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

Again ID Request is down to just part of one page! Just a few weeks ago it had many pages. I currently count 14 pictures.

Just letting everyone know, since I don't think it was this low last year.

But lots of work to be done in the guide!
Pick any group you like, as broad or as specific as you like and there's work to be done. How about the Sphingidae page?? There are 200 images looking for a home there!

 
Balancing accessibility and taxonomic specificity
A lot of things seem to be getting moved out of ID Request *VERY* rapidly in recent weeks. There's an upside and a downside to that movement. I have an interest in a wide array of insect groups and might even be able to contribute reasonably to identifications for a number of them. Glancing through this diversity in ID Request has a distinct advantage; although it is routinely populated by a lot of chaff, it is more efficient to have several pages to enjoy there, rather than to have to navigate to "Moths" AND "Nymphalidae" AND "Cicindelinae" AND "Springtails" AND "Zygoptera", etc. I wouldn't suggest that images stay put in ID Request *after* having been identified to a detailed taxon (family or below), but shunting them rapidly out of ID Request adds some inefficiency to the task for those like myself who would like to help.

 
please keep in mind that most photos posted on BG never go through ID Request at all, so checking that section alone means missing much of what's really going on (pls refer to the guidelines provided here, widely used by our most prolific contributors, and responsible for considerable increase in ID process efficiency over the last year)

 
As Charley pointed out on your other comment,
we would add here that we almost never look at ID Request except to check every now and then to see that it is not getting out of hand. We always visit BugGuide through the Recent tab just to the right of ID Request. As you, we're curious about all the bugs posted to BugGuide, and Recent is a place where we can see all the recent posts, wherever in the guide they are posted. We learn something new there every day!

 
A comment on my own comment...
I should add that image placement, image movement, and identification work on BG offer a great study in the action of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, coupled with Optimal Foraging Theory, but I digress. ;-)

 
a while ago
I went through and identified a bunch of them... not sure if they got moved yet.

 
Great
We'll take a look.

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