Anything that can/ should be done about dysfunctional projects?

General
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I recently came across a project (sort of local to me) that is supposedly for ‘accumulating sightings of all flora and fauna’ in a particular area that includes a national park. The area would be less than 50 km square.

However the project includes observations from all over New South Wales (an area bigger than Texas). And it seems that observations MUST be casual grade, which seems contrary to the project description. I assume it is a ‘collection project’ however I’m newish to Inat, so I don’t know much about projects. I think I made my first contribution to a project about a week ago.

Over 4600 observations are included, I cannot find any that actually fit the project description.

I have left out specifics because i don’t want to embarass the project creator, who I’m sure had good intentions. He/ she joined Mar 2, created the project Mar 3 and has made two observations, added Mar 2. That’s all their activity I think.

I’d like to know what, if anything, users should do if a meaningless and misleading project is encountered? I have no idea how common they might be, but I’m sure there are more.

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There are a few parts of iNat that are totally user-curated, a wild west of sorts, with little to no attempts at building standardization or curation into them. They include:

  • projects
  • places (community curated vs. “standard” geopolitical iNat places)
  • observation fields
  • guides
  • lists

The general advice given is to just ignore them.

There are some new potential limitations to creating projects and places that should help a bit with the frequent creation of soon-abandoned content, but won’t get rid of them altogether.

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Thank you, I’m happy to just ignore it. Yep encountering this project certainly illustrated to me why the ‘upcoming limits’ are a really good idea.

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