I like this idea! While combing through CNC, I have come across a few brand-new accounts (probably made just in time for the event) with several hundred obs—almost none of them with any ID at all, no direction for reviewers, seemingly no action when questions are asked, etc. It is so frustrating. And it takes time away from users who are being more responsible.
What if CNC projects were ranked by observation biodiversity? Wouldn’t that increase the motivation to look for a broader range of organisms and cut the repeated posting of the same weedy plant? I can see people arguing that this ranking is unfair to places with less biodiversity, but surely, the whole point is that cities are places with unrecognised biodiversity? And the locations with higher “natural” biodiversity are also ones that tend to have fewer observations as things stand, so providing an opening for them could motivate more valuable engagement.
Yes but the iNat community will always see the risks. I know this well enough. You can expect people to say that “What if the participants will start making egregious id of random species just to increase the species count?”.
Again, we need iNat to speak for itself. We need another survey. And for what?
Let’s ask people - identifiers and observers who contributed to CNC something.
1: In which way did you contribute to CNC - Identifier, Observer, or both?
2: If you have been observing, did you take care of taking good quality images that show details? Where is your weightage, quality or quantity?
3: How many identifications did you make for CNC observations?
4: What was your motivation to participate? To win, or to enjoy?
5: If you were an identifier too, then what was the biggest problem you faced/your feedback/suggestions for improvements?
6: If you were an observer, what is your feedback on CNC/what are your suggestions for improvements?
7: (for observers) When did you first participate in CNC?
- Both.
- My photos aren’t perfect, but I generally try to make them clear and sharp.
- Around 3,500.
- To finally get out of the house :) and also, I wanted to find more species than I did in previous years.
- Blurry photos that cannot be identified to species level; duplicates and observers who don’t respond to messages; obviously cultivated plants taken in flowerbeds and pots.
- I would really love for CNC to keep going. I love it when people all over the world go outside at the same time to document biodiversity. But I also wish there was more work being done to improve the event.
- 2021
- Наблюдатель
- Обычные и распространённые виды - одно узнаваемое фото, даже если слегка размыто. Что-то более редкое или сложное в определении - серия снимков с разных ракурсов, сколько успеешь.
- 0 - был в отпуске, вдали от компьютера и наблюдениями занимался)
- Выпал на мой отпуск, в котором я и так распланировал ряд маршрутов, просто часть моих отпускных наблюдений и сюда попали.
- Пустые наблюдения, без фото или голоса. В одном наблюдении фото разных видов. ФОто, по которым неясно, что наблюдал человек: пейзаж, слишком размытое, кусок травостоя.
- Планетарное мероприятие в фиксированные даты - неудобно. В одних регионах жизнь кипит, в других - в стадии глубокого покоя. Лучше бы разделять по широтному принципу, с учётом фенологии.
- 2021
We have a DQA for that. Not a single sp - which pushes the obs to Casual, and out of the Needs ID queue. Since we don’t get notified I also leave a comment.
Only one species per observation please (but you can have many photos in one obs - if they are all that same species)
Data Quality Assessment (see below) - evidence related to a single subject
- Both
- I will not even post it if it’s not a good quality photo. I also added one observation per day of common species two per day of uncommon species
- over 300 IDs
- It motivated me to spend time outside and go out of my way to find new things to photograph
- I only ID one genus of butterflies, I didn’t notice any major issues, the computer vision was wrong a lot but that’s expected for this genus
- I don’t have any
- This was my first year participating, I really enjoyed it, my city did a very good job managing the project, it was organized and we got a daily update during the event. My city had very high participation (there were more identifiers than observers) and a high species count, we reached 72% research grade by the cutoff. I would participate again next year.
Not species count: biodiversity. Fudging a broad range of taxa (vertebrates, invertebrates, vascular plants, algae, bacteria, fungi etc) is much harder to do, and would take coordinated activity (“Have you posted a mantid from Tenoderinae yet?”). Knocking back spurious IDs is no more work than adding IDs to Unknowns, but the effort it takes from cheaters is much higher. It might even force them to learn some taxonomy. 
May sound like a silly question, but as someone who spends a lot of time in rural and/or regional areas, should I make an effort to travel to the city to participate in CNC?
No - there is a Global project for all the places which do not have a local project. Has been so for the last few years.
Ох, а такой уровень “городской природы” часто бывает?))
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/362425070
Наблюдение за растением в магазине… Ещё один очень раздражающий момент, да.
Pls. everyone this is not what I intended. This question should be done like a survey: like the December identifiers survey
I don’t want to read every reply to see if my points have been covered (I did skim through really quick, so none of my points should end up reopening a long-discussed topic, anyway), so I’m just going to list them all as if they weren’t mentioned.
Why??? Is iNat even good for that? I feel like new species or rare populations that pop up on iNat are just happy accidents, not really something that iNat should be exclusively used for by anyone. I personally use iNat for things like “Isn’t it a little late for this Black Swallowtail to be here?” or “When should I schedule that Monarch tagging event?” which rely on people taking photos of common species to create accurate, local seasonality charts.
This is going to be a hot take, but I HAAAATTTTTEEE when people travel just for the sake of seeing wildlife, ESPECIALLY if the intent is to find rare wildlife! It disturbs the habitat, destroys the soil, and causes carbon emissions from travel. LEAVE. NATURE. ALONE. I get that some people need to go visit a green space every once in awhile, but “omg I HAVE to go out of my way to see the nesting pair of rare owls before all the other birders inevitably run them off from all this disturbance we’re causing!” is a bit different than going on a general nature hike and taking a bunch of photos.
