Results
Hey everyone we did it! We survived ID-blitz December 2021!
- 54 people made 30,948 identifications in 48 hours
- Unknowns decreased from 259,666 to 241,321, that is 18,345 unknowns cleared
- Plantae stayed nearly the same (though not without hard work!) changing from 596,605 to 596,422
- Fungi rose from 502,575 to 504,192
- Animalia decreased from 45,570 to 44,476
- All remaining kingdoms are about the same (Protozoa 1,473/1,472)(Chromista 1,265/1,270)(Bacteria 1,263/1,249)(Viruses 963/969)(Archaea 31/30)
- Total kingdom level observations rose from 1,149,745 to 1,150,081
You will be contacted directly with your individual number of IDs made.
@marina_gorbunova, @sue1001, @wildskyflower, @peakaytea, @paloma, @annkatrinrose, @lynnharper, @sdjbrown, @arboretum_amy, @richyfourtytwo, @danieldas, @beetle_mch, @roysh, @vireyajacquard, @antrozousamelia, @egordon88, @abhijatshakya, @driftlessroots, @helmwige, @mmmmbugs, @elschongar, @rainhead, @avocat, @trh_blue, @lisa_bennett, @odonut, @machi, @sambiology, @deboas, @kevinfaccenda, @glisby, @teawren, @dallonweekes, @fseichter, @lappelbaum, @ncb1221, @dianastuder, @jmillsand, @blastcat, @jonathan_mack, @navaneethsinigeorge, @trscavo, @ionam, @kitbeard, @calopogon, @fuzzyspider, @caja-manga, @jbecky, @naturejeanne, @lera, @kristalwatrous, @hederahelix, @emilyearthquake, @wkostick
Edit: I didn't consider checking this right when the event ended, but as of 1 hour after event end time, 3855 observations identified during the event are research grade.
Edit 2: more breakdowns!
Category/Count/% of All
Plants/16,509/53.4
Insects/8,048/26.0
Fungi/2,174/7.0
Other Animals/1,133/3.7
Birds/793/2.6
Other/657/2.1
Arachnids/389/1.3
Mammals /443/1.4
Ray-Finned Fish/ 242/0.8
Mollusks/212/0.7
Reptiles/120/0.4
Amphibians/101/0.3
Protozoa/81/0.3
Chromista/41/0.1
All/30,943/100.0
評論
I didn't note these numbers at exactly the start time of the event, but I had a couple of people express interest in them a few hours in.
Life went up slightly from 34,394 to 34,553
Total Needs ID went up by about 10k, from 34,060,468 to 34,070,842 simply because people upload new observations constantly
That was an awesome event. Thanks so much Amy!
26 more days at the same rate would clear all unknowns (if math is correct)
This was fun! And exhausting, even though I took breaks. Let's do it again!
I think you're right, a little over 26 days. We should recruit more people :)
My 1 ID of a mud pot to sulfolobus makes Archaea the biggest % change lol
Good work everyone! So many plants. So. Many. Plants. It was a relief to finally run across a pile of scat or a rock
Maybe I'm just sick of clearing Unknowns, but I think it would be fun to have a blitz where we move as many Needs ID observations to Research Grade as possible. Maybe even pair up, if possible, so if, for example, I can take an observation from genus to species, my ID partner could then come along and bump it to Research Grade. Then we could switch and I'd bump their IDs onward to Research Grade.
Does that make any sense? Probably not, I'm a little bleary-headed here, I can't imagine why.
@paloma You make good point. When I conceived of it, I wasn't so much thinking of "clearing" the kingdoms, more that people could work on kingdoms if they dislike unknowns or got tired of unknowns. It's also fine if people worked on neither unknowns nor kingdoms! (Confession: I got tired of unknowns quickly and ended up doing most of my IDs on toyon bushes that just needed one ID to get to RG. Heh.)
There's a trade-off between having the event feel too complicated/restrictive and having it feel unfocused. From comments I've seen so far, some people definitely wanted more of a defined goal and indeed it seems like a subset of you made up your own goal of clearing unknowns from particular states/provinces, which is cool.
@lynnharper That sounds fun, although it might be hard to find the right participants. You'd need people who thought they knew enough about whatever taxon in whatever area to confidently produce RG. Certainly I wouldn't want to encourage people to jump to RG if they didn't actually have certainty in the IDs.
