I wonder if it would be possible to set up an “In Memoriam” page on iNat that links to the profile pages for those iNaturalist contributors who have died? It would not only be a nice way to immortalize our community members, but also serve as a place where people could check to see if someone they…

This has been discussed and won’t be implemented, at least by iNat officially, sorry: [image] Deceased observers - and a deceased symbol on their icon after some discussions with our legal counsel, we’ve decided that it’s too difficult for us to verify that a deceased person is actually the owne…

In New Zealand, we maintain a Fallen Tōtara project for our fallen: https://inaturalist.nz/projects/fallen-totara-of-inaturalist-nz-mataki-taiao

out of curiosity (and not to derail the discussion), but upon scanning thru a few of the accounts in that project, i notice that several of them have bios that either previously specified/have been updated posthumously to reflect their intentions to have their observations remain on the site in the …

Someone previously proposed having a dedicated page on the forum for In Memoriam messages. The compromise was to have In Memoriam in the topic and put under Nature Tslk.

[image] actuallyaxley: is that practice something necessary for the observations to remain up? No. iNat has no way of knowing that the account holder has died, and accounts are not paid, nor will they lapse if users do not log in after a certain amount of time. [image] actuallyaxley: but…

(I think those comments were added by these observers to their profiles prior to their deaths. I don’t think it’s necessary.)

I fully understand and support the reasoning that staff are unable to verify that a deceased person is the owner of a specific account – i.e., that iNat will not mark accounts. But I wonder whether this would also be true for a user-controlled account designation – i.e., a system by which account h…

Maybe, though people do already do this by editing the profile text or just not logging in. There was a feature request about whether inactivity should be surfaced on other pages of the website, but staff did not move forward with that one either: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/make-it-more-visibl…

Can we have an In Memoriam iNat page?

General

caththalictroides January 31, 2026, 4:10pm 5

What about a less formal set-up, a page where members could post tributes or memories? Would that pass muster?

Topic		Replies	Views
Deceased observers - and a deceased symbol on their icon Feature Requests	67	11045	April 17, 2019
In the event death or incapacity General question	38	1701	April 23, 2024
If a significant Inaturalist contributor dies General	14	1339	August 16, 2022
Users' Content After Death General question	11	2378	April 11, 2023
Honour long time contributors or champions General	5	750	July 18, 2025

Can we have an In Memoriam iNat page?

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