Best Practice for Using iNaturalist in the UK: A practical guide for producing high‑quality, verifiable biological records 1**. Use Your Real Name (or a recognisable version of it):** The UK recording community places strong emphasis on recorder reliability. Using your real name helps: ~ County…

I haven’t seen a mention of wild vs cultivated/captive and the need to mark appropriately (apologies if I missed this). This is an issue with both new and experienced users’ observations, and also with identifiers who choose not to mark observations that are obviously not wild as such.

[image] SteveMcBill: I see this guidance as complementary rather than competitive — raising the quality of UK iNat observations is worthwhile in its own right, regardless of the current state of the bridge. There’s an important distinction to be made between improving data quality on the one …

Thanks again, bazwal — you’re raising important distinctions, and I agree that improving data quality and adapting to the UK’s existing systems aren’t identical goals. The guidance isn’t intended to imply that iRecord’s practices are the gold standard, only that many UK schemes still rely on certain…

I assume you mean as to the UK standards, and not iNat generally?

@SteveMcBill thanks for your thoughtful engagement with this thread. I might add a couple of notes that I think are significant. Sorry if others have said some of this and I’ve missed it, it’s a lot to read! Make clear the distinction between Display Name and username. The username is irreleva…

I presume you are aware of this article in the UK hoverfly project, but in case it’s of any use to you, this was my attempt to do something similar in a more limited taxonomic application https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/uk-hoverflies-syrphidae/journal/77600-optimise-your-own-observations-for-th…

Thanks for the link to your hoverfly article Matthew, I hadn’t seen it previously, an interesting read.

Thanks for a few useful and interesting suggestions Matthew, appreciated. I will try and incorporate them a little later

Oh, and You should link to NBN’s advice on ‘pinned locations’ as an alternative to obscuration. https://uk.inaturalist.org/posts/62014-location-location-location

Best Practice for Using iNaturalist in the UK:

General

andrewtree January 5, 2026, 5:32am 29

My comment is equally applicable to iN generally

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Best Practice for Using iNaturalist in the UK:

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