Identifying iNaturalist observations
- As being not an expert, I very rarely can and do identify anything at species level.
- All my IDs are always supportive upto my best guess taxon level; any disagreements are explicitely marked as such [0].
- When not sure I still try to give my best guess to advance/shift community ID.
- Most of the time, when community taxon improvement is linear, I only advance it with more specific IDs than previous ones.
But when opinions split, community taxon improvement is branching, and even most generic IDs make a difference, I try to shift it to the branch I believe to be the right one even by giving less specific IDs.
This is especially useful in pre-maverick cases [1], when even broadest ID may shift the equilibrium to better community taxon and bring the observation to attention of experts.- I just don't expect people to give / wait for expert-level only IDs in cases, where even amateurs can help. :)
- I also like to believe it will be we — the amateurs, not the professionals, who will save the world one day! :) Just don't know for sure when it will happen…
[0] https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/13503-identification-disagreements-are-now-explicit
[1] https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pre-maverick