Unknowns are hard to do without a break. I had a goal for myself but only got 2/3rds of it done in the time. Part of that was because of other commitments during the time frame, and part of it was just needing to take a break. I can only handle so many blurry photos of who knows what at a time!
On a related note, can anyone explain why when you compare your own ID numbers on the profile page and on the IDs page, they are different? And for me, the IDs page (IDs made for others) is a few hundred higher than the profile ID total. Is it because of IDs I made then withdrew later?
@vireyajacquard I think the profile page stats just take a while to regenerate, which is why they're often out of sync with the IDs page.
Wow, we really did well! I have never cleared unknowns before, so that was all new to me. It was pretty exhausting, but I'd do it again sometime in the future! Thanks @arboretum_amy for keeping us organized!
@vireyajacquard yes, one of the pages counts all ids and another only those that active now.
I quickly learned I don’t know enough to clear unknowns or make IDs at the kingdom level, except for moving a few mushrooms from unknown to fungi. So I used it to concentrate on the one genus I usually focus on. There is a huge backlog and many mistaken IDs because there are 2 common confusions, and one of the experts has given me some tips.
Until I learn more, I hope I can join events and continue to learn.
The Unknown link never did load for me. But I worked thru the other links. Mostly, frustrating, mark as reviewed, next.
Then I tweaked the URLs to Africa, and ploughed on till I hit that barrier where others have tried and failed.
But, each obs that moved, even one taxon level, was rewarding to do! Thanks, Amy.
My favourite was a 'four leaved clover' in Brazil - which is Marsilea, helicopter fern.
@arboretum_amy, I agree it might be hard to find partners if we wanted to do this by pairs, but do you (or others) think it would be hard to find people to help with a Research Grade blitz? I kind of assume that most people who are willing to participate in any sort of ID blitz know enough about something to move observations to Research Grade, but am I wrong about that? I could easily be wrong, I guess; I just don't have a good feel for most identifiers' expertise.
@lynnharper but you need to consider how wide that something is and how well ided this by others, plus geography.
@marina_gorbunova, true! Maybe I should organize an ID blitz just for where I feel most comfortable (New England) and see if we can push a few thousand observations to Research Grade in a short amount of time. @karro_frost, would you be interested in such a project, especially if we concentrated on plants?
@lynnharper @arboretum_amy I think it'd be fun to organize something to move to research grade, even by pairs. @elschongar Imagine if we worked together to ID mulleins in tandem...I could ID the pieces I know, you could finish them off, perhaps you could find an expert to get to RG those that don't quite make it.
Or, @marina_gorbunova, I could ID to insects, and you could narrow further, and perhaps I could learn something about moving beyond just a "winged insect" IDs.
For me it was a great experience, even though I didn't make as many IDs, I thank everyone who put energy into making the ID-blitz December 2021 happen.
I'm just starting out, so I focused on the unknows, but I don't have the knowledge to make it in DG yet. Still it was a good learning process.
I participated in the mentoring program organized by @trh_blue, it was great to give me a little more confidence.
As far as trying other formats, I believe it would be something hybrid between these two experiences. Organizing working groups of people interested in specific taxons, trying to get people who are starting out together with others who have a lot of experience. That way those who are starting out try to go as far as they can in identifying those specific taxa, and the experienced ones go on reviewing and coming up with the RG when possible. And those who like it can leave tips for beginners on how to advance in observations or some hint to not fall into a mistake, I particularly learn a lot in the exchange with other people.
I am not fully proficient in English, so sometimes that gets in the way as well, and I apologize for any shortcomings in the exchange of messages.
caja-manga
@peakaytea yeah, I asked a couple of times on the forum if someone wants to go through insects, if you're interested, I'm sure open to collaborate!
I didn't get as much done as I wanted because I got a really bad migraine. :(
I prefer to follow up on other people's high level IDs rather than going through unknowns. During this ID-blitz I discovered that I also like to go through Life and help with disagreements over whether something is a fungus (lichen) or a plant (moss or liverwort usually).
@peakaytea, you were one of the people I was thinking of! Let's start thinking about this for real (maybe February?) and I definitely want @arboretum_amy in on this, too.
@marina_gorbunova - what were you thinking of with insects? I’m Ok at getting most to order, sometimes to family. I’d be happy to help go through some.
