Add Folders to organize iNaturalist Journal entries

Feature Requests
1

Platform:
Website, because Journals are accessed via the web.

URLs:
Example of user Journal page in folder: https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/adamwargon?folder=ID+Guides

Description of need:
The core community need is to make identification resources easier to find, thereby increasing the number of accurate identifications across iNaturalist and improving the experience for everyone.

Many power users take the time to write excellent ID tips. However, because there is currently no way to organize journal entries, these high-value resources are hard to find.

iNatters currently use Journals for 3 distinct purposes:

  1. Inwardly focused: Personal records (e.g., documenting a personal iNatting trip).
  2. Narrowly focused: Event updates (e.g., updates for people who attended a small bioblitz).
  3. Broadly focused resources: Educational resources for the whole community

Because Journals currently lack folders, valuable educational content ends up scattered in inconsistent places. Some is written in user profiles, some is buried in Journal posts among daily trip logs, and some is hosted on external websites.

Why not just use tags or search?
Tags and search are not user-friendly for discovering resources. Tags require readers to know those tags exist. Search requires the reader to know the correct search terms. Folders, on the other hand, provide immediate clarity. A reader visiting a user’s journal can instantly see a folder titled “ID Guides” without having to learn about tags or search terms.

Feature request details:
I am requesting the ability for users to organize their Journal posts into basic folders. Here is how this feature could function in practice:

For the person writing the journal:

  • Add a simple dropdown menu to assign a post to a folder
  • Allow users to create, rename, or delete folders
  • Note: To keep engineering scope small, each journal post could only belong to one folder

For the person reading the journal:

  • On a user’s main Journal page, add a list of folders, above Archives
  • Clicking on a folder name displays only the posts assigned to that folder
  • The default view is still chronological (all Journal posts)
2

A great idea, Adam. One alternative you missed: Creating an index Journal post (i.e. one post to index them all, and in the darkness journal bind them). The biggest problem with this is that that post gets quickly lost in the month-by-month journal default index, so nobody can find it unless they know the month it was published or it is linked somewhere permanent (e.g., a user’s profile or a project’s description). Having folders on the Journal page would be a much cleaner alternative.

3

On the other hand, folders on a user’s journal page requires that a reader visit that user’s profile in order to find out about the existence of a relevant journal post. This is an even less logical way to search for information about a particular topic than a keyword or tag search.

If the purpose is to make relevant resources easier to find, better site-wide indexing of journal entries would seem like a more effective way to address this. E.g., make it possible to associate journal entries with particular taxa and/or regions (much the way projects can be associated with taxa or places) and provide a link that pulls up relevant journal entries on taxon pages.

4

An excellent idea and one which would certainly help in providing organisation to a current system which is merely a ‘dump’ of Journal posts.

5

I see what you did th— wait, where did you go?