Wins, Prizes and More
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%
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.
Comments
Please contact myself or @arboretum_amy about your choice of prize!
Amy, Blue and the rest of the team,
Thank you for you time and talent. This was a lot of fun and very educational.
Awesome work everyone, and a million thanks to Blue and Amy! This was great.
This was a very fun, competitive but friendly way to help me work on my taxonomical skills. I did a lot of reflection in some of my reference books with this. I'm so used to just identifying stuff in my region that it was really fun to look at observations all around the world. Thanks for putting it all together!
in case anyone missed it, the full rankings are included here. I just made the link much bigger and easier to find.
It was really neat to see how many things (especially non-plant things) got IDed almost as soon as I pulled them out of unknowns. I also really enjoyed being able to get some things down to species that had been sitting in "plants" or "dicots" for 5 or 6 years (it was good to have the contest to keep me pushing through all the stuff I couldn't drop to a lower taxon).
I really need to work on how to tell the dang algae apart; it still bugs me that I can't just throw them all in with the plants!
Thanks so much for putting this together; it made for a very interesting week.
If anyone tried to look at the full rankings and couldn't, there was an issue with the link. It's been fixed now, so everyone should be able to access the document. Congratulations to everyone! It was a joy to watch you all from behind the scenes!
Thank you co-ordinators and assistants for arranging/helping with the event. It was fun.
Mystery category "some of our favorite things": My guess was the organisms mentioned in the song "a few of my favorite things" from "the sound of music". Was far off.
@muddytortoise There are a lot of taxa in that song! You were not correct, but my favorite things list does include cats and bees, so maybe you got a few either way.
Thanks to all for a fantastic introduction to iNaturalist identifying! I had a lot of fun learning to identify and learning more about the community aspects of iNaturalist, and look forward to spending more time here in the future!
If we didn't make the "Old Observations" leaderboard, is there a way to find out how many we did? I didn't keep count.
@jasonhernandez74 go to the Old Ids tab in the Results spreadsheet.
I encountered an observation that made me wiggly all over. It was a blurry photo of a flower but I gave it a try. Two bonus organisms turned up: a Crab Spider and a Sun Moth. I've never personally seen a Sun Moth (that I know of) but learned about it while identifying Unknowns when I first started seriously IDing for others. The picture tells a story with three possible endings, but we'll never know...
Here's the observation from ID-athon: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/80761239
Here's the one where I learned about the odd thing that Sun Moths do with their legs: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/30958206
The most remarkable thing is that after I made the ID for this event, what should pop on my dashboard the next day but a notification that someone had commented on the older observation.
You know, I don't need a prize - this was just plain fun even without the enticement of prizes. (Although of course I want to see photos of Baklava!) It was cool to look at pages of Unknowns and mutter to myself, "Hey, I know that plant from Turkey/Ukraine/Peru/wherever - that's a legume/orchid/hibiscus/whatever!" Thank you for organizing this and especially for wrestling with the data!
Bah, I was barking up the wrong tree on the known unknowns, but I guessed that when I started wondering how you would count identifications on observations that had an identification conflict taking them back to life....
But it's been great fun, and I wasn't doing it for the prizes either.
Doesn't hurt to look at the prize list even if you don't want anything for yourself ;)
Wondering if there is a ranking of plain total identifications of everyone. I know I started out with somewhere between 450 and 500 identifications. I now have 1508 identifications, so I know I made just over a thousand identifications in these 9 days for this event. Wondering what my ranking would be with everyone else's IDs, and how many total identifications the top people were able to make.
We have that data but chose not to release it. I can send it to you privately but I don't see how that information would be beneficial for more than curiosity's sake.
@pinkspoonbill Assuming I did the math right, working backward from my improvement and starting point, I did about 4435 IDs for the project, and I'm one of the top 3 IDers, for whatever that's worth.
The real thing is I don't want to discourage the newcomers. It's great to do a lot of IDs and it does correlate with getting prizes, but we're trying our best to make the event newbie friendly.
However, if you do want a competition that's all about the speed and numbers game, I guess you have to claim a big prize and get yourself invited to the private competition. I'm playing in it and I will have no mercy. I like winning.
