Some of the community’s top identifiers, whom we all depend on, may identify hundreds or even thousands of observations in a day, including hundreds of confirmations.
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A short while back iNat curtailed the number of id per obs. When it achieved research grade the “Agree” button was unavailable for further agreements.
There was a big community backlash and the option was reinstated.
There are pro’s and con’s to both arguments. I have no objection to “to many” agreements. It does not affect me in any way. It is research grade, and if someone appreciates my observation and wants to agree, then thanks to them.
I do feel that where multiple incorrect agreements have been made an expert should be able to override them with a valid argument. (A debate for another day)
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You need to reload the page again, it will happen no matter what, just a common iNat thing.
That is not about language. It is why emojis were invented. We all struggle to get across tone and intent online.
I have learnt to value taxon specialists adding their informed ID to a long list (as a way of Seen That Obs Next for their workflow)
For myself, I have made a rule - if it has reached CID, next. I would rather work thru my long lists of Unknowns. Then nibble at the monumentally daunting longer lists of Need ID. I will die trying …
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The number of identifications has never been limited. In that short-lasting change, a new ID could still be entered, even if it matched existing ones.
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No, that does not work. I will stick with putting my ID on it, which works fine for me and honestly I really don’t get the issue. Let people put their ID where they want to, I don’t see the harm, just upsides. And if I spent my time on this observation anyway the only thing that changes if I don’t put my agreeing ID is that other won’t see I spent time with it (even if I have). but the time was spent for whatever reason and will not be put in another observation … clicking agree if I agree is the shortest amount of time I use on it
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This spends time of observer, you wake up and there’re 200 notifications on your crow obs, that already were RG, maybe you see upsides from your side, but observers see downsides, otherwise this question wouldn’t pop up again and again, we shouldn’t try to downplay this as a non-problem because ider just clicks agree and goes on.
I am an observer as well, you know… I think the “problem” is totally overblown.
I remember you on other topics stating something alonge the lines of “well, let people use the plattform as they wish, as long as it is within the functionalities of the plattform”.
Ok, agreed.
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I’m pro experts checking everything they wish, but after finding multiple easy mistakes from mass clickers, I’m skeptical on their abilities, sometimes there’s an observation with 5+ wrong ids, people fly by many obs just agreeing, maybe too fast to actually think what they agree with, or they genuinely don’t know something. @someplant mentioned this aspect. So, maybe it comes down to “how much I trust this particular mass ider, does this id add more weight to observation or it’s really a mindless click”.
Anyway, on this point it’s just stating the same things again, so maybe let’s go and id more rather than talking about how to id.)
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You hit something right on the head with this. So many people on this site are not scientists, but are just casual users. And giving them a hard time because they don’t do it quite the way you want them too is not the best route. Most are here for different reasons and different levels of learning and enjoyment.
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I fall firmly in the Observer camp; although I know what I observe and can often upload observations at species (or a high) level, I find myself singularly unqualified to distinguish much of anything that others post.
That said, having read time and time again innumerable comments that People Like Me Are The Worst, Ugh, I recently decided to give it a good think and identified two species I felt comfortable identifying in others’ photos because they are two of my favorites: Nannotrigona perilampoides, which is a small bee that I see daily because there are two colonies within the garden, and Tridax procumbens, the Tridax daisy, which is also in the garden, profusely.
In a not shocker, the only N. perilampoides observations needing identification, i.e. not already at RG, did not appear to my eye to be readily identifiable as N. perilampoides nor could I necessarily exclude it, so I backed out and headed to T. procumbens, where I found gobs of observations by college students, largely here and in India, their schools and classes clearly marked, taking photos for class assignments. I spent a happy hour using the Agree button, and typing in the species name when I wished to add a comment. “Did you note the extra petals in the bloom just above the red wrapper on the pavement?” “Excellent photo!” “Lovely!”
What I did not consider, not even once: how other people ought to be spending their time, whether the species was important enough for me to be spending my time on it, if I was making too many identifications, hahaha (see: “The Worst, Ugh”).
On my own observations, I have observed the following:
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the pedestrian species (like Tridax) get few identifiers
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the specialized (bees, butterflies, lady beetles) have local or global identifiers who come through regularly sometimes even daily and identify “their” thing
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the interesting (rare species, in action moment, funny photo, whatever) ones get many, many identifications. For those of us who are newer users or self-taught, this is an indicator that the observation we made is exciting! We may not always understand the buzz but we see it, we feel it, we appreciate it.
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In this case and Gerald the Muskrat (warning: may overload browser), it may possibly be an example of an observation going viral? That or sarcastic iNatters…
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iNaturalist is a citizen science project. Such projects have lots of wonderful characteristics and can produce great data! One thing they don’t ever have is efficiency. Some iNaturalist observations are overlooked. Others get lots of identifications. That’s just real, to be expected in a citizen science project.
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To an extent they can – if by valid you mean persuasive enough to get one of the wrong IDs withdrawn.
And none at all on your snail obs, that you took the time to write out your keying steps.
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Yes. Power user? What kind of scientific credential is that?
We’re hearing here so many feeling miffed at being blocked, (“Whoa, don’t you dare tread on my personal rights!”), but nobody saying, “Well, I AM an expert…”
Alright, I am an expert on eastern North American Bombus, now do I have your permission to continue identifying at a rate hundreds per day?
Next, let’s just take a brief look at some of the power users, shall we? https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&view=identifiers Start clicking profiles and count how many times you see words like Phd, Professor, Ecologist, Biologist, Curator, ect.
Third, you don’t have to be an “expert” to place correct ID’s (in fact when I place ID’s outside of Bombus, it’s because I’m trying to learn those taxon), and having seen the dogs breakfast that specimen collections, or other databases that are run by “experts”, I think this method works just fine.
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I really don´t get that comment. Can you help me understand what you are trying to say here?
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Most forum users are “experts” and iders, or those in creation, so they don’t need to say that, we already know who they are.
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This discussion is going a bit beyond answering the original question. If this continues to go off topic, I’m going to close the thread.
iNat is a huge community spanning a wildly diverse group of people. The way some people use iNat might annoy some of us - we’re all different! That’s something that I think needs to be expected and accepted when you have a community like this.
As was mentioned earlier, we at iNat tried to reduce the number of “redundant” (as in not needed to move the community ID forward) agreeing IDs and nudge people toward adding IDs to “Needs ID” observations by removing the Agree button from RG observations (yet still allowing people to enter any ID they want), but that was met by a lot of resistance so it was rolled back. That being said, there’s nothing inherently wrong with adding agreeing IDs to RG observations, as long as the identifier can independently verify their ID.
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I, for one, am SHOCKED! This forum is always well behaved 
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