The CNC is great for iNat and for nature in cities! Someone else in the thread mentioned that a lot of CNC people will observe on the CNC, then not observe again. That’s wonderful news to me! Those are probably people who “don’t have time” for nature, even if they somewhat care about it. They don’t have time to travel, to go to the park, to even plant a single flower on their balcony, but iNat said “Do you have time to take a photo of a bug for us?” so they reserved that predetermined time into their busy schedule for the CNC to interact with nature. That’s what iNat is all about! They didn’t travel, or interrupt their day, or even discover something brand new or rare, but they still participated by adding a data point or two to the CNC. And, most importantly, maybe THEY, the OBSERVER, learned something new about that bug they saw. That’s the REAL point of the CNC.
By approaching the thread this way, you have missed @aaravmishra explaining what he meant by travel, which is not at all how you have taken it, as well as his expression of his motivations. (I also misunderstood, though I do agree with you re: travelling for nature, as you will see if you read the thread.)
Please do go back and read though rather than merely skimming, because I do not think your approach serves well; you have also missed how the conversation has evolved and where it is currently, and that iNaturalist and CNC are separate entities, that CNC merely utilizes iNaturalist as its platform, so iNaturalist is not the one asking “Do you have time to take a photo of a bug for us?” but rather the recipient of all the snaps, good and bad.
(In return, perhaps everyone will “skim over” the excessive use of all capital letters, which to my understanding are not really acceptable on iNaturalist, as they are considered akin to shouting.)
This.
Where is this going? You are writing something I cannot even think of. I remember when on one of my complaints on CNC @ tiwane literally wrote that it helps us figure out how climate change affects blooming of some tree. I liked the comment not because I found it reasonable but because it nearly got me to the point of laughing. If the agenda of citizen science is so small, when where does iNat actually help scientists? (Believe me or not, I wanted to make that thread but just the iNat community always tries to pressurise my threads and even shuts them up, perhaps because they think that I am writing nonsensical, abstruse criticism, whereas I see my criticism from a constructive point of view.
Enough; I think this is a bit too far. I am for the sake of reference, just 13. And when I grow up, I want to travel to collect as many Auchenorrhyncha as possible. Not to endanger; to create a classification. By know I know hundreds of taxonomic problems in this group. And unless people look at insects, we ignore a majority of biodiversity. Not just Auchenorrhyncha. Insects. Have you seen a thrip? A springtail? A hopper? A (soil) mite? There is a small chance, because when people write on social media “nature’s beauty”, most people will only look at birds, butterflies, mammals and herps. more than half of the biodiversity, is ignored.
When you travel, you learn more. You cannot find everything at your doorstep. Try to search for “pretty_will_life” on Instagram, he’s a true inspiration. He left his home country 4 years ago in the search of every kingfisher in the world. He has traveled the Philippines, India, Indonesia and he plans to travel further. I have never seen anyone criticise a nature educator for CO2 emissions (think of David Attenborough, for example. Why will they criticise my ideals? because I do not have support, because I am weak to fight.
Once you become an identifier, the desire of travel becomes irresistible. You know that the creatures are waiting. You know, that islands are the home of infinitely beautiful fauna. Low-growth countries are often those with the most beautiful biodiversity. Papua new guinea and also the Indonesian art of the island, contains about 20 genera/species of excessively beautiful Penthimiini. And forget about the beautiful ones; not a single Penthimiini has been sighted in New Guinea on iNat.
Again. They do it to win. iNat develops a habit. A hobby. And you are writing this? If you are adding observations to win and not to actually enjoy nature itself, there is no point of iNat.
Thanks very much. I wanted to say that I felt that perhaps because I am not learning more, that is why I am bored. The problem is support. I like to share data. In my opinion, guides are the best way to do this, but no one supports me in making them. Things have been slow but I am able to id something. Still I am not able to say that iNat has sufficient observations, especially from the most biodiverse areas, like Indonesia, New Guinea, the Philippines, Madagascar, Pacific islands, etc.
I wanted to write that. Excessive use of capitals made it look like harsh criticism instead of a constructive one.
comments like these read as dismissive and disrespectful (and to be honest, narrow-minded). Please carefully consider your responses before writing them. Just because you are unable to perceive or attribute value or importance to something does not mean it is unimportant, or that it should be disparaged.
It is true, but look at the comments from user I responded to before judging me on this.
Here’s a nice alternative:
The project on iNaturalist (you must join the project for observations made between May 15th and 31st to be included in the list): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/idb-2026-acting-locally-for-global-impact
The reference website of the Convention on Biological Diversity: https://www.cbd.int/biodiversity-day/2026
Many perhaps, but not everybody. I didn’t take part in CNC much this year other than identifying, but when I did last year, I took photos of many organisms I regularly come by. Not so much as to “observe more species than anyone else” (which I can assure you, I certainly did not, lol), but rather to just take those few days to see what species I have been blind to noticing in my backyard. In fact, perhaps this is one major point of the CNC (or perhaps not) - to encourage us to observe even the things we see more often or are uninterested by. It’s hard to see a mountain when you’re standing on it. =D