You can use a specific url btw that will show all your ids of that taxon.
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Here’s an analogy that might be useful: suppose you have a workbench with dozens of specialized parts and tools. Keeping track of where they are is challenging but necessary for you to work efficiently. That’s going to get a lot harder if people are coming in and moving things around while you’re not there—even if they’re putting the tools in the “right” place!
It’s basically an “it’s easier to find things if they stay where you put them” issue, for me.
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you can use this:
This will given you your observations on the explore page, and then you just tick the ‘your observations’ box
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No, I meant an actual url, as @thebeachcomber linked it, but you can also add a url for identifier - you.
They’re all URLs! :-)
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I’m lazy to write that I mean one you customize for your purposes, ofc every web page is a result of it.)
Interesting, I hadn’t known about that particular option. It has some advantages over inaturalist.org/identifications, but also some disadvantages. With reference to the present discussion, the biggest disadvantage is that observations will still only “stay where I left them” if I also opt out of community ID. For instance, this observation:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/118003710
Is not among the set of observations returned by:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?ident_taxon_id=76696
For what it’s worth, from a usability standpoint the use of taxon_ids is the biggest limitation on me actually using either inaturalist.org/observations?ident_taxon_id= or inaturalist.org/identifications. Manually looking up a number every time you want to search for a taxon is really obnoxious. Were I in a position to redesign iNaturalist’s handling of taxonomy, abolishing taxon_ids is one of the first things I’d do…
When identifying it is observers who have Opted Out for ALL their observations that annoy, and that I skip. Someone I respect who opts out on a deliberate case by case base - absolutely their right to chose their appropriate workflow (those I skip by our mutual agreement)
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It sounds like your overarching goal is to have observations
and use iNaturalist as a personal database. If that’s the case, you should opt out of Community ID, but then it’s unclear to me why you want other user’s input.
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I can be interested in both my IDs and other people’s IDs! :-)
From my point of view, the ideal solution to the issues I’ve mentioned here would be a selector switch somewhere that chooses between “show observations by my ID” and “show observations by community ID”. If there were such a switch, I’d opt in to community ID. One of the great things about digital data is that, unlike a physical workbench, things can easily be in multiple places at once. So my desire to have things stay where I left them can coexist perfectly well with other people moving them around. A forced choice between one or the other is an unfortunate result of iNaturalist’s current structure.
Or, to put it another way, why would you think “personal database” and “community ID” are mutually exclusive?
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(For what it’s worth, I do in fact have a separate personal database, and the ability to relate records in that database to records on iNaturalist is something I would like to maintain and improve. This is a more general problem that I think warrants more attention–many potential use cases of iNaturalist involve relating iNaturalist records to external data of some kind. iNaturalist is currently not well built for this, but I think this is basically a “we didn’t think of doing that” problem and not a “doing that would be any more difficult” problem. That my interest in being able to easily and reliably interact with iNaturalist based on an ID other than the community ID is seen as weird and confusing within the iNaturalist community highlights the issue… I think once you’re working with multiple databases, the need becomes obvious. Suppose records in database A are stored based on identifications made by user X. When you go over to database B, you’ll want to be able to look at the records based on identifications made by user X, too. That doesn’t mean identifications by other users are any less useful in a global sense, that’s just not the way you’ll be wanting to interact with the observations within one particular context.)
Most users of this data would want to know what the organism is, or is thought to be – the Research Grade ID, in iNaturalist’s case. Few researchers would organize a project around identifications by a particular person. They might use identifier’s name to help evaluate doubtful records. So I don’t share your concern, @aspidoscelis .
However, if opting out of community ID is how you want to use iNaturalist, you can.
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I think you’re thinking of something different than I am. :-)
Here’s an example: I’m doing ecological research that includes recording the plants present at each study plot. I want to ensure that my records are as verifiable as possible, so that other researchers don’t have to simply take my word that I saw a particular species. However, the volume of data makes collecting physical specimens impractical. iNaturalist doesn’t provide as thorough documentation as physical specimens would, but it gives me a good tradeoff, I can get some level of verifiability with high volume. All the annoying data management issues are already handled within a really well-designed UI, and there are good structures in place for other researchers to provide input or correction on my IDs.
One role for the iNaturalist records is documenting what plant I called by what name at each plot. So, yeah, for them to fill that role well, you’re going to want to be able to view the records based on my IDs.
(Also, for what it’s worth, I think the norm in ecological research at present is basically, “Documenting biodiversity is just too hard, we’re not going to bother.” So I see this particular scenario as a big need in the research world that iNaturalist is almost perfectly designed to fill.)
Or, a simpler example: Suppose I collect some herbarium specimens and document them with photographs, too, then upload the photographs to iNaturalist. If it’s easy to look up both the herbarium specimens and the iNaturalist observations by the collector’s identification, it’s going to be really easy to find the iNaturalist observation that goes with the specimen. And it’s going to be reliable across a much wider range of weird contexts than, at least, the obvious alternatives I can think of.
I’m familiar with herbarium databases. You know that herbarium specimens often do get annotated, though the process is slower than on iNaturalist. The two databases I use most allow you to search on collector’s name and get the collector’s identification, as well as a most recent identification. So no problem if you want to coordinate them with iNaturalist data.
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Yes, in most herbarium databases it’s easy to search for the collector & collector’s ID. On iNaturalist, it isn’t.
@aspidoscelis – I am very glad to hear that you value documenting biodiversity. As you say, too many ecologists feel that reporting growth forms is enough, and it’s really not. For one thing, it allows non-natives to slip into the habitat unreported.
Several years ago I met a researcher who documented the distribution of plants in an unusual, difficult-to-access region. I asked if a particular upland sedge was included in her “bunchgrass” category. She had no idea because they didn’t recognize or record species, only “bunchgrasses.” So frustrating.
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For what it’s worth, I’m thinking specifically of cases where species-level IDs are recorded in ecological data, but there’s no documentation associated with those IDs. If the data says they recorded Bommeria hispida, can anyone else verify that ID short of going out to the site and hoping it’s still there? iNaturalist is well-suited to providing documentation in a way that doesn’t quickly become prohibitively time-consuming. When you’re checking that record of Bommeria hispida, you want it to be easy to search by that ID. If you want “records of Bommeria hispida”, you probably want the community ID; if you want “records that this ecologist called Bommeria hispida”, you probably don’t.
I agree, though, ecologists who don’t want to bother identifying the plants in the first place are another source of frustration!
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I see. In the small dataset I downloaded (200 observations), it was easy to find the original identifications by looking for disagreeing identifications and checking what those were. In a huge dataset, or one with controversial taxa, that could get too cumbersome.
I wonder if iNaturalist has a mechanism for personalized data requests.
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