IDing "unknowns" on iNaturalist
I've spent some time over the last few days IDing unknown organisms on iNaturalist. These are organisms which were uploaded to the site by people who declined to even attempt identifying them. This means that they don't appear in regular searches on the site and often can't progress toward a correct ID - because they're not appearing in the focused searches that actual experts use to actually confirm or deny IDs that others are making on the site.
IDing unknowns is like drinking from the firehose of terrible phone photographs made by normies. It's a nightmare!!! Apparently, if I ID enough of these, I might find a hidden gem that will be interesting to someone... but the vast majority of the time, I'm confirming that a blurry picture of a plant is indeed a plant and then moving on to the next blurry plant.
I do take a certain amount of perverse joy in mass data processing/data cleaning... it itches whatever part of my brain gets pure dopamine from organizing things. And looking at a lot of pictures of plants does, indeed, teach me more about plants... if only barely, through some kind of ambient and untargeted plant-visuals osmosis.
I'll check back in a few weeks and let you know whether any of the plants or bugs I marked as "this is a plant" or "this is a bug" ended up being interesting to anyone. In the meantime, if you do use iNaturalist, I recommend going to the identify page in browser and filtering by your location and by "unknown." You'll see the absolutely worst pictures that anyone in your local area is taking. Here is a link to a search which you can add a location to. Enjoy!!