Projektin 2021 Jan-Feb ID-a-thon Päiväkirja

Hi everyone. Look! An update, finally! We will try to be more punctual next week.

Week three. If you're still making IDs, congrats for making it so far! If you've had to skip a little time, it's the perfect time to get back into the groove... welcome back ;)

Remember, slow and steady -- this is a marathon, not a race. Take breaks, drink plenty of water, and stand up and stretch periodically. You can do it!

First of all, Total% ... what have we done together, in this short span of time?

61 people have made a total of 18155 IDs!
Over the span of the entire competition, that's 71656 IDs! Fantastic!

Improve%

1st @natashataylor, 250.5% (1373 IDs added)
2nd @philiptdotcom, 207.2% (1688)
3rd @matthewvosper, 119.5% (794)
4th @abigstone, 117.7% (67)

10th @lynnharper, 106.2%
20th @roshan2010, 101.9%
30th @lera, 100.4%

40th 100.2%
50th 100.03%

Old%

1st @sedgequeen, 208
2nd @lisa_bennett, 66
3rd @ddubois2, 50
4th @lynnharper, 38

This will be the fourth and final prize for ddubois2. After this if ddubois2 wins again the prize will got to the next person down.

And now, the grand reveal... what is Mystery% this week??
Most IDs of organisms observed on the day @trh_blue's cat was born--August 26 2019.

1st @navaneethsinigeorge , 101
2nd @esummerbell, 23
3rd @csledge, 19
4th @roshan2010, 3

If you are one of the top 4 in any category, you win a shiny virtual certificate declaring you a Top Four [your category] Winner of Third Week of ID-a-thon. Coming to your Messages inbox soon.

We can do this together! five more weeks to go!

The hint for next week's Mystery% is:
Set some trends

I know you're curious, so here's the taxa used for our calculations, formatted as
word mentioned in song/taxon used

Blue went through the songs to find the taxa. Amy chose representative taxa. @radak, our programmer, had a fun adventure trying to get the API query to play nice.
The list is probably not exhaustive and some of them are definitely open to interpretation.

Acorns/Quercus
Bee/Anthophila
Blackbird/Turdus merula
Blue jay/Cyanocitta cristata
Bullfrog/Lithobates catesbeianus
Butterfly/Papilionoidea
Chocolate/Theobromacacao
Coral/Scleractinia, Alcyonacea
Corn/Zea mays
Dog/Canis familiaris
Dove/Columbidae
Eagle, Kite/Accipitridae
Elephant/Elephantidae
Fish/Actinopterygii
Horse/Equus caballus
Lizard/Sauria
Many veiled references/Cannabis
Monkey/Simiiformes, excluding humans
Mustard/Brassicaceae
Norwegian wood/Picea abies
Octopus/Octopoda
Onion/Allium
Penguin/Sphenisciformes
Pepper/Capsicum
Pig/Sus scrofa
Pilchards/Sardina pilchardus
Poppies/Papaveraceae
Raccoon/Procyon
Rice/Oryza sativa
Strawberry/Fragaria
Tangerines/ Citrus aurantium, Citrus deliciosa, Citrus clementina
Tiger/Panthera tigris
Truffle/Tuber
Tulips/Tulipa
Walrus/Odobenidae
Wine/Vitis vinifera
Worm/Annelida

47532
51015
47224
47178
85552
47204
2715
5067
47851
630955
47332
936377
50299
47144
47357
65979
12716
41661
47491
8229
55800
63567
42134
47458
209233
48448
48517
67564
43692
61381
41967
64340
72032
331122
765426
708233
79519
41764
118600
120278

and NOT
43583

Hi everyone!

Week two is over... how are you feeling? Have you learned something new this week? Please share :)

Remember, slow and steady -- this is a marathon, not a sprint. Take breaks, drink plenty of water, and stand up and stretch periodically. You can do it!

First of all, Total% ... what have we done together, in this short span of time?
This week, 67 people have made a total of 20,683 IDs!

Over the span of the entire competition, that's 56,525 IDs! Wow!

Improve%

Note: we are counting the proportion of your weekly IDs to your pre-competition IDs. We've decided to do it this way, rather than as a cumulative count, to encourage you to form a regular/steady habit rather than binge-identifying.
Cumulative count will be provided at the end, and if you absolutely must know it now, you can calculate it yourself using information from the Resources post.

