Identification, Images, & Information
For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin
For the United States & Canada

ID Request vs. Placing pictures in Guide

When submitting a bug for ID, is it better for me to submit it into ID Request where it is easily found and seen, or to submit it directly into the guide as far in the classification levels as possible for me to distinguish?

be 100% sure
there are many insect species that look identical to the untrained eye, or that mimic species from other groups. If you're going to place into the guide, make sure you're 100% sure of your ID.

 
Just to voice the loyal opposition -
we would say you need to be as sure as you can be. If we felt we needed to be literally 100% certain, we (J&J) would never move anything into the guide. We wouldn't even be able to move species identified by an expert into the guide since we have seen them change their minds as new information becomes available. As Ethan says above, there are many species which look alike. You don't want to be placing flies on a bee page or thread legged bugs on a walkingstick page. But if you have researched something and have matched your bug to images in the guide and are as certain as you can be that you have it correct, then post it there. Experts will see your newly uploaded image as they look through Recent, and if they think you have misplaced it, they will tell you. The beauty of BugGuide is that mistakes in placement are easily corrected. We wouldn't want anyone posting things willynilly around the guide pages, but reasonable certainty is a pretty good start.

Recent images
I also scroll through recent images rather than ID request and prefer that people don't clutter the ID pages with images that obviously belong in some family or other taxon. It often saves us, editors, an extra step. Other than that I echo Joe's words of caution, put them in a taxon that you are absolutely sure of.

That's a very good question.
We look at all the new posts by scrolling through Recent and almost never look at ID Request. So we would see your post no matter where you put it. It would be interesting to know how other folks access the images.

 
Recent
I am new to this (and loving it!)... The more time I spend exploring the site, the more I am learning about it. I started off going to ID request link.... However, I realized that by accessing the recent link instead creates a much "cleaner" approach to viewing recently published photos. (Any thoughts of "stacking" the duplicate/alternate angle photos taken by one submitter so it ends up being one entry?)

I'm still unsure about posting pictures that I take of "known" insects. Is the idea to have anyone post photos for editors/members to verify and then the editors choose ones to "fill in the blanks" in the guide? If that is the case, I'll look at my photos, check the guide to see if the "subject" is missing and then post the photo.

 
BugGuide Access
We open BugGuide via a desktop shortcut that goes directly to Recent.
Gayle

 
ID request vs. Recent
I've missed some things (especially a few neat spider wasps) that I would have loved to comment on or that were ID'd incorrectly. Now I solely use "Recent" to access images.

:)
It's more likely to be seen by one of our experts if it's placed in the guide... just be 100% sure you have it placed correctly... I can remember a bumblebee-mimicing fly that was placed in with bumblebees a few days ago.