I have been on INaturlist for a short while, mainly identifying things for others, but no one is helping me with identifying my own specimens. Why won’t any of my observations be recognized? They stay at “Needs ID” and never get any attention. Why does this happen? Any help would be much appreciated.
Most identifications are made by very few people, so there’s a huge number of un-confirmed IDs. Your ten observations are of insects (EDIT: and arachnids!) which tend to be at Needs ID stage for longer than, say, birds - they’re harder for the average user to identify (me for example - I couldn’t confirm any of your IDs!) Be patient.
Yesterday, one of my bird observations reached Research Grade after eight months :)
Your Casual observations likely won’t get any attention since you don’t have photos or audio recordings. Arthropod photos can take a while to get reviewed since there are fewer IDers knowledgable about those and some won’t be IDable to speces regardless. I suggest you crop your photos of small subjects to make it easier for IDers and only post the best shots (avoid posting out-of-focus images when possible).
Welcome to the forum, Marshall!
You may find these resources helpful:
This tutorial: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-get-identifications-for-your-observations/
This wiki: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/observing-identifying-wildlife-wiki/
This thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/little-interaction-by-the-community/
As well as the “Related topics” that appear at the bottom of each thread.
As you are in USA I wouldn’t be able to help anyway. But having looked at a few of your recent observations, I’m afraid there just isn’t enough detail visible for them to be identified. You need close-ups, several views, and you really need to know which aspects of e.g. a spider are going to be useful for its identification. How did you identify them initially? The characters which you examine when making an identification are the characters someone else needs to see. For spiders this is usually lateral view of a palp if it is a male, or the epigyne if it is female; overall body shape and pattern; arrangement of the eyes; close-up of the cephalothorax if there is any ornamentation here.
If you’re really interested in a specimen and really want a confirmation, find out some of the top identifiers of that taxon, and politely DM or tag them. Note that they have no obligation to help you, but you never know if one might take a look at it.
You need to be much more patient. Most observations that get instant attention only do so because they are: (1) of well-known species that are fairly easy to identify, and (2) provide photos that make the identification relatively straightforward. AFAICS, none of the observations you’ve made since you started a couple of weeks ago fall into that category.
PS:
Your first four non-casual observations are all of the same beetle observed at exactly the same time and place - they should be grouped together as a single observation.
It’s normal for observations of harder to ID or less well known taxa to stay at needs ID, I looked through your observations and there was one I could identify.
In the future feel free to contact me for any ant or wasp IDs, I specialize in those and am familiar with the fauna of your area, unfortunately I don’t know spiders or beetles well.
Try posting a bird and you’ll see how quick identifiers can be! Some birds I post get their first ID in mere seconds 
The truth is, there are far fewer people knowledgable about certain groups of taxa. I’ve had spiders sitting unidentified for years before someone comes along who knows what it is. How long it takes also depends on other factors like geographic location. But at the end of the day, identifiers only ID what they are interested in and knowledgable about, and there is no getting away from the fact that there are well-known species and others almost nobody in the world knows or cares much about.
Today my bird got an id within one hour…
I’ve had my bird observations IDed or given an agreeing ID before I even finished editing them or adding notes. Like within a minute. It’s rather ridiculous. Plants and insects can sit a long while before someone agrees with or adds an ID. I recall that I finally got an agreeing ID on one of plant obs only after a decade had passed.
Most of my bird observations have been quickly ID’d, but this one has been sitting at needs ID for two years because despite being well lit and in focus and in Southern California, it happens to be an cruddy angle :P https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/244839155
I think it’s helpful to make the most identifiable photo the first one. The photo of the bird’s tail is likely unidentifiable, but the second photo of the bird’s underside, legs, and head is likely more distinctive. I’d make that one the first photo so an identifier skimming through a long page of unidentified bird photos will be more likely to take a closer look.
The reason your observations aren’t getting IDed is because arthropod identifiers on iNaturalist are burned out from dealing with the endless stream of junk IDs coming from the app CV (unlike the website CV which gives reasonable higher level taxon IDs). This obviously isn’t your fault and hopefully one day the iNaturalist app developers will fix this problem.
@zygy - Are you referring to the difference between iNatNext and the website suggestions being that iNatNext sometimes offers species level suggestions as the top suggestion whereas the website only offers top suggestions that are coarser than species? The evidence I’ve looked at suggests that this hasn’t resulted in an increase in incorrect suggestions and in fact initial IDs of observations coming through iNatNext are less likely to corrected with disagreeing IDs. Though I suspect this might be because of 2 other differences with iNatNext: (a) showing confidence scores and (b) suggesting Top IDs in more situations because higher ranks such as Order are allowed. Both of these I suspect also decrease the number of incorrect suggestions selected by observers.
FWIW - these were uploaded through the website and the suggestions on the web and iNatNext are about the same (ie we’d prefer the observer clicks on Subfamily Salticinae, which didn’t happen here)
Sorry to be that guy, but I have observed spiders and those are not insects.
I would do more things with birds, as those are my true passion, but I don’t own a phone so I can’t take pictures of them. I have an Ipad, so I can take spiders and insects in my home and then release them after I photograph them.
Thank you! I have been wanting to be on Inaturalist, but I have not had any device that I could use it on. In my free time in class, I now constantly identify for others. I am happy to finally have Inaturalist, and thank you for these resources.
The casual IDs were before I had any sort of camera, and thank you for your help.
My camera quality is very poor right now, and it only focuses from a certain angle.