1st @natashataylor, 178%
2nd @philodendronjoe, 141%
3rd @abigstone, 138%
4th @troisha, 135.7%

10th @paulexcoff, 107.8%
20th @gheaton, 103.0%
30th @oliverc29, 100.85%

40th 100.45%
50th 100.11%
60th 100.02%

We have a new category this week, the one you previously voted on. It is "most IDs on observations 5 years old" aka added on or before December 31 2015.

old%

1. @ddubois2, 314
2. @sedgequeen, 294
3. @esummerbell and @natashataylor, 59
4. @michaelpirrello, 53

And now, the grand reveal... what is Mystery% this week??
Beetles? Nope actually it is The Beatles! Tricked you! The following people have ID'd the most taxa mentioned in the lyrics of the British superstar band.*

1. @mike_h, 628
2. @philodendronjoe, 85
3. @ddubois2, 58
4. @kemper, 24

*for details on how we calculated this week's mystery% see next journal post.

The hint for next week's Mystery% is:
National Cherry Popsicle Day

If you are one of the top 4 in any of the three categories, you win a link to an adorable image of an organism of your choice. Multiple wins = multiple taxa. Send trh_blue a direct message to let her know your choice.
Since we are seeing repeat winners, any individual can only get four prizes total. We will give the prize to the next-ranking person in stead. You can and should be proud of yourself regardless!

To see complete rankings go here.
note: we still have to add old% for the week but we'll do it later because it's late already

One day at a time, don't fade out now! Six more weeks to go!

Do you have a favorite taxon? And you want to be sure to find every observation which might be that taxon?

Or maybe you can think of a taxon people are constantly miss-identifying? (Ugh.)

Introducing your new favorite tricks:
&ident_taxon_id=
and
&without_taxon_id=

How to use them? I'll give an example.

1. Go to identify and type in a taxon. Add any of your preferred settings and hit go. For this example I'll be using Asparagus setaceus, searching for both "needs ID" and "casual"
   https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=casual%2Cneeds_id&taxon_id=75604&photos=true&place_id=any

2. Look at the URL of the page. Find the bit that says "&taxon_id=[number]" and carefully type in additional characters so that it instead reads "&ident_taxon_id=[number]" Now hit enter.
   https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=casual%2Cneeds_id&ident_taxon_id=75604&photos=true&place_id=any
   Assuming you didn't make any typos, you should now be seeing more observations than before.* The new ones are observations where a disagreement has occurred, but at least one person thinks the observation belongs in the taxon you're searching.
   *As long as observations with disagreements exist; they usually do!

3. If you want to look at only observations where there is disagreement, alter the URL again to add an additional component, "&without_taxon_id=[yourtaxonnumberhere]" I find it easiest to add it to the end so that I am sure not to mess up anything in the middle. You should have just produced a URL containing both &ident_taxon_id=[number] and &without_taxon_id=[samenumber]
   https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?quality_grade=casual%2Cneeds_id&ident_taxon_id=75604&photos=true&place_id=any&without_taxon_id=75604

Neat! If you really want to dive into search URL tips and tricks, check out the forum guide: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-use-inaturalists-search-urls-wiki/63

This method also works great when tackling taxa from the list of Computer Vision Clean-Up: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/computer-vision-clean-up-wiki/7281

UPDATE: You might also prefer to look at Explore view rather than Identify. That way if you tab over to the “species” tab it will show you stuff that often gets confused for the species in question. Using my example of Asparagus setaceus, that turns out to look like this: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?ident_taxon_id=75604&photos=true&place_id=any&verifiable=any&view=species&without_taxon_id=75604 I find that very handy for alerting myself to possible "lookalike" taxa.

Of course there's also a built-in way to do that on the About Page of any species:

Clicking the grey numbers in the image corners will show you observations with identifications of both species. So for example, observations identified as both Asparagus setaceus and Asparagus aethiopicus are here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?ident_taxon_id_exclusive=75603,75604&place_id=any&verifiable=any
Actually by looking at this I just learned that &ident_taxon_id_exclusive= the URL modification to use if you want to search for multiple taxa IDs which appear together.

the Resources post has been considerably expanded.

yet to be added:
Identify links
links to Forum (etiquette etc)

please let me know what else you think should be added.

at least one person was accidentally dropped from the participant list. please check the master list to make sure your name is there!

