Rankings Jan 10-16

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!

Julkaistu tammikuu 18, 2021 02:26 AP. käyttäjältä astra_the_dragon astra_the_dragon

Kommentit

Loving the creativity for the mystery category and prizes! :)
Good job with IDs, everyone!

Lähettänyt conboy noin 3 vuotta sitten

Amazing work!

Lähettänyt lisa_bennett noin 3 vuotta sitten

Oh and by the way, nobody correctly guessed this week's mystery. So, the prize of one limerick for the first correct guess sent to me by private message still stands unclaimed.
In this case, you'll have to do a little sleuthing to get the full answer. I will let you know if you're on the right track, but each person still only gets one guess.

Lähettänyt astra_the_dragon noin 3 vuotta sitten

Excellent job with the mystery category. I honestly got salty that I found so few beetles in my unknowns, and what felt like so many Lepidoptera. I kept thinking if only Lepidoptera were the mystery category.

Lähettänyt ddubois2 noin 3 vuotta sitten

Unlike some of my other New Year's resolutions, I seemed to have firmly acquired the habit of dawdling over my morning coffee while making IDs. Congrats, you've made a convert! While doing so, I keep being humbled by how much I don't know: there are TWO white-flowered waterlilies in New England? Oopsie, I didn't know that before this.

I'd love to hear from others in this projects how they speed up their identifying - or do I just need to dawdle over my morning coffee till mid-afternoon?

Lähettänyt lynnharper noin 3 vuotta sitten

I could probably benefit from some speedups too, but honestly dawdling on one ID or another for way longer than I should is part of the fun for me. I didn't need to spend more than an hour trying to wrap my head around the circumscription of a polyploid complex, or convince myself that how most of it is IDed on iNat probably does not conform to the most current definition, but those are the most fun IDs by far for me.

Go at your whatever pace feels best to you, because its more important to enjoy the process than to reach maximum efficiency. I do have one pro tip though: you do not have to wait for the green circle to stop spinning and your ID to show up before moving onto the next ID. Your totals at the end of the page will be all off but the IDs will be saved on the observation.

Lähettänyt ddubois2 noin 3 vuotta sitten

I've been thinking since the beginning of this... Isn't Improve% kind of unfair? If you started with only 100 IDs, it would be easy to end up first in the category just by making 50 or 100 more. But since I started with over 700, I have to work a lot harder. And for someone who had thousands of IDs... you get the point.

Lähettänyt fluffyinca noin 3 vuotta sitten

Well... That's kind of the point, for newbies to get involved. I am thinking about an alternate method for future competitions though, something along the lines of separating improve% into groups either at random or by previous ID numbers. It's a learning curve. I'm going to try not to change the rules more than with little adjustments while the competition is ongoing though.

Lähettänyt astra_the_dragon noin 3 vuotta sitten

Alternatively, it might be interesting to see whether improve% calculated weekly based on total IDs as of the previous week would work. That way newbies' advantage would slowly decline as they made progress, leading to a natural learning curve.

Lähettänyt astra_the_dragon noin 3 vuotta sitten

One interesting stat to look at might be the number of IDs as a percentage of the number of observations made by an individual. I say that as I'm trying to get my own IDs to catch up to my observations. The longer I use iNat, the more I realize the value of IDs as a way to reinforce observers' knowledge and their connection to the natural world.

Lähettänyt lynnharper noin 3 vuotta sitten

January 25. I've gone through the observations for the second half of 2013. I tried limiting my search to just plants, but that was boring. The method I'm now using is interesting but inefficient; I look briefly at all the observations. It's quick, though, because I can skim over the moths, grasshoppers, mushrooms, and other mysteries really fast. For my initial effort, I placed some kind of name on 5.8% of the observations skimmed, and that rate certainly hasn't increased. The identifications include naming things to order or family, adding a tenth or more identification on a controversial observation, restricting the possibilities to a large genus in which species identification is almost impossible, etc. Very occasionally I actually get something to Research Grade. I have learned a few Mexican birds -- that's fun. Gaining knowledge means the list of organisms I know I can't actually identify is increasing! Sigh. Sometimes I think, "Yeah! Finally! There's a plant I can identify!" -- but the observation is about some obscure insect sitting on the plant. Sigh again.

A couple things that didn't occur to me at first might be useful to others, too. First, marking "No, it's as good as it can be" under Data Quality is great when I know enough to be confident that the traits I'd need to identify the organism to species just doesn't show in the photo. I'm getting more aggressive about this. Second, I'm starting to mark observations that lack a photo as "Evidence of organisms -- no." (I also write a short comment saying that on this date there is no photo.) Both these processes get observations out of the "Needs ID" pile, though not in the direction we'd prefer.

Lähettänyt sedgequeen noin 3 vuotta sitten

Thanks for the tips!
And that reminds me... The rankings for last week didn't get published! Oops!! We will get on that.

Lähettänyt astra_the_dragon noin 3 vuotta sitten

I'm with sedgequeen - I'm getting more assertive about marking observations as Not Wild. Dahlias and zinnias do not grow wild in Massachusetts, particularly in mulched garden in front of a house. Frankly, it's a little discouraging to find so many observations of plants that are clearly cultivated. I can certainly understand how someone who's new to all this can look at a big maple in the lawn of a park and think it's wild, whereas I can see the whole line of maples in their photo and know that the park was constructed a century ago, plenty of time for a maple to get big. But the tomatoes they planted in their own garden? Something about the "rules" of iNat is not getting through.

On the other hand, I am still finding plenty of observations where I can contribute something substantial, even if it's just taking an observations marked Plants down to Celastrus. And this is still fun!

Lähettänyt lynnharper noin 3 vuotta sitten

You can't blame people really. The app description/website home page make no mention of the database being for wild organisms only. It just says you observe "nature" and for most people (especially in urban environments) "nature" means anything outdoors. The app has no built-in guidelines/FAQ, although it will link you to the website help section if you look through the menus carefully enough. Even on the website you have to be pretty motivated to find and read the help pages thoroughly.

Some people do genuinely want to learn the name of the cultivated plant they photographed. Another fair chunk are students trying to complete a vague assignment with the minimum amount of effort. I admit the people who photograph their own tomatoes perplex me. I guess they think they are on Instagram ;)

Lähettänyt arboretum_amy noin 3 vuotta sitten

for @sedgequeen ;)

Lähettänyt astra_the_dragon noin 3 vuotta sitten

Hey, I've been looking for that Scroll of Truth for a lot longer than 15 years - he got lucky early!

Lähettänyt lynnharper noin 3 vuotta sitten

That is funny.

Lähettänyt sedgequeen noin 3 vuotta sitten

Lisää kommentti

Kirjaudu sisään tai Rekisteröidy lisätäksesi kommentteja