Note that this tutorial is only for users who want complete control over their users list. If you want the project to display observations only by those who have joined the project, I recommend using the Project Members Only setting.
Quite a few users, especially educators, would like to create a collection project that only displays observations made by certain users. Here is a tutorial for how to create such a project.
If you’re a teacher, before using iNaturalist with your students, please:
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Read our Teacher’s Guide and Managing Projects pages, and use iNaturalist for at least a few days or a week before using it with your students.
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Consider using Seek by iNaturalist, rather than iNaturalist itself. If there’s no reason for your students to upload their observations for the world to see, Seek might be a better alternative.
Remember that collection projects are basically a saved set of search parameters. When you load the project page, inaturalist does a quick search and displays all observations which meet those parameters.
Before starting, make sure you have a list of the usernames you would like to include in the project.
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Go to https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/new and click on the green “Get Started” button under “Collection Projects”.
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You’ll now be on the Project Details page. Fill out the Project Name, Project Summary, and other fields at the top, then scroll down to Project Requirements.
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The Project Requirements section determines which observations will be displayed in your project. If you want to only include observations made by certain users, then you will have to add their usernames to the Users list.
- Start typing the first username you would like to add, then select it from the list of suggestions:
- It should now appear in the Users list:
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Repeat step 4 for each user you would like to add to the project requirements. If you make a mistake, you can click on the “X” next to the username to remove it from the list.
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Add any other requirements, such as dates, taxa, places, etc. You can preview which observations will be displayed in the project by clicking on the Preview Observations button.
- Click on “Done” to create the project