Hi everyone!

It's been a great first week (plus two days). Remember, slow and steady -- this is a marathon, not a race. Take breaks, drink plenty of water, and stand up and stretch periodically. You can do it!

First of all, Total% ... what have we done together, in this short span of time?
69 people have made a total of 35842 IDs!

Improve%

1st @natashataylor , 208%
2nd @zdanko, 172%
3rd @amujcinovic , 150%
4th @troisha , 146%

10th @murphyslab , 117.4%
20th @ddubois2 , 105.8%
30th @ellendale , 101.849%

40th 100.71%
50th 100.37%
60th 100.07%

If you are one of the top 4 in this category, you win the right to tag me (trh_blue) as many times as you want in the next 24 hours and I won't complain. Congrats.

To see complete improve% rankings for this week (and each week) sorted by username go here.

I am still working on up-to-date trackers.

And now, the grand reveal... what is Mystery% this week??
Most withdrawn IDs
It's part of the learning process. I'm proud of you!

1st @zdanko, 144
2nd @philodendronjoe , 47
3rd @oxalismtp, 32
4th @alex_abair, 31

And to all of you, thank you for taking part! Seven more weeks to go!

The hint for next week's Mystery% is:
the beetles

Question for all of you: do you think mystery% should also have prizes?

Hi all.

I'll be adding new links to Resources over the weekend, including an ongoing count of your IDs this year (sorted by date you joined iNat), useful Identify links, and more.

There are also some new answers in the FAQ.

The final category will be "old%", the greatest number of IDs on observations more than five years old -- ie, uploaded up to the last day of 2015.

Results and rankings for week one (Jan 1-9) will be posted on Sunday.

Stay safe
Blue

This list will be updated with Identify links, places to check your progress, info on workshops, and more.

People
Master List of participants
Blue's profile -- main admin
Amy's profile -- co-admin
Even's profile -- co-admin
@radak's profile -- programmer

Identification Guides
slideshow: Identifying Unknowns for Beginners
iNat Getting Started guide
True Flies of the United States -- moderate challenge level

Rankings/Stats

weekly full rankings -- all categories
this is updated manually, if something is missing let me know

How many IDs did I have before the competition started? (takes a minute to load)

tool created by @pisum (thanks)

Q: How will my identifications be counted?
A: automatically! with help from the iNat API.
The project does not count your IDs, it's just for information and journal posts.

Q: why are the project's observations your cat?
A: the purpose of the project is for you to get journals relevant to the project. the observations within it are irrelevant, so I chose my cat because I adore him and why not share his fluffy majesty?

Q: who are the admins?
A: @trh_blue is the main person coordinating this effort, but feel free to send questions to @arboretum_amy as well. @edanko is also helping, but is rather busy ;)

Q: can you give me a hat/stickers/etc if I win?
A: I'm already volunteering a lot of time to this I'm not spending money lmao

Q: can you help me learn more about identifying?
A: yes! check the Forum for information on ID workshops, or you can send me a message.

Q: why did you choose not to use the project to count IDs?
A: There are a few reasons I didn't make the project's observations the ones you'd identify for the competition.
One, there are multiple categories, so I'd have to make several projects, splitting attention. Two, the project cannot differentiate the date IDs were added, only the observation date. Three, I don't want to put focus on volume of IDs, rather on individual self-improvement and collaboration, and having a leaderboard where people are ranked by number of IDs is counter to that ethos.

last updated 9am EST Jan 3 2020

Blue

Hi. I'll be adding an additional category, starting on the second week of the competition.
These are not for mystery%, it will be a regular weekly category.

The approved potential categories are:

greatest % improving IDs at Kingdom/Phylum (rough approximation of your Unknowns activity)

most IDs on obs more than five years old

most IDs of taxa listed on the Forum as needing help to retrain Computer Vision

highest % leading IDs

highest % improving IDs

and you may also suggest a main category, mystery% category, or prize.

You can vote using this form.
Voting starts now and ends Jan. 8th.

I apologise for the delay, I was feeling unwell. Doing much better now :)

Blue