Final Numbers, and Some Thoughts and Questions
You all did a FANTASTIC job with this marathon! At just past 7 PM on Sunday night the 27th, the total number of New England plant observations needing IDs stands at 577,458, a decrease of 12,477 from 48 hours ago. The number of species-level observations is currently 260,883, down 10,961 from Friday night. Simply astonishing! MUCH more than the usual effort on a February weekend (remember, last weekend the total number only decreased by 916 and the species-level number by 557).
(TEN THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE!!!)
I was also able to figure out that at least 518 verifiable New England plant observations were added to iNaturalist on Saturday and Sunday (plus some unknown number added Friday evening). So I think we can safely add 518 to the total number IDed above.
Thank you, everyone! I really enjoyed seeing so many notifications rolling in while I was working, and I bet you felt productive, too! I felt productive, but I also realized, not for the first time, how little I really know about New England plants – yikes. Time to study more this coming field season.
So, now what? Did you enjoy this? Learn something? Are you now hooked on making IDs? Have you resolved to take better photos for your own observations, to make life easier for identifiers? Are you sick of identifying and just want to get back out there and see real plants?
Do you want to do this again sometime? I figured late February was a good time to catch most botanically-inclined iNatters stuck at home, out of the field, so we could do this again next year at this time. Or would you prefer another time of the year? I’m happy to coordinate this sort of project again, if people want, or cooperate with other iNatters, for that matter.
A sobering thought: There are still hundreds of thousands of plant observations in New England that need IDs. Now, many – many! – of these can never be IDed to species, maybe not even to genus, but what are your thoughts on identifications going forward? One of the possibilities I’ve thought about are arranging coordination among active IDers, so that if, say, @patswain works on observations that are currently at Clethra and brings them to C. alnifolia, another identifier could come along right afterward and agree with Pat (assuming we do) and thus get the observation to Research Grade quickly. Or another possibility would be a project that concentrates on difficult-to-ID certain taxa every month, where we’d invite an expert to write a journal article that explains how to separate and actually ID various groups. Or we just start a Plant Identifiers of New England project, post our own observations to it, and work on helping each other out (because I suspect that among us we all post many plant observations every year). Or organize field trips, now that Covid is maybe, possibly, I hope calming down.
Or something else entirely? What do you think?
Comments
Great work motivating all of us Lynn! It was nice to feel like I had a good reason to plow through some taxa that I'd only chipped away at haphazardly in the past year. I do believe @patswain and I have effectively roundhouse-kicked the entire genus Kalmia into very good shape now, in exactly the manner you prescribed (though not intentionally so). The volume of unidentified plants is daunting, but I am actually most dismayed by the preponderance of landscape plants entering the stream and the plethora of haphazard IDs based on a single poor photo. I'm sure I will continue to "clean up" records for locations and taxa as I work my way through the field season, and perhaps this is the best way for observations to improve, when they are directly relevant to an individual's knowledge & interests of a place and/or group of organisms. Many taxa are naturally time-consuming, even with fresh material and mastery of the group, so I am resigned to seeking quality where quality may be had here with reasonable efficiency.
Regardless of whether we organize things like this again, I think this exercise has taught me that 10-12 pages of "to be identified" observations is a manageable and worthwhile task to tackle.
Thanks, @taluswalker! And thanks for your hard work, too. I think there are several reasons why cultivated plants get posted so much: Observers didn't learn that iNat is primarily for wild organisms (iNat is working toward a better on-boarding system), or they truly don't understand the difference between wild and cultivated plants (seriously! I think many, many people have only the slightest shred of understanding of the natural world; maybe iNat can help with that), or they just want to know the name of some cool flower they see somewhere and iNat pops up as the first answer about how to get a plant identified.
As for lousy photos, again, there are a couple of reasons: Observers don't know how to take a good photo, or they don't know what photos are needed to distinguish among species (I'm still learning that myself). Plus iNat encourages putting a tentative ID on every observation as you post it, and while the artificial intelligence suggestions work reasonably well for common New England species, it's definitely not perfect.
The main goal of iNat, as stated by its staff, is to connect people with the natural world. It's not meant to be a perfect tool for biologists to record the presence of properly identified and documented organisms, although the data can sometimes be used that way, with lots of caution. And I completely understand why that means iNat observations can be frustrating for good botanists!
That's why I usually filter for a particular species and skim over the crappy photos. I wish I had the patience that some IDers have who leave useful notes for observers, things like "a photo of the number of needles in a cluster helps a lot with identifying pines" or "any chance you took a photo of a leaf under this tree? (when all they posted was a close-up of bark) That can help with identifying trees." And so on. Also, some observers who are quite good naturalists post tons of observations simply as a way to create a record and a map of what they saw on a site visit, not expecting the photos to be enough for IDers to confirm the observers' IDs, even though those IDs are probably correct.
So, do what you can and quit when you get frustrated. It's all any of us can do, really.
Thanks for organizing the project, Lynn. It was fun, and clearly cleaned up some backlog. It reminded me that I can take better photos than I have for others' identification purposes - not just my record that I'm sure of (and it turns out, sometimes wrong about). I think a lot of the posting of cultivated plants is students in classes, maybe sometimes people who want to know what some plant on the street. I'm not terribly taken with the photos that include the ID tag from the nursery, even if someone is posting to show where they can grow. And I automatically try to ignore plants labeled "Arnold Arboretum" or "Garden in the Woods", I won't know them or won't be sure they aren't some non-native look-alike (or nearly alike).
The added comments to observations- I realized I was saying the same thing over and over, and sometimes wanted to remember what separates one species from its relatives. So I keep a text document of those phrases, do a lot of cut and paste. This works well when I'm going through one genus to work on backlogs, or learn the differences from one fall aster to another (the details do not stick!). A spreadsheet would work well, I just started with a text document.
I liked the middle of the winter, late February date, and would do it again. Formally connecting with other people to finish IDs would be good, it seems to happen informally, I see the same people checking the plants I've named. Or I confirm someone else regularly (and I don't gloat at all when I disagree, nope, (but that is fun)). One point I've thought of, it would be harder to do next year, the easiest species and best photos have been ID'd!
Amazing! I tried to add comments to ones that didn't have photos that I could I.D. making suggestions. I hope people found those helpful! There was a lot of conversations going on with various observers over the weekend and that was fun. It was a great thing to do this weekend while I am laid up with a sore foot, good timing on your part! I think this is a good thing to do at least yearly if not twice a year, but I don't think I could do it more than that, too much like work :-)
@patswain, don't worry about IDs being harder next year - remember the City Nature Challenge comes up in a couple of months and that adds an amazing number of observations. Plus, iNat keeps growing almost exponentially every year, so there will be plenty of easy IDs to make in a year. I mean, I only make easy IDs, because that's really all I know, and there are plenty of easy observations to keep me busy!
@karro_frost, I agree about the conversations with observers (and identifiers) being a lot of fun. But don't feel like you have to conjure up a sore foot every time we do this, ok? ;-)
@lynnharper – this project was so very well-worth doing! And absolutely well worth repeating. Sure, I’ll sign on next time around. I didn't get started till sometime on Saturday, but once I did and found a rhythm, the value of the process became increasingly clear: expanding my horizons beyond my one little state (Vermont), honing my ID skills, and providing much satisfaction at the thought of adding Research Grade observations to iNat's impressive collection. As you point out, there is still much work to do, but I'm up for continuing to chip away at it. And for this first time around, the group’s results are, as you say,"Simply astonishing!" Thanks for organizing this, and thanks for the report!
@cgbb2004, you're welcome! And it's been fun chipping away at Sambucus with you!
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