It would be most helpful if within that bracket it stated what it was (Identified as .......). Reading through the threads can be quite circuitous. Perhaps @dave can add a box that opens when that thread is marked as ID'd wherein the actual name would be entered by the person marking as ID'd. Just a thought.

I think someone suggested this earlier but I'm not sure what the resolution was. I know many folks will post asking for an ID but then forget to go back and even mark the thread as Identified ... so we'd probably still have a few left hanging.

Maybe an admin can go in and mark those if they don't come back and also have the option to add an ID?

The best thing to do is import the photos used to request the ID into the DB entry for the plant. Then when you go into the thread you immediately see which plant it is since the photo will have been switched automatically to a db_photo tag.

Ahhh, perfect!

I can see that would work perfectly well although the quality of the photos used to request ID are not always good. I have submitted a few into the
database that I'd like to replace/remove at some point. If this is the only way and its automatically changed in the thread upon import to the database it would be a nice shortcut in the learning curve for those of us who are watching this forum. I still read the threads just to see who and how they arrived at an ID. Who would do the importing? If it creates more work for the admins then perhaps its not worthwhile. Im sure this has been suggested before as Lin said. Seems an obvious shortcoming. So perhaps it proved to be impracticable.

HamiltonSquare said:I can see that would work perfectly well although the quality of the photos used to request ID are not always good. I have submitted a few into the
database that I'd like to replace/remove at some point.

This is a good observation. If the photo used in the Plant ID Forum is imported into the database and is later deleted, there will be no photo left in the forum thread.

Who would be moving the image from the ID forum to the database? Would it be the original poster or the admin person?

If the image that was later deleted disappeared from the ID thread...could there be a 'magic Dave button' attached to certain photos moving from the ID Forum to the database that would not allow them to be deleted later? I am thinking that even a bad photo is better than no photo when people are searching the database.

It would be helpful to move the image once the poster is satisfied with the ID they received/decided/approved, but just in case the poster fails to follow through will there be a back up person to finalize each positive ID thread? I hate to put more work on any admin person, but... one person on another site had a look at the ATP ID Forum, checked the numbers, and said "looks like they are running at a 50% success rate", which does not reflect the true numbers of positive IDs.

Having a box or bracket to enter the plant name would be helpful for everyone, if it's possible for Dave to do that. Another option could be a 'reminder message' automatically sent to the poster after X-amount of days with no activity on the thread. A gentle reminder addressed to the original poster to mark the thread 'identified' and add the plant name, or click a box to say 'still needs ID'.

And then there are IDs that are not really definitive - perhaps you get a general consensus that (A) is the most likely answer, but perhaps the original poster is not comfortable in the answer and/or does not want to add that photo to the (A) entry. I think it's fine to just have non-conclusive things disappear down the screen myself.