I have been trying the “new” way out, but I don’t really like it. I end up being the second person to hit Life, and if the first person didn’t check “it’s as good as it can be,” so I have to do it, it makes me cringe a little because it doesn’t seem true if the photos are all plants. I think I’ll go back to the original way.
Follow your notifications. If you are lucky enough to have identifiers respond to broad IDs, then it works for you. That Californian plant link I put in an earlier comment, is still sitting at 31K. There will be new obs, and fresh IDs, but the running total holds steady.
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I’m not sure what you mean. I do follow my notifications. I do search for both Unknowns and Plants. I’m not willing to check the box that an observation is as good as it can be when I know that all the photos are of plants and the observation is labelled “Life,” but knowing that some people prefer them to remain in Unknown I will just move on to the next observation rather than add a broad ID like Plants, Flowering Plants, or Dicots.
If the obs you ID as plants return notifications that someone has added a finer ID - then that works for you. If your lack of notifications tells you - no one is looking at them … I guess I don’t understand why people move ‘unknowns’ from Unknown to Plantae. Same difference but the box has a different label.
We each have our own way of using iNat - no reason for you to be influenced by me.
I push the multiples to Casual - to save other identifiers tripping over them again - it was advice from someone else in the forum.
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I don’t think this is the lesson to take from this discussion. Please add the ID you think is appropriate AND select “as good as it can be” when appropriate.
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I agree that this is a regional preference. I feel that every time this recommendation is made, it should be be clear which area it applies to. Not everyone who comes to the forum will have spent enough time here to have that context.
In general, adding broad IDs to unknowns (including plants) is encouraged. Some high volume IDers in Africa (maybe only a portion of Africa) have requested that Unknown plants not be placed into the broad categories because of their workflow.
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What I got from this discussion is that it’s not only African identifiers, but California ones as well, who feel adversely affected:
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Sorry I thought we had drifted into the topic of general unknowns where some areas of Africa do have a different preference.
I agree with @greysquirrel’s comment about why it is beneficial to have the first ID on a multiple species observation be at Life. I’m not sure it matters on the subsequent IDs if “as good as it can be” is selected. That will move it out of Needs ID and limit the likelihood of additional IDs. I also think adding comments about the presence of multiple species limits the addition of incorrect IDs.
I guess you are seeing a range of approaches and perspectives, but I think it is possible to find a workflow that allows IDing to most specific taxon that will not be disruptive to others.
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Some of us are more literal than others, I guess. To me, it’s a false statement to say “it’s as good as it can be” if it isn’t. I don’t care what others do, but I care what I do. So I will avoid multiple species observations in the Unknowns that have something in common besides “life.” I will mark them reviewed and move on. I am okay with changing my previous way to this one in order to not cause other people problems. And I am happy that people answered my original question so that I understand where they are coming from. Thanks, everyone.
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What is the difference, practically, between “State of Matter: Life” and “Unknown”?
“Life” makes it clear that someone tried to identify it, but couldn’t get any further than that, while “Unknown” is a much more vague category that mostly includes observations from people who don’t understand that they need to add an ID.
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If given the choice between IDing Unknowns and Lifes, I think most users would pick Unknowns, as there are some good observations in there (among the chaff) that users have just forgotten to an ID to or didn’t know to. Life usually means it is either a low quality observation, an observation of multiple species, or one that the observer hasn’t come back to (and likely won’t).
Life can also be Kingdom Disagreements (11K waiting. Filter to your chosen location? Every little helps) that tripped over homonyms.
Crassula?
Erica?
I seem to find a NEW one every day!
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I regularly go through unknowns of southern Spain.
I pick “Life” when I really can’t tell what the organism is.
I often add rough identification such as Plantae or Insecta . My thinking on that is that this allows me to clear the Unknowns relatively quickly and that a rough ID will increase the chances of an observation being noticed by someone who can make a higher level identification. At the very least the observation will not be stuck at Unknown.
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I’ve always had difficulty understanding when it is appropriate to mark an observation “As good as it can be.” That seems like a very presumptuous conclusion for many of us to make. I don’t even apply it to a few moth genera on which I have published ID articles in peer-reviewed journals. I see the use of that label being over-applied by identifiers who are subconsciously answering a different question: “I personally can’t ID this any better and I don’t think anyone else can.” IMHO, the label should be reserved for use by experts in a particular taxon who can properly address a different question: “Can a more specific (lower) taxon be applied to a photo of this organism by someone/anyone given the quality of the image(s) and the present state of our knowledge on the taxon/group?” Irrespective of what I think can be accomplished with a given image, it’s the latter question which ought to be the basis for “Yes” or “No” on that DQA, and that should limit the number of identifiers who are qualified to make that judgement.
But perhaps I have strayed from the original iNaturalist concept of this particular DQA question.
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It’s not difficult for observers to fix - albeit not while out in the field. Three plants in one photo … use the image cropping tools available to anyone with a computer and submit them individually. Only takes a couple of minutes usually.
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I actually haven’t seen this much. Usually if there’s multiple pictures of multiple things, like one flower, one cat and a rock, or something, I’ll see the “life” ID and that makes sense to me, but 3 plants definitely can be more specific than that. I’ll ID “life” for when I actually can’t tell if it’s a plant or an animal mainly, but that’s because it’s as specific as I can be. I think cthawley said is probably the logic behind it, and I can’t really think of another reasoning other than error or some kind of confusion as to how to ID.
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I often use “as good as it can be” on my own observations where I identified it to genus, someone agreed with me, and I seriously doubt the observation is good enough to get it to species. That gets such observations out of Needs ID sooner rather than never.
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But how or why would Life be better than Unknown? People like you ID Unknowns.
Who will choose to ID Life? Who works thru the Needs ID at broad IDs, rather than the taxon specialists each in their chosen corner. For the really can’t tell what the organism is you can Mark as Reviewed.
The result of a search for “Unknowns” is all the observations labelled either “Unknown” or “Life,” right?
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