ID-athon May 2021's Journal

Announcing a 2-day ID-a-thon mini: the ID-Blitz! This will be a short event, running for 2 days, December 10 and 11 (UTC).

This is a great opportunity to work on IDs in a collaborative environment, with a chance to work with and support other iNat IDers. We will be focusing on IDing unknowns and observations at the Kingdom level, but all efforts at IDing are welcome and will be tracked in the project results. We will also have a collaborative ID link, where you can see the IDs made by other members of the Blitz, and work on improving IDs in areas where you have knowledge and experience.

Results will be reported for the group as a whole, not as competitive rankings. As we get closer to the event, check the project page for mentoring and team-up opportunities.

Sign up is simple, just join the project at least 24 hours before the start of the event (by December 8, midnight UTC.) You can find the project here.

december

Hello. One of Blue's family members is having a medical emergency and as a result Blue will be unavailable for the next 2-3 weeks (estimated.) I know you are still waiting on some prizes, but they will need to go on hold for now. Thank you for your understanding.

We are working on setting the date of the group prize for the consistency category.

To remind everyone: the prize for the consistency category is a get-together for everyone who made identifications at least 7 days of the event. For those who made id's at least 8 days, you get to bring ten minutes of music that will be played during the event. If you want to check if you qualify, the final rankings are here.

Because so many people qualified (yay!), we still need to decide between two dates. The gather will either be on Saturday June 12th starting at 6 pm EST or Thursday June 24th starting at 8:30 pm EST. Please leave a comment if you have any opinions so we can pick the day that works the best for everyone!

Here is a feedback form for you!

It will take only a minute or two.
There is an optional long version with many, more detailed questions.

Questions on the mentorship program will come later.

Thanks!

Blue

Those of you who won prizes, please let me know what you want -- or if you don't want one. Right now very few have let me know what their choice is. Send me a message, or leave a comment.

List of prizes won can be found in this document.

Prize options can be found here.

Thanks

Blue

I typed “amy” into the search box and pulled the first 15 taxa, excluding taxa nested within other taxa:
922110 Subfamily Amygdaloideae (a group of plants including cherries, peaches, etc)
733722 Leucadendron laureolum × salignum Safari Sunset and Derived Cultivars (hybrid flowering shrubs, including one cultivar named Amy)
58795 Apocynum cannabinum Hemp Dogbane (a poisonous plant, also called amy root)
39556 Apalone spinifera Spiny Softshell Turtle (synonym: Amyda spinifer)
57662 Euphorbia amygdaloides Wood Spurge (a plant)
39566 Apalone ferox Florida Softshell Turtle (synonym: Amyda ferox)
148560 Mestra amymone Common Mestra (a butterfly)
849752 Subtribe Amyeminae (parasitic plants called showy mistletoes)
104226 Lepidodactylus lugubris Mourning Gecko (synonym: Amydosaurus lugubris)
17318 Genus Amyna (moths)
987183 Order Amylocorticiales (fungi)
84470 Ceratomia amyntor Elm Sphinx (a moth)
223123 Lecidella elaeochroma Lecidella Lichen (common name in Polish is Amylka Oliwkowa)
122382 Cupido amyntula Western Tailed-Blue (a butterfly)
1237160 Section Amygdalinae (a group of willows)

Similarly, here's the taxa for "blue":
13071 Luscinia svecica Bluethroat (a bird)
47923 Family Lycaenidae Gossamer-winged Butterflies (including those called Blues)
47925 Family Coenagrionidae Narrow-winged Damselflies (including those called Bluets)
634914 Subfamily Vaccinioideae Blueberries, Cranberries, Huckleberries, and Allies
4956 Ardea herodias Great Blue Heron (a bird)
47121 Genus Lupinus Lupines (also called Bluebonnets)
8228 Genus Cyanocitta Blue and Steller's Jays
558404 Genus Spatula Shovelers and Allies (birds including Blue-winged Teals, Blue-winged Ducks)
36204 Sceloporus occidentalis Western Fence Lizard (also known as blue belly)
12935 Genus Sialia Bluebirds
61860 Family Calliphoridae Blow Flies (also called bluebottles)
59774 Pachydiplax longipennis Blue Dasher (a dragonfly)
49917 Genus Sisyrinchium Blue-eyed Grasses (wildflowers actually in the Iris family—not grass)
5112 Accipiter cooperii Cooper's Hawk (also called Blue Dasher or Big Blue Darter)
52913 Cichorium intybus Chicory (a flower also called blue weed or blue sailors)

Hello everyone!

First of all, thank you all for participating.

Together, 69 project participants made 69630 identifications for others!
(If you remember us quoting a bigger number, that was including IDs made on one's own observations.)

The median identifier made 401 IDs over the course of the event.
The 1st quarter was 140, 3rd quarter 881.
So the middle 50% ranged from 140 to 881.

Here's a graph of total IDs made per day.

Unknowns

All those who signed up or were in the project together made approximately 25,000 identifications of unknowns! Great job! That comes out to 2,778 per day!

You'll continue to be notified of follow-up IDs over the next days, weeks, months -- maybe even years.

If you have a really special or cool observation that you discovered as part of this event, please share it with us. Later we would like to make a post featuring some of your discoveries.

Our original goal was to identify 10,000 unknowns. We did more than twice that! Given we had 69 people working on unknowns, over 9 days, that means that we averaged around 40 IDs of unknowns per person per day. So, next time, we will be basing our goals and stretch goals on that data.
We hit the 12k, 15k, 20k, and 25k stretch goals too!