@lisa_bennett personally I want to clear them all down to orders (or lower where possible), for that I'm ok with anything that others want to do, I can check all ids at those level and lower or just be happy to have somebody else going through them with me, they're at 117,5k now and most of them are not hard ones like mines and galls, and as there're now 30k of viewed by me but still at insecta/pterygota, if a person wants to add another id to push them further, that would be much appreciated too.
@marina_gorbunova, cool, I can absolutely help with that! I’ll tick along at my end as well, and maybe I can help you make a dent in them :)
All the ideas and collaboration make me so happy. Anyone who wants to create working groups, events, or both, know that I would be happy to provide a logistical/planning backbone and resources. And of course, much thanks to Amy and Michele for their hard work. I was barely involved this time.
Speaking of, I am hoping to set up a round 3 of mentorship. It's still experimental of course. Anyone who can offer even a few minutes of help (eg fill in a test form so I can have sample data), or who wants to be more involved, please let me know. Work will only begin in earnest after Jan 3rd or so for a target date of late January or early February.
@lappelbaum me too migraine. I need to pace myself better. I need a target that I can, reasonably, work towards.
I have been inspired to bookmark a new Unknown URL for the Western Cape - 70 pages which I will take gently. Picking out the few I can easily move along. Every little helps - especially to encourage new observers away from - but nobody saw it!!
@dianastuder for me it was too much screen time (even with blue light filter) AND a cold front passing through AND got my Covid booster on Friday. I took my extra meds (on top of my daily stuff) but it didn't help at all.
Yay for the booster - I need to wait till January.
It is just ... so tempting ... to pull another page and see what I can clear, and oh wow what is that ...
The notifications trickle in as I work, and that forces. Just. One. More. Until suddenly I couldn't see any more.
I'm so sorry to hear we had multiple migraine attacks from the event! I've never gotten one from screen time, but I suffer about 2 episodes per year.
I also have a headache through this whole day, I doubt it's from ids, but who knows.
I will now go back to my regular habit of doing a few pages of unknowns a day. I have a system I've using for a while, based on dates of uploads. Because what I am looking at has been well picked-over, most are plants, which I'm happy to get to family if I can. (Until this blitz I have generally left alone the ones I could only recognise as dicots or monocots. But perhaps now I will add those IDs too.) I love to find something amongst old unknowns like a snake or a frog that many people must have seen but not noticed before. Some of those can go to research grade very quickly once they are out of "unknown". It is a shame that the observer did not give them a basic ID when they uploaded them.
I hope all of you suffering headaches are feeling better soon!
oh noooo not headaches! I suppose there will always be some extra pressure in an ID blitz which isn't so intense for the ID marathon. Perhaps we should alternate them to prevent burnout.
I also had a headache, coincidentally, but not from IDs. I've been trying to beat the Hard campaign of a new game I got. Plus I'm starting to think I'm approaching the need for glasses... genetically, they were inevitable, but I like(d) having 18/20 vision.
Maybe harder, but it would be interesting to have an event refining observations between phylum and class (or phylum and order). This event definitely (and not at a all surprisingly) increased the stuff at those ranks. Some like phylum tracheophyta do have a significant fraction of broadly easy things to refine, mixed with a fraction where it seems relatively obvious that 'cannot be improved' would be appropriate, like a small chunk of wood or a pile of miscellaneous plant litter with no obvious target. Some other areas are obviously much harder and would require specific expertise to refine or even be confident refinement isn't possible.
Dear ID Blitz-ers, I was inspired by this group clearing a swath of unknowns in the Pacific NW, so I've been slowly working on "clearing" areas of unknowns throughout the world starting with the easiest places (lowest number of unknowns).
Here's the areas that are currently unknown free:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/areas-throughout-the-world-cleared-of-unknowns?tab=observations&subtab=map
And a link to keep them cleared: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?per_page=100&iconic_taxa=unknown&order=asc&without_taxon_id=48460&project_id=123773
Cool @sue1001! I might try to help with that, it sounds like fun. May I suggest an edit to your "keep them cleared" link though? Currently you're using iconic_taxa=unknown, but that also includes things like protozoans that have no iconic taxon of their own. I usually use identified=false instead, which will only bring up observations without IDs. If you want to include observations at State of Matter Life as well, you could use https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=unknown&without_taxon_id=47126%2C47170%2C1%2C47686%2C48222%2C67333%2C131236%2C151817
@fluffyinca that is a super helpful tip! I was wondering what all those protozoans with IDs were doing in my project. So the link to keep those areas cleared of unknowns would be:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?per_page=100&identified=false&project_id=123773
@paloma as soon as the community ID is anything other than "unknown" or "state of matter life" it is no longer included in the project - so it will no longer show up in the "keep them cleared link." I was really just focused on that first sort - getting observations from "Unknown" to someplace they can actually be identified.
