I’m wondering if I’m not in the know about some trick but it’s been nagging at me for a while since I spend most time IDing unknown obs and trying to welcome newer users. I usually get frustrated and call it a session when I stumble upon 3 + pages in a row of unknown observations from users who con…

Message me in iNat with your email address, I’ll send a PDF…

[image] tonyrebelo: While busy with higher ranking identifications, one that I would really appreciate is that of “Not Life”, for observations of rocks and minerals (some look like lichens or fossils), clouds, rain, fire (although perhaps that is living) and so forth. I would love this.

@tonyrebelo , did you ever submit a feature request for “Not Life”? I’ll definitely upvote it!

[image] lotteryd: Then there’s finding the really weird stuff that stays unknown but I have to favorite it just in case the mystery is solved. Like, what the heck? Is there a “what the heck?” project that we could add weird observations to? I’ve run across some interesting unknowns where I ha…

[image] grace_sibley: Is there a “what the heck?” project that we could add weird observations to? If you find one (or make one) let me know, I’ve run across a lot of things that make me go “I’m sure this could be identified, if I could only figure out what kingdom it belonged to…”

Piggybacking: For a while I was using the newest-first search order, but specifically starting on page 5. That way everyone would have time to fill in their observations from a home computer, but newbs would get still get a relatively-quick response.

[image] grace_sibley: Is there a “what the heck?” project that we could add weird observations to? This might be the place! https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/weirdwildwonders (I’ve been holding off adding much to that so far, but I could probably triple the size of the project just by ad…

I love that discussions in WeirdWildWonders have resulted in the creation of at least one other project ( Tilly Bones was spawned from WWW observation comments).

[image] grace_sibley: I’ve run across some interesting unknowns where I have no idea what they are but seem identifiable if they could be seen by the right set of eyes! Like this https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/27262103 (fungi? insect eggs?) Or this https://www.inaturalist.org/observat…

[image] Star3: a feature request for “Not Life”? How would this be different from downvoting the “Evidence of organism” DQA?

Why do some serious "power users" add so many unknown observations?

General

Topic		Replies	Views
Improve How "Unknown" Observations Are Treated and Displayed Feature Requests	60	6912	June 12, 2019
Thoughts on unknown ID level? General	59	1352	October 9, 2025
Does anyone else get bothered by how many observations are marked as "unknown species"? General question	231	9354	December 27, 2022
Amount of "Unknown" records is decreasing General	555	38750	July 8, 2021
In Defense of Failing to Add an ID When Submitting an Observation General mostly-humor	75	1396	November 28, 2024

Why do some serious "power users" add so many unknown observations?

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