• 10k: The group prize will be a photo shoot of my cat Baklava -- exclusive access!
• 12k: I'll also take some photos outdoors, with my cat on his harness!
• 15k: Some of the photos will also have edited versions with custom backgrounds you request! Submit your suggestions here!
• 20k: I'll make a few costumes and dress up Baklava during the photo shoot. Submit suggestions here!
• 25k: I will create a few memes featuring Baklava
• 30k: gifs / video -- better luck next time.*

Watch out for a later post with a link to the photos, once I've got them.

Beginners:

• We would like to congratulate the following users on reaching

Consistency:

The following users have missed zero or one day(s) and get VIP treatment:
@als93, @antrozousamelia, @beetle_mch, @blastcat, @bouteloua, @dbarber, @driftlessroots, @ellendale, @fluffyinca, @fseichter, @fuzzyspider, @harshith-nambiar, @heidi_eaton, @jasonhernandez74, @jbecky, @jennywest1, @joaolemoslima, @juan_sphex, @kitbeard, @liamhutcheson, @liamthornebirderboy, @lisa_bennett, @lynnharper, @mathieu_h, @matthewvosper, @michaelbakkerpaiva, @mmmmbugs, @muddytortoise, @mydadguyfieri, @naturalist_aditya, @naturejeanne, @navaneethsinigeorge, @ncb1221, @norwichtim, @pinkspoonbill, @richyfourtytwo, @roshan2010, @squirrelbait, @srall, @teratornis, @wildnettle, @zdanko, @zneedham1

The following users missed two days:
@haemocyanin11, @ianmanning, @mirts, @oliverc29

To the 17 of you who signed up for this category but didn't manage -- you can do it next time! I believe in you.

All of you win a communal prize. We can decide on it together-- what I was thinking was that we can have a music + iNat party on an upcoming weekend. Each VIP gets to bring 7-10 minutes of music to add to a group playlist we will listen to. We can share our favorite observations and stuff we have identified. Bringing your pets is recommended, those of you who are of age can bring your own drinks too. I can come up with an icebreaker and a few things to do during the event. Not sure what I'd do for those who could not attend.
This might be a really lame idea. We do have some other ideas, but it's hard to find things that work for like 40 people.
Whatever the event will be, I do want it to be some form of group activity. Please use this link to indicate when you could meet: https://www.when2meet.com/?12020356-TVZ2M
For username, please enter your iNat username -- password is optional but recommended

Mystery:

Time for the reveal! Woohoo!

According to the arbitrary cutoff we used, there are three "power-identifiers", srall, lisa_bennett, and sedgequeen. They get prizes separately, so that others can still get prizes. Next time we will lower the arbitrary cutoff from 80k IDs to something like 65k.

Some of Our Favorite Things:

Taxa that are in Blue's or Amy's list of favorite taxa! These can be seen on our respective profile pages: @trh_blue and @arboretum_amy (You'll need to hit "view all" for full list.)

1st: @zneedham1 (274)
2nd: @navaneethsinigeorge (61)
3rd: @mmmmbugs (35)
4th: @bouteloua (25)
5th: @ellendale (23)
6th:@juan_sphex and @fuzzyspider (20)

Zneedham1 definitely guessed this one! Probably some of the other winners too.

Searching for Blue and Amy:

What taxa come up when you enter "amy" or "blue" into the iNat search bar?
Taxa included are listed here.

1st: @harshith-nambiar (124)
2nd: @fluffyinca (117)
3rd: @srall (91) and @mmmmbugs (77)
4th: @bouteloua (29)
5th: @navaneethsinigeorge (22)
6th: @roshan2010 and @zneedham1 (20)

Looks as though some of you correctly guessed this one! Good job!

The Known Unknowns:

the odd stuff that shows up in the Unknowns even though they have IDs... bacteria, viruses, and archaea.

1st: @jbecky (8)
2nd: @zdanko (3)
3rd: @srall and @joaolemoslima (2)
4th: @dbarber, @ellendale, @kitbeard, @beetle_mch, @gillydilly, and @fseichter (1)

There is only one outlier, jbecky, but that may have been coincidence.

Old Observations:

1st: @srall (1458) and @avocat (540)
2nd: @ellendale (447)
3rd: @richyfourtytwo (317)
4th: @beetle_mch (294)
5th: @antrozousamelia (188)
6th: @ncb1221 (153)

Great work! All of these observations are more than five years old... altogether we were able to add 3,915 IDs to observations that have been waiting for a long time to get narrowed down further! Think of this next time you don't get an ID after a month and start getting bitter... ;)

Improvement:

1st: @richyfourtytwo, 3286%
2nd: @antrozousamelia, 2309%
3rd: @zdanko, 2238%
4th: @muddytortoise, 2068%
5th: @mmmmbugs, 1505%
6th: @bouteloua, 1191%

Full rankings here.

First place winners in bold receive a large prize.
Second or third place winners in italics have earned a medium prize.
Fourth, fifth and sixth place winners receive a small prize.
If you won 2 small prizes you may trade them in for 1 medium.
2 medium may be traded in for 1 big prize.
And you may trade a big or medium for any lower-ranked prize on a 1:1 basis. In fact, I encourage you all to make these trades because it's less work for us ;-;
Please choose from the list of prizes here.

Thank you everyone for participating and for helping us make a difference in iNaturalist's Needs ID pool. There were a lot of things we wanted to do that didn't make it into this event. Our next event will be very similar to this one, but more polished ;) Look out for us in fall or winter 2021. Please stay in this project to receive further announcements, such a feedback forms, and of course info about the next event.

While we are working on the final rankings and prizes announcement, here's something to pass the time.
Of the observations in the project (pets of participants), which is your fave?

You may not vote for your own pet(s)!

Thank you everyone for participating!
We will start crunching numbers tonight, and tomorrow will be releasing the journal post (hopefully). Prizes will be announced then and given out during the following week.

Blue