Please Help Annotate Project Observations
As many of you are probably aware, the iNaturalist developers have rolled out several platform updates recently, including a new format for observation pages, some new features on the updated taxon pages, and also an observation feature called annotations. This tool takes a select few of the most used observation fields & standardizes them, which provides an opportunity to enrich iNaturalist data in a way that can be used for features such as the Life Stage trend graph on taxon pages for those taxa that have a Life Stage annotation option (which I have found especially interesting for some insects. With regard to this project, the annotation tool provides an opportunity to define, in a standardized & searchable manner, the life stage for insect observations. As the goal of this project is specifically related to insect life stage, I see this as an opportunity to improve our project data, and would like to move toward having all project observations annotated as life stage = larva. If we are able to do this retroactively for all current project observations, I can add a project parameter stating that observations must be marked as such in order to be included in the project. This will help us to collect additional new observations, and will also enrich the dataset & improve the life stage trend graphs for the project taxa.
How will we do this? Unfortunately, there is not yet a batch tool to annotate multiple records at once. However, there are some keyboard shortcuts available in the Identify tool that make it fairly quick to annotate records. While there are over 20,000 observations in our project, I hope that, with our 100+ members, we will have enough person-power to get all these observations annotated without any single person having to do a vast amount of work.
We need your help adding annotations to project observations.
It's easy, and you get to look at lots of cool caterpillar photos!
To add annotations to project observations, start with this link to the Identify tool, filtered to only include observations that have been added to the project but have not yet been annotated with life stage. Click the thumbnail to open the first observation, select the Annotations tab, then add the annotation Life Stage = Larva. You can do this quickly with keyboard shortcuts: simply type "ll" [for L(ife Stage) L(arva)], then use the right arrow key to move on to the next observation. If you just want to see those from a specific state or area, you can filter them further by adding something to the "Place" box. If you happen to find an observation that doesn't belong in the project (e.g., an adult butterfly or moth, or a sawfly larva masquerading as a caterpillar), please annotate it appropriately, and then send me a message so that I can remove it from the project.
Special thanks to @bouteloua for suggesting crowd-sourcing this process using the Identify tool, and thank you to everyone who has participated in the project. Stay tuned for a post in the next few months with some analysis of our project data.
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I'd already updated mine, so I went through about 100 or so from my area (DFW) and updated them. I'll do some more over the next week or two.
2,000 caterpillar observations annotated in under a week! Keep up the great work, everyone!
I've been trying to help annotate, but iNaturalist keeps telling me that an error happened, try again later. A bit annoying.
@coatlicue, thanks for your help, & sorry you've been having problems. Does this describe the problem you're having? I stopped having this issue about a week and a half ago when they supposedly fixed it, but if you're having that same issue, perhaps the thread needs to be revived.
That does look like the same problem. At the moment, it seems like it's resolved for me, seemingly spontaneously. I'll post to that thread if it recurs. I've been annotating observations in mini-marathons since the error went away, ha.
Great, hopefully it won't start acting up again. We're down below 10,000 remaining to annotate!
I'm still chopping away at the DFW observations. Made a good dent though, but I'll keep on. @eraskin What do you recommend for observations that are a cocoon or chrysalis or web with no visible larvae? I've been skipping those to come back to.
Thanks! I've been working on them as well, as I have time. If you find things in the project that are a cocoon or chrysalis, you can mark them as life stage = pupa, and please send me the links so that I can remove them from the project (must be larval to meet our project parameters). For webworms or tent caterpillars, if you can't clearly make out any individuals with enough detail for them to be identified, you can mark them as larva, but please also send me links to the observations so that I can remove them from the project. More details about what we do & don't want to include here. If you come across a whole bunch that don't meet those guidelines and it would be easier if you could remove them yourself, I can make you a project admin & you can remove them yourself.
Well, I finished up DFW and everything started acting up when I tried to find the observations that I skipped because of other life stages. I'll look again tomorrow. There seemed to be only a handful, so not worth the project admin change. And certainly not now since they have POOFed into oblivion. Fresh eyes on it over the weekend!
Fewer than a thousand left to be annotated!
We're done! Well, at least for some last bits of tidying up that I need to do, removing observations from the project that don't fit our parameters. THANK YOU to everyone who helped out, and especially to @coatlicue & @kimberlietx! With our powers combined... This was a huge effort, and is a big step toward making the project more sustainable/less effort to maintain.
Glad to help!
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