OK, I didn't know that information was any different from the other info in the spreadsheet. And, yes, I was just curious and only because I follow that sort of thing when we do the City Nature Challenge. srall - appreciate your info. I like to see how well people do in general, and it helps me get to know people online. I also didn't know there was a private competition anywhere - but that makes sense, seeing as how it's private LOL. I'm happy to have done this ID a thon because I learned more about the taxa and got to see things that grow in places very different from my own. I got some of the IDs wrong, and what I really hope to improve on is getting them right, as well as getting them to the lower taxa. It's a work in progress and since I haven't done that many IDs, nor studied the taxa as thoroughly as I should, I'm going to enjoy the improvement I'll make in the future.
Don't worry about getting IDs wrong. I have seen every one of the best identifiers on iNaturalist get IDs wrong. It's part of the process. Often a wrong guess will push someone in a direction that lets them find the right answer. (And there's a truism that the fastest way to get the correct ID is to post the wrong one!)
for the same reason, in the large spreadsheet we put everyone alphabetically rather than in ranked order.
Yeah, the private competition is just a way for me to chill with my friends and blow off steam. And I gotta catch up on a month of Euphorbia ID. It can also be a chance to make new friends!
I also love seeing the diversity of life in places I've never been and have rarely made IDs. it's a great way to learn.
I met Blue when she invited me to a little four-person showdown last year. I lost very hard :)
@arboretum_amy giiit guuud stats are the only thing that matters!!!1! /s
Congratulations to the five continents winners - that is truly an achievement!
A couple of questions, not that I'm competitive or anything...
What does this mean? "There is only one outlier, jbecky, but that may have been coincidence."
I thought I'd gotten 5 continents. Which did I miss?
you weren't entered into the beginners' challenge, so the continents-category wasn't tracked for you.
It refers to the fact that you seem to have guessed the mystery category -- based on the significantly higher than average number of IDs in that category.
Speaking of the earlier comment about the "My Favorite Things" song mentioning a lot of taxa -- I'm not sure what you mean by a lot. I here provide the lyrics, altered to show the mentioned taxa:
Raindrops on Genus Rosa and whiskers on Felis catus
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things
Cream colored Equus caballus and crisp Malus domestica strudels
Door bells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Genus Anser that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things
Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things
When Canis familiaris bites
When Apis mellifera stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad
So that's seven taxa all together. Not a very impressive list -- although, in fairness, it is a lot more than any of the other songs from that musical.
It just says "bee stings", not "honeybee stings"; That adds another like 250 species in my area. {Though it might be less if you have to stick to stinging bees}, Just saying.
And I'd do Malus sp. for apple and include Branta sp. in geese.
Even with your strict definition, without being aware of it, I observed 51 things that fall under it in May, (100 if you do it my way). (But I am an extremely prolific observer).
I wish there were an easy way to search my identifications, but I don't know how to do that.
Even though I didn't have a lot of time to work on identifications, I was able to do it consistently each day. It was a great event and I am going to try and make ID's every day.
Thanks for putting it together.
There is a roundabout way to see all of a person's IDs, ironically it is a little harder if you are looking at your own. I think @zdanko made a journal post or something on that?
And I'm really happy we've got some people in the habit of identifying most or all days. It adds up fast.
@srall
I used the species of apple that is normally made into strudels. The bee was a judgement call, but I went with honey bee because it is the one kept in large numbers in proximity to human habitations. As to the geese, "The Sound of Music" was set in Austria -- are any Branta species found there?
Please note the Sound of Music song had nothing to do with the category and any conversation about it is a tangent. I'm not saying you must stay on topic or anything, but I don't want anyone to get confused.
I think seven taxa is a lot for song lyrics.
@arboretum_amy I can agree with that. Seven is a lot for one song.
Let’s not forget the Irish Rovers' The Unicorn Song
:
There was green alligators and long-necked geese
Some humpty-backed camels and some chimpanzees
Some cats and rats and elephants, but sure as you're born
The loveliest of all was the unicorn
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