on a crow looks exactly like a time spent for nothing. Plus people who review all obs can just skip where they agree and then mark all as reviewed, it’s not like adding id there is such a necessity. With big % of unided obs any found mistake is worth hundreds of ids on other obs and everybody should think well on how their time is spent, if you can both review everything old and new that is cool, but for any more generalist ider that won’t be a good approach (I respect how you id).
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What people seem to miss is that… different organisms require different levels of specialty to ID. Some things are just… easier to confirm. Maybe they don’t have any look-alike species. Maybe they have easily available resources about ID. Maybe those people just can’t get the hang of whatever species.
With big % of unided obs any found mistake is worth hundreds of ids on other obs and everybody should think well on how their time is spent
This makes no sense. Me correcting one misid’d buteo is not equal to me iding hundreds of gull observations, because I’m terrible at gull ID. That’s why I don’t do it. So it would be an even bigger waste of time
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People don’t miss that, they want experts to learn more, that’s one of the point of being on iNat. It’s pretty clear I’m talking not about you as specialist ider, but somebody else, I hope?
There’re 41k of unided accipitrids, why you took that taxonomy so straight, it was just an example.
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I do concede the point that for most people hitting agree on hundreds of Bombus griseocollis isn’t the most productive use of time, personally when working out of Bombus, I tend to set the level to Bees as the lowest taxon, since I’d be useless agreeing on species ID’s there. However, I would argue that when I confirm RG Bombus observations I’m doing two things: first for many of these Research Grade observations, there is no one who specializes in that taxon who agreed, mine lends some credence to the observation. 2nd when one is wrong, I’m getting it off of the GBIF map.
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Right, I understand that. And my point was, that people will ID what they have resources for, what they have interest in, or what they like. Calling people learning to identify commonly identifiable taxa “time wasters” is exactly how you get novice identifiers and new site users to give up on the site all together. Its discouraging at the very least.
People don’t miss that, they want experts to learn more
Are you providing resources so that people can learn to ID whatever these taxa are? Are you teaching other identifiers? Because that’s a more effective way to get people to learn than demanding they stop identifying easy taxa…
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But people doing that are not novice iders, they have tens of thousands of ids and more, on site for years, I’m sure nobody has anything against new user doing that other than their id can have less weight subjectively, just another notification to check and see it’s not much to check.
I was ready to “teach” on the idathrone, though nobody was interested in insects at high levels, but of course we all do it with links and other stuff in comments, I’m pretty sure I do enough, including the gull theme.
I don’t force anyone, I described the observer’s perspective, and I’m not even hard on that, there’s a certain community where you will be seriously looked down upon for mass agreeing, I have my own view on that, understanding more than one side.
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While I do think overconfident ID’ing can be a problem, I don’t think it’s fair either to aspiring or dedicated users to punish people for making “too many” IDs. It discourages new users from learning more about taxons and dipping their toes into more complex ID’s while hurting those with the authority to reliably make tons of IDs, which would exacerbate the already serious issue of bias towards easy-to-ID species like birds, large mammals, and monarchs.
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Because the ones getting all those IDs aren’t the ones that take too long to get IDs. Because instead of adding another agreeing ID to an observation that doesn’t need it, that time could have been spent identifying one that does need it.
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we appreciate your intent and interpreted your question as neutral, without accusation or bias. We think we understand clearly.
We learned a lot by people’s responses, so thank you for asking this question. It met our need for information.
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Sometimes if a Research Grade record captures my interest and I spend more time than usual looking at it, and I agree with the IDs that are already there, I’ll add my agreement. If it has multiple IDs already on it, mine isn’t really necessary … but since I spent all that time looking at it, why not?
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I have to review all of them anyway, clicking agree isn’t the the time consuming part. When reviewing a few pages of RG observations, is it only not a waste of time when I find wrong ones in the mix?
Also, the ones that take “too long” to get ID’d take too long for a reason: they are considered more challenging ID’s, and personally I wish more species were considered challenging. As was pointed out previously, new people start off on easy stuff and hopefully work up. If something is more cryptic then I would be much happier if the person who ID’s it is an expert, not someone new.
To speak facetiously: recently there was a discussion was on mistakes in the RG observations, this week it’s why are so many people checking RG observations.
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Does not work all the time… that is actually why I started to ID all, even if there are already 5 IDs.
I just had it happening today again that 2 observations I had reviewed before reappeared on my pile for unknown reasons. I was happy that I had IDed already and noticed immediately because of that.
I have this little issue since a few months now already… doesnt happen all the time but frequently
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Thank you for the reassuring words, I see that the topic is now way above my pay grade …
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Wait…what? You get paid for this? …what am I doing wrong?
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I admit I haven’t read through all of the above but from what I skimmed I’m feeling vaguely reminded of what happens when you dole out candy to kids to the tune of one child get only one while the other gets a whole handful… 
I think I’ve mentioned this before on another similar thread: I’ve noticed a cultural difference in this, too. If I observe a common bird in the US, it quickly gets confirmed to RG and that’s it. No more additional IDs typically. If I observe a common bird in Germany, it may accumulate a dozen more IDs even after hitting RG. Maybe the Germans are just more generous with giving out candy…
Yes, and this might actually be a good reason to occasionally add an additional ID if you’re confident, especially in cases that are less clear-cut where losing an ID would not just drop the observations out of RG but change the community ID on it.
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I consider myself pretty new. I know what you’re talking about- when an observation of a bear is posted nearby, I’ll see tons of black bear IDs… because that’s the only bear species nearby lol.
I think people just get excited to see a cool animal they recognize or a familiar loved plant.
Personally, I might confirm IDs of sea snails or bivalves just to stay engaged with the marine mollusk community. It can be good practice for me but it also gets my username and icon out there so people may start to recognize me as someone they can tag or start a discussion with because I am likely going to be interested in the taxa or possibly even helpful.
I don’t think I’ll ever get enough IDs to pop up in the “Top identifiers of this species” but that’s how I’ve known who to tag for help, and that could potentially be me one day if I get enough IDs. I definitely focus on “Need ID” tags, but won’t hesitate much to confirm a RG observation if I have it pulled up for a certain reason since its helps me establish myself in that species.
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More than anything I appreciate the work of those experts who check all the observations in their field and region of expertise, regardless of whether the observations are already RG or not. Their IDs either reveal misidentifactions or allow for certainty (after all I want to learn sth. here and certainty helps a lot in that regard). And of course I wouldn’t expect them to add their ID to all Ephemeroptera, for example, except for those two ‘easy’ species - that would be rather strange. Just wanted to point out that this kind of agreeing ID surely is not a waste of an expert’s time.
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When it comes to highly visible observations, I’ve seen cases where people put identifications down without knowing how to identify them. I think they might be thinking, “well, 3 people agree it’s species X, they can’t all be wrong, right?”
Unfortunately they can be, such as these cases:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/12490294
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/7992125
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An observation with 5 or 6 unanimous IDs is much more difficult to demote by one misguided or malicious IDer
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I know which observations relevant to my work or interest I have already looked at
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I use projects for particular observations, and URL query those that I or other IDers trusted by me have identified, so as to present only those I think are trustworthy examples of a taxon
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Three or more IDs get over the hurdle of observers who are serial agreers, even for taxa they have no idea about. Sadly this kind of user is very common.
There are heaps of other reasons, but the more confirming IDs an observation has, the higher the chance that the identification is correct, all other things being equal.
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