One last push! Results will be tallied 9am Monday!

Here's where we stand this morning, on the LAST DAY to upload and identify, and what we can do to keep these good standings!

Observations: We are 10th place worldwide. Review your observations again. Did you get everything of yours uploaded? In addition to pictures, did you remember to upload any audio recordings you took?

Species: We are 15th place worldwide.
--See if someone has provided an ID or correction that you can learn from and respond to.
--Look at your photos and see if there is an extra plant, bug or gall hiding in there that you didn't notice before. You can upload the same photo multiple times and use for multiple species observations, just make a coarse ID and maybe a comment ("Dicots" and "The pink flower in the background") so that people know what organism you want to feature in the photo.

Observers: We are 4th place worldwide. If you led a walk or encouraged one of your contacts to participate, see if they have uploaded their observations, and send them a quick reminder if not. Even one less-than-ideal quality photo by one person qualifies them as an observer, and the hope is that by participating in even a small way they will discover the fun of iNat and participate more fully in the future.

ID's: We are at 45% Research Grade. New observations are still coming in. You KNOW these people have been busy if they are still getting their observations uploaded from a week ago, so give them some iNat love!

Thanks to @carrieseltzer for the following advice on how to help with ID's no matter what your experience level:

"If you haven't helped with identifications yet (or want to do more but are unsure how), find which of these strategies best fits your interest & abilities:

  1. Get the unknown stuff classified broadly (currently 2000+ observations sitting in the "unknown" category). This means adding "plants" or "insects" or "birds" so others can find it more easily.
  2. Get the stuff from a broad category into a finer category (e.g. from "Plants" to "Ferns" or "Insects" to "Lepidoptera").
  3. Get stuff from any of these categories to species.
  4. Confirm species-level identifications for species you know well and can distinguish from lookalikes.
  5. Add comments to help users who may have encountered common errors (copy/paste from iNat Help page).
  6. Mark garden plants/captive animals as captive/cultivated if they aren't already.

Tips to remember:
• Assume people mean well, be kind, and remember everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
• Use the Identify page to work more quickly. (video tutorial)

• Always try to add a more specific identification (i.e. if it's already identified to species, don't add something like "plants" unless you disagree it's that species).
• Don't agree blindly with other people's IDs.
• Check in daily to see updates and withdraw or correct earlier identifications if needed.
• You can turn off notifications for confirming identifications in your account settings (highly recommended to reduce a flood of uninteresting notifications)."

Posted on May 5, 2019 01:46 PM by dbarber dbarber

Comments

Wow, I'm impressed with our collective identification effort! There really wasn't a lot of low-hanging fruit at the end here when I was looking for easy, charismatic species to confirm at the 11th hour. There's still plenty to continue to refine and improve over time, but I think we've done well for the deadline!

Posted by carrieseltzer almost 5 years ago

Add a Comment

Sign In or Sign Up to add comments