- To answer the title of this thread, yes, Numerous Pages on the Site are Difficult for Me to Find
- The UX on iNaturalist is frequently compared unfavourably to the iNat Forum (Discourse), with the general gist being, “Why can’t iNaturalist be more like the iNat Forum?”
- I would like to point out that, AFAIK, Discourse is 3 to 4 times bigger than iNaturalist in terms of staff, revenue, etc., so, while everyone’s concerns are valid, it is something to bear in mind
Also, there are many more pages and much more functionality on iNat than on the iNat Forum!
What about adding a Curation page under More, which in turn can hold links like https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/new and https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/
I get to both of those pages by typing the urls into my browser because I’ve never found a link to either anywhere on the site (maybe I’m missing something?) except buried within text blocks in the curator guide.
I’m a software developer. Having people list hard to find pages on a forum is not the ideal way to deal with UI/UX issues. Asking forum members to report user experience problems give skewed results because forum members don’t reflect the total iNat user base. Plus, many forum users have learned to modify their behavior to deal with various UI/UX issues.
I saw the iNat job listing for a user experience researcher/designer. That new person should do interviews with people who don’t use iNat, people who casually use iNat, and people who use iNat a lot. These user interviews need to be well structured so the person conducting the interviews can produce meaningful analysis of what areas of the site, mobile apps, and workflow need to be improved. When doing user-centered design, the product roadmap should reflect the needs of the users.
there’s a bottom! i always forget there’s stuff down there. thanks!
Well, in many cases one may only know about some of these pages at all if one happens to be a forum user, because there is no link to them anywhere on iNaturalist itself, e.g.:
- https://www.inaturalist.org/comments
- any of the pages under /pages/… (e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/responses)
- the list of url snippets that can be used for advanced filtering (that is, it is not just the urls themselves that are not easily accessible, but information about them)
I agree that it’s poor interface design (though I’m not sure whether some of the pages being fairly hidden might be intentional), but I think it’s important to be clear exactly what the problem is that people are concerned about here. It isn’t just “difficult to find” but essentially “no way to even suspect they exist unless one happens to be party to insider information”.
Statistics, annual statistics - you have to know
https://www.inaturalist.org/stats
Two others I have bookmarked are from the iNat blog (yes you have a search function there, but, we have to know / remember exactly which words were used) I am interested in the upcoming product goals for July to December. Meanwhile we are in
https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/123394-our-product-goals-for-january-june-2026
And then the CV update posts with the links - difficult to find the latest one. More difficult to find the previous ones !
Wow! I don’t have to maintain my own list of FURs? Cool! Thx.
I’ve always wondered why there was no link to the blog. That seemed like a major oversight. Now I know that there are links at the bottom of the page. I think the problem with having a menu of links at the top of the page and separate links at the bottom of the page is that the average person like myself will assume that all of the links are in the link menu at the top and not bother looking for additional links at the bottom. It’s silly to have them in two different ends of the same page. One solution to not have too many link in the links at the top of the page would be to have an actual links page that has everything, which could be linked to under the more menu. Maybe even better, if you click “More”, it will just take you to a links page that has everything. Ultimately, having an easily accessible place (one obvious link from any page) that helps people find everything would be the most useful.
While I appreciate that there is a workaround, I don’t like that I have to leave the dashboard to see all my subscribed taxa and/or places listed. I thought I’d been unsubscribed from some and opened a bug report, when actually they were just hidden (which makes little sense, given the vast amount of screen real estate on the right side of the page underneath them).
I would like there to be a quicker way to get to recorded trainings. Are these accessible anywhere on the site even, or do you need to know they’re out there on YouTube? (A YT link in the social icons may also be helpful. And unrelatedly, LinkedIn too? I have to use LI for work and enjoy seeing your content there amongst the rest…)
Yes,
A site map for all of the pages would be appreciated
others:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/about
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/whichtaxonareyou
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/range_maps
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/resources
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/community+guidelines
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/science
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/computer_vision_demo
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/archived+help
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/terms
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/search+urls
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help-global
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/teacher's+guide
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/ambassadors
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/citynaturechallenge
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/archived+bioblitz+guide
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help-inaturalist-canada-en
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/jobs
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/id-a-thon
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/api+reference
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/trips
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/developers
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/newsletter
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/network-join
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/giving
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/fabricated_data
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/flags
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/translate
and others
non page pages that should be easier to locate
https://www.inaturalist.org/geo_model
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields
https://www.inaturalist.org/vision_language_demo
There are so many. This list which is not comprehensive as I’m not adding everything has been an accumulation of links over a year.
Compare observation searches
*seems experimental and forgetten about
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/compare
iNaturalist trips
https://www.inaturalist.org/trips
iNaturalist Wiki pages
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/all
Observation Taxonomic tree maker
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/taxa
*Example, all chiros observed
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/taxa?taxon_id=53275&place_id=any&quality_grade=needs_id,research
iNaturalist open range dataset
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/range_maps
API recommended practices
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/api+recommended+practices
Taxon Ranges
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/taxon_ranges
iNaturalists complete taxa list
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/complete_taxa_list
How iNaturalist Counts Taxa
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/how_inaturalist_counts_taxa
iNaturalist Backbone Taxonomy
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/taxonomy
How Taxon Changes work
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/how+taxon+changes+work
Protocol for manually splitting taxon ranges
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/split_ranges
Curator Application
https://www.inaturalist.org/curator_applications/new
Finding and dealing with fabricated observations on iNaturalist
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/fabricated_data
How to use iNaturalist’s search URLs
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/search%2Burls
Species Search
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/search?is_active=true&q=Non-biting+Midges+&utf8=✓&view=grid
iNaturalist terminology
https://www.inaturalist.org/terminology
List of external applications that can connect to your iNaturalist account
https://www.inaturalist.org/oauth/applications
Manage your subscriptions
https://www.inaturalist.org/subscriptions
Observation Fields list
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields
iNaturalist taxonomic sources list
https://www.inaturalist.org/sources
Taxon Framework Relationships
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_framework_relationships
iNaturalist Atlases
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/atlases
Taxonomic changes list
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes
Responses to commonly flagged things
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/flags
I was on iNat for years before I found the link to the blog, down at the bottom of the dashboard page.
Also, I am unaware of any way to navigate to the “Trips” data entry/reporting pages, other than just knowing the URL.
-Doug
There is a list of all the wiki pages in the comment i posted above under Wiki pages. All of what you posted are Wiki pages.
There are also tech demos, which you posted one, but not others.
On site demos
AI-Assisted Identification Summaries
https://www.inaturalist.org/id_summaries_demo
Vision Language
https://www.inaturalist.org/vision_language_demo
Computer Vision
https://www.inaturalist.org/computer_vision_demo
Abandoned features
Identotron
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identotron#establishment_means=&order=&place=&taxon=48460
But to answer the OP question, yes. So many pages are so hard to find or are hidden unless you know they exist. It’s pushed me to essentially make a site directory of page links for myself.
These can be found under “More” on the top menu bar.
I think you were typing as I was, so we both published to the forum at the same time with repeating information, would not have done that otherwise
Pages/all is exactly what I wish I knew about, goes to show that even forum users that know many of the pages are still missing out from a proper directory or a way to access links without typing them in
Sorry for the hit and run, haha. I neglected to save the list I mentioned in my original post, but I’ll try to create a new one some time this week (minus whatever pages others have already mentioned thus far – which by the way, I’ve already learned about several pages I didn’t previously know about!).