Hi! I am a field botanist and ecological consultant in the Chicago region. Here's my personal website: cassisaari.com

iNat Tips & Tricks:

* It's totally ok to just leave an identification at a broader level, like "sunflower family" or even just "plant." If someone helps identify something further, don't "agree" with the ID until you've confirmed the identification seems correct. Otherwise observations may become "research grade" mistakenly.

* Take the automated species identifications with a grain of salt. Sometimes it provides suggestions for organisms that are only found halfway across the world!

* Turn off "confirming identifications" in your account settings (only receive notifications about identifications that don't exactly match your own). It greatly reduces the number of unnecessary notifications you receive. You'll still get notifications if there is a comment attached to the agreeing notification.

* Join the iNaturalist Google Group.

* View recent comments.

* View recent journal posts.

* Show scientific names first, set your preferred common name place, or completely hide common names in your account settings.

* Use the Data Quality Assessment section to mark observations as cultivated, that they lack evidence of an organism, or that the community can't improve them based on the photos provided. A few of us have prepared some frequently-used responses for new users and problematic content.

* View "Marked Atlases" - species that have observations falling outside of their known distribution (read more about Atlases).

* You can always download iNaturalist data and manipulate it as you please.

Special Searching Tips:

There are a lot of ways to check out the data on iNaturalist. Most are included in the filters at the Explore page (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations), but some are hidden! You can always use the API directly to search for quite a variety of things, but there are also a few that you can access directly from the iNat website:

* Search identifications at https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications, e.g. all my identifications of Nabalus albus.

* Search observations based on identifications with ident_user_id, e.g. Nabalus observations where I added an identification.

* Search all comments. Typing your username as a search query is one way to search for previous mentions. You can also view all your comments with the addition of mine=true.

* Find species observed by others, but not yet observed by you, with URL qualifier unobserved_by_user_id, e.g. flowering plants not yet observed by bouteloua in the state of Illinois.

* Or observations by everyone except a specific person with not_user_id (you currently have to use the numerical user_id. Find that by searching here, e.g. mine is 8882).

* Search for observations within a group but without a specific member of that group with the without_taxon_id search qualifier, e.g. identify Silphiums, but not S. laciniatum, S. terebinthinaceum, S. integrifolium, or S. perfoliatum or search for milkweeds, but not common milkweed.

* You can do the same thing with places with not_in_place.

* And with projects with not_in_project.

Curating Needs

There's a lot you could help out with as a member of the iNaturalist community. Besides uploading observations and helping others identify theirs, there is also a need for volunteers to help with curating the site's taxonomic database and help resolve various issues that come up. If you're interested in becoming a curator, read through the iNat Curator Guide and shoot an email to help@inaturalist.org.

* Current Curating Needs

* Dealing with Low Quality Observations and Inappropriate Content

Don't hesitate to reach out to help@inaturalist.org or the Google Group if you have any questions/feedback about iNat.

My photos are free to use, with credit, for non-commercial uses. Please get in touch if there are any you would like to use on Wikipedia.

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