Thanks everyone for the responses!
I already read a lot in the forum, but did not search for these specific questions. Sorry. And thanks for the links!
Such answers don’t help me here. I understand iNat is a neutral platform without a specific goal, but some guidance on how to get started/what to look for in the help would make the project more accessible to beginners.
CW: mental health
In my specific case, i currently suffer from depression and can’t really enjoy nature or anything. When i see a flower, i know that i would have liked it in the past, but now i get thoughts like “this stupid flower. i hate it” without any specific reason for that. And it’s very hard to make any decision. Autistic thinking makes it even harder when i get caught up in details or overthink.
Collecting data is currently more important to me than appreciating nature (sadly). I would love if my contributions help scientific discoveries. So the main question really is:
And @sopacexplorer gave good examples:
And this answers my question very well:
I will summarize it and try to get it into the help page.
@sopacexplorer thanks a lot for your perspective!
I don’t do observations for some arbitrary personal goal, but “for science”. So i care more about what the scientists need and what makes a good/useful dataset for them.
The iNat project could coordinate with researchers by inviting them to share their needs and promote important research projects using temporary (local) challenges users can join. This way users know what goal they contribute to specifically.
For example the Lower Saxony State Office for Water Management, Coastal Conservation and Nature Conservation (NLWKN) asked the public for help to protect the stag beetle by sending them observations (using a horrible PDF form). A local NGO shared it on social media. That’s how i learned about it. That would have been a perfect local iNat challenge that i could have been notified about in the App. Then more people would know about it.
(I shared them links to my iNat observations and said it’s open data, please use that. And they answered that they know iNat and already use the data, which made me very happy!)
@tiwane was that idea discussed before in the team?
(I searched the forum and only found challenges announced there. Like the City Nature Challenge and Bioblitzes which are general challenges without specific research goal and e.g. Western Redcedar Dieback Map. How should a casual user of the App find out about those (without reading the forum)? Was the City Nature Challenge 2023 not properly announced in the blog? It was only mentioned here.)
Yes, looking at existing research should give a good feel for what the data is actually useful for.
I know pixel binning is enabled by default, but you can turn it off to get the full sensor resolution. Which might not be useful in most cases. The point was people could provide crazy high resolutions if useful, or scale it down.