Are you bored? no photos to post? your iNat notification queue is empty?
Fear not, there always something you can do!
San Diego County has a lot of "unknown" observations and the number is going up. This happens when someone adds an observation without an identification (usually a new user or the occasional mis-hap).
How can you help?
-Click on the "Explore tab"
-Enter "San Diego County" in the location field
-Click on filters and in the "Categories", select the bottom right symbol. It looks like a dotted leaf with a question mark in the center. Finish by clicking "Update Search".
Congratulations! You are now looking at nearly 2,000 unknown observations from San Diego County. Click on the observations and add an ID. For any organism, you don't need to spend an enormous amount of time trying to figure out what it is. Just enter a broad ID such as Vascular Plants or Fungus, including Lichens or Winged and Once-winged Insects. Of course if you can refine the ID, please do so!
This simple action will get the observation out of "unknown" status and a future identifier who focuses on plants or insects will be able to see that observation in their search.
You may run into photos of pets or house/yard plants. That's ok. Just enter an ID (refined or broad) and make sure you scroll down and under "organism is wild", select the box for "no". This will kick the observation into a "casual" grade, which scientists can disregard for their research projects. For certain animal like dogs, cats, cows, the observation might automatically go into "casual" grade. In this case, you don't have to worry about selecting the the "organism is wild" box.
You may run into photos that are so blurry you can't tell at all what it is, or a photo of a road or an object or a kid making funny faces. For these simply enter "human" and the observation will automatically be assigned a "casual" grade. Think of it as human error :)
Here is a good example of someone using iNat as a Nextdoor platform to ask what this construction is all about: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/110463132
You may run into observations that are simply "State of matter Life". These are observations that might not be able to be IDed based on current photos. This happens when the observer has applied an ID such as "bees", but an identifier missed the bee and IDed the plant it was on instead. The only thing in common between these two is "Life". This also happens a lot with plant diseases because it can be hard to determine if ailments are due to a fungal infection, a viral infection or or even a pest affliction. In this case, just leave the observation as is, unless you have the answer as to what it is that's causing the damage.
You may run into someone who has several photos, but they are of different organisms. In this case, add a comment to the observation such as :
--Great photos, but we can't ID them until they are separated. One species per observation. Here is how to fix it: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-fix-your-observation-with-photos-of-multiple-species/15096
Hopefully the person will fix the observation(s).
I usually don't spend a lot of time doing this, just 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there. But if many of us do this, we can clean up the San Diego data set :) ... and in the process I'm sure you'll run into observations made at MTRP! In fact here is a list for the park:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=81859&subview=map&iconic_taxa=unknown
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