I’m working on updating iNaturalist’s help docs and found links to some ancient help docs that are still listed in our Bioblitz Guide. They’re pretty fun to look at and for me they bring back memories of how iNat used to look and function.
Early iNat general how-to (PDF) - circa 2012 or so?
Flyer for the World Parks Conference Bioblitz in 2014 (PDF)
Between this and the thread asking when the message feature started, I think it’s time to compile an Official History of iNaturalist, if only so we can reference it when someone wants to know “when did iNat reach 10,000 tardigrade observations?” or “what year was it made impossible to upload without an initial ID?” or " when did we first reach 1,000,000 species documented on iNat?"
(No, the answer to the last question is NOT when the mycologists perfected species descriptions based on spore sampling in the upper atmosphere.)
As a pandemic addition to the iNat community I sometimes catch snippets of commentary rooted in iNat’s early days and wonder about how it evolved. Partly because processes can drive organizational cultures that aren’t obvious to latecomers (like me) and leave us wondering why on earth things are done in such-and-such a way. Partly because years in non-profit management and governance turned me into a non-profit process nerd.
I hope all the old stuff is archived in a redundant, secure, useable way. It would be a shame to lose it.
Could be a fun project to compile some of the more interesting or significant moments on iNaturalist over the years.
I remember when I started there were no annotations and discussions of the site took place in a Google Groups community. Also, the ‘Great iSpot Migration’.