Ask for an identification online

1. Read the pinned guide of the board you are posting to. Each says the same thing in its own words: photographs with a scale, locality, size, and no guessing.

2. Take the five photographs (see Photograph a specimen for identification). Attach them at forum size; four is usually the limit per post.

3. Write the locality to the finest level you are willing to share publicly: country, state, county, and the formation if you know it. If you bought it, say where from and what the seller said. If you do not know the formation, write “formation unknown”; a wrong formation sends helpers the wrong way.

4. Give the numbers: greatest dimension in millimetres, weight if it is a nodule or a suspected meteorite, and whether it is magnetic if the question is a meteorite.

5. Say what you think it is and why, in one line. It tells the reader where you are and saves the first exchange.

6. Title the post with what you know, not what you hope: “Tooth, Miocene, Calvert Cliffs, 22 mm” rather than “Megalodon?”.

7. When an answer comes, ask what feature decided it, thank the person, and record the identification with “identified by” on the record — a forum handle and a date is provenance for the identification. If two answers disagree, post the detail photo they ask for rather than choosing the one you like.

8. Stratum's Ask the forum action writes this post from the record and resizes the photos; the scale-bar reminder is there because the boards reject posts without one.