Do you think there is a need for subsequent identifiers to find them? That might take a whole other project? I'd be interested to better understand what's needed there...
Filters are tricky! It's hard to handle "pure unknowns" (identified=false) vs. Life vs. stuff that goes in the "unknown" iconic taxon because it doesn't fit in any other iconic taxon vs. stuff that's just glitching. So for example your project home page is displaying 3,987 obs, and almost all of which are Life, with a few glitch taxa thrown in. In contrast that first link you provided (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?per_page=100&iconic_taxa=unknown&order=asc&without_taxon_id=48460&project_id=123773) displays very few observations because it's not pulling those at Life. It sounds like @paloma would prefer the link to include Life, so piggy backing on @fluffyinca 's version of the link, that would be https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=unknown&without_taxon_id=47126%2C47170%2C1%2C47686%2C48222%2C67333%2C131236%2C151817&place_id=any&project_id=123773, and it does pull up the specified observation https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/103400527
Actually I've realized I don't need to use Mara's link because the project rules accomplish the same thing, so...
Original link with no Life and a few glitch taxa: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?per_page=100&iconic_taxa=unknown&order=asc&without_taxon_id=48460&project_id=123773&place_id=any
Or "pure unknowns" only https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?per_page=100&identified=false&order=asc&project_id=123773&place_id=any
Or put the Life back in: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?per_page=100&iconic_taxa=unknown&order=asc&project_id=123773&place_id=any
@arboretum_amy thank you for the summary! That makes sense to me.
If anyone has ideas about how to improve the project, I'm all ears...
I also have been working on expanding the contiguous blob off and on. Using the definition of 'contiguous zone' for crossing waterways, it now includes the entire coastline of the arctic ocean, and borders the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans on both sides. Depending on whether you consider South Africa or Chile to count as touching the southern ocean thats as far as it can be expanded in terms of touching oceans; clearing South Africa by itself would probably take about as long as clearing every Mexican State/country in a path to Chile. @sue1001 I don't think New York, Quebec, or Arizona are in your project yet but they are all clear as of this moment. Washington, Minnesota, Vermont, and Missouri each have only a few hundred unknowns left and would expand the blob, and once Missouri is cleared Mississippi, and Louisiana are both very manageable.
@wildskyflower awesome work! I added New York, Quebec and Arizona. Excellent! And the blob expands.
And nice work on the waterways!
I am still chewing down for the Western Cape. Skimming back in time, it seems we are more or less managing to keep up somehow (mostly from 2021 which surprised me).
And SO rewarding each time another obs moves taxons! I have about 1K to go and enjoying that. Beyond Cape Town there are many quieter rural areas that seem not to have been seen for IDs at all.
Following my notifications from the active project. Where I added an ID to help move it in the right direction, I am now often deleting my no longer useful ID - for places beyond the Western Cape. Even 'the rest of South Africa' takes me to so much I don't know.
and a PS for the next round - @tiwane would like to learn plants ...
I've been working on southeast Texas which is really hard to finish because of Houston. I can probably keep up with Louisiana. I prefer to do areas where I know what I'm looking at and don't have to leave something at a high level ID.
Somehow I stumbled onto moving Ontario mushrooms and such from Unknown into Fungi (or Slime Molds or Lichens). Mindless work, which is about what I'm up for right now. I am leaving observations at Fungi, though, rather than a "better" ID, because that's really all I know. Once the fungi are taken care of (HA!), I'll move onto Animals, where I can do a better job narrowing down the ID. And then onto Plants.
There are only 17, 323 Ontario Unknowns left to go, so maybe by 2023 I'll have cleared Ontario. Isn't obsession grand?
The number of observations which were identified the during this event and also currently at RG has risen from 3855 on the day the event ended to 4,472 observations just now.
新增評論