what is a “tool”? is it an Excel spreadsheet that takes a standard CSV export and generates a bunch of visualizations? is it a pre-defined publicly shared map layer in ArcGIS Online that displays all iNaturalist observations? is it a small web page that shows people their longest observation streaks? is it an R script that generates a packed circles chart of species in a given set of observations? is it a Jupyter notebook that transfers can be used to format iNaturalist data to be imported into another system? is it a whole website and mobile app that allows folks to record and view wild orchid observations?what is a “tool”? is it an Excel spreadsheet that takes a standard CSV export and generates a bunch of visualizations? is it a pre-defined publicly shared map layer in ArcGIS Online that displays all iNaturalist observations? is it a small web page that shows people their longest observation streaks? is it an R script that generates a packed circles chart of species in a given set of observations? is it a Jupyter notebook that transfers can be used to format iNaturalist data to be imported into another system? is it a whole website and mobile app that allows folks to record and view wild orchid observations?
All of the above, I intentionally didn’t want to restrict it to any type of use case or technology. From a user perspective, all these provide extended or customized functionality to visitors and contributors to iNaturalist, regardless of how they are implemented, whether they rely on the API or static data dumps or whatever. The responses in this thread are already a goldmine of ideas I had absolutely no idea about (and yes, I could have done a GitHub search to start with)
if you’re looking for apps that require authorization, just about every one of those should be registered over at https://www.inaturalist.org/oauth/applications
I was not necessarily thinking of tools that require auth/authz but that’s the closest to what I had in mind when I posted this, thank you for the pointer.
i think this doesn’t give the iNat community enough credit for all the interesting things they’ve accomplished. if i were to fault the community, it wouldn’t be for lack of innovation. it would just be that we could put more effort into organizing and marketing that innovation.
You are absolutely right, apologies for implying otherwise.
Ideally, i think it would make sense for that list – at the least the items that meet the stamp of approval – to be published on the main iNaturalist website rather than as just another post in the forum. since i think people are much more likely to visit the website than to venture into the forum, that would give greater visibility to these items and encourage others to make their own contributions, i think.
Agree, although I suspect the iNat core team would be reluctant to do such a thing like giving a “stamp of approval”.
As for what to include / exclude, that’s a big issue that depends on the kind of governance and maintenance that would be appropriate for such a tool directory, as well as its intended audience. I tend to agree an inaugural “developer summit” or “hackathon” would be a great place to start.
A small conference for iNat tool developers (if a larger community event is hard to pull off) would be an amazing thing to see and as you point out there might be already a critical mass of developers interested in participating. If funding or sponsorship to organize such an event is needed, the CS&S Event Fund could potentially provide it.
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items and for there to be some more formal stamp of approval process whereby, say, a working group could review listed items according to some set of standards.
