I think you got this wrong. iNat should encourage people to step out of their homes. Finding something rare is a coincidence. It is supposed to be a passion, not walking in the park for 4 days and then not looking back.
I apologize. I misunderstood this.
I do not necessarily think though that finding something rare is a coincidence. I think it can come from observing in the same place, seeing what stands out one day, what is new, what is there that was not before. It can come from letting oneself be bored and insisting oneâs eyes look beyond the everyday to see what is hidden just beyond, or training oneâs eyes to be still and observant, like in @AdamWargon 's story.
But all of that starts from the first observations people make, which maybe come during CNC. And that is built on by the excitement those new observers get when an identifier offers up a more refined ID that becomes a little more knowledge about what they saw. Or a confirmation, which also feels good, because someone at least sees what they have observed and confirmed it.
(And with that, I am back to seeing what I can identify in the Needs ID pile in my local CNC, currently at 36% RG.)
I hope you are feeling more at ease today. :)
edit to fix grammatical errors from trying to think across languages but hooray, my local CNC is up to 38% RG now!
You might try posting this in https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/city-nature-challenge-2026/77622 for more responses. (Mods, as appropriate, please move the comment Iâm responding to and this response to that threadâŚI want to respond, so I just have it do it here for now. Sorry - thanks.)
From my perspective -
(1) if there are multiple photos of what appear to be the same plant, many identifiers will comment that the observation(s) are duplicate, and encourage the observer to combine them into one observation. This doesnât always work though because the observer may have already ditched the platform. If the photos linger as duplicates, IDâg them at least removes them from needing ID.
(2) (a)if a plant is clearly in an area where cultivated plants would occur (e.g. a botanical garden, someoneâs backyard), donât hesitate to mark it as cultivated.
(2)(b) re: your question about certain species - sometimes, if you ID a plant to genus or species, the observation will automatically default to âcultivatedâ if more than a certain percentage of that species or genus is âcultivatedâ in iNatâs system for the geographic area. Roses are a great example of this.
(2)(c) you can always ask, but that often doesnât yield an answer.
Yes, every time I get a message filled with leafhoppers from @ john_ibis for identifying, that feels great. Yesterday I received on in which I saw Anagonalia emeiensis - a species which neither had been observed on iNat and nor had it been reported from Thailand before.
Yes, I feel a bit better as Iâve been able to ID something new recently. In addition to Anagonalia emeiensis I could also id Thessitus mortifolia, Rhinodelphax hargreavesi and hopefully ic an find some others. I crossed 550 species. I idâed all 550 in 7 months since I became active (Iâd been suspended for age restrictions, below 13, prior to September)
This was a good reminder to go look in other parts of the world. I had not done it recently, but on reading this comment I started helping (I hope!) with CNC obs in Africa. Not at all boring to see completely different organisms for a change!
There are very few organisms that I will add a species ID to anywhere, mostly stick to higher levels, but I think for species experts it might be a nice change of scenery to use your taxonomic and deductive skills to narrow things down at a higher level than usualâand then learn something new when it reaches research grade.
Also I forgot to mention that CNC needs to make observers responsible. Add something like âunknowns will not countâ
I agree that âunknowns do not countâ seems like an attractive solution. Iâve thought of that myself, but if it leads to âpick the top CV suggestion [a whale] and take no further actionâ, you end up with mavericks.
The core problem seems to be the competition element. The individuals who post every dandelion on a walk around the lake are, in my view, poor candidates to become enthusiastic naturalists. If city outcomes improve over time, it probably isnât as a result of those individuals changing. There may be better ways of getting other individuals involved and of excluding the competition-minder users.
Some low barriers to entry ? I can cope with honest Unknowns. Donât count them for CNC till âsomeoneâ has added an ID (to Family if there are enough field marks visible or in notes)
First barrier - basic photo skills. Fill the frame. In focus. Exclude the green / colour / greige blur focused on My Shoe or That Gravel or Branch with ((bug)). Now. You may upload your first obs.
We donât want or need badges - sparrow - hawk - Eagle ! - ooh Condor !!! But some way to encourage people to improve the quality of their own obs - clear your mavericks to remind people to follow notifications and withdraw wrong IDs. Make IDs for others to focus your mind on how difficult it is to ID greige blurs and ((bugs )).
A new DQA to push the duplicates to Casual.
Split Not Wild obs from broken = missing dat obs. Then the Not Wild can be Needs ID or CID. The feature requests are queued up.
lol. I tried to add that feature request for duplicate DQA and it was rejected!!! Is this enough? I have, in the past, submitted atleast 6 feature requests, and not a single still is active. I wonder why. If I had a choice, I would have made tons of feature requests for the improvement of guides, starting with the removal of âas isâ.
Agree. I donât pay much attention to badge status on other sites. What I do think might be helpful is a series of self paced modules on the core competencies of iNaturalist. Completion status could be displayed on the profile.
Not that iNat has to do everything eBird does but eBird does have an eBird Essentials/Fundamentos de eBird. Asking CNC organizers to promote the course prior to the CNC could help improve the quality of observations.
Oh, I think that self-paced modules is a good idea! Thanks for suggesting it, Anne.
Limit of 10 submissions to a CNC project for accounts less than a month old, increasing to 100 for accounts up to one year old. Similar limitations on adding IDs to CNC observations.
And a handicap ⌠clear your issues from last year, if they have left a persistent residue.
In fact a limit per observer would also be a good way of reducing the outright junk. If you are in good standing at iNat you may upload 100 a day for CNC. After all iNat is about quality, not quantity. They say.
ID credits: Per ID you make, you can add x observations:
First ID of a species on iNat - 5 obs. credit.
Unknowns ID - 4 obs. credit.
Leading - 3 obs. credit.
Improving - 2 obs. credit
Supporting - 1 obs. credit
In general it ranks how much of your head did you use to make the ids. Unknowns I have given a better score because they need attention. First ID is always the one which demands the most research. Supporting is just pressing an agree button, so it is not that big of a contribution.
People will need to be responsible enough add ids before adding to iNat with their observations. This will also mean that people will make more ids than observations, therefore fixing these problems.
If there is support then we will make it a feature request.
This is not very logical as it kinda demotivates people from adding observations.
That is about quality. Not quantity. Much better. We donât want mountains of obs of the same whatever. Bring me a dandelion - wide view, leaf detail, flower face, and profile for bracts, buds and fruit - thank you. Meadow with yellow spots - no. Meadow for EACH yellow spot - I am out of here.
Many of the issues from CNC were made by accounts with fewer than 100 observations. I think restricting # of observations/IDs will just lead to an increase in the creation of duplicate/sockpuppet accounts which are very difficult to track. I think curators would rather have single accounts with lots of bad content as opposed to lots of fake accounts each with lower numbers of bad observations/IDs.
Wouldnât this lead to people giving blind agreements or guessing an id just to get some more observation opportunities? Hundreds of wrong ids by gamers arenât going to help solve the CNC issues.
Partly; However the iNat community can even get to the point of suspending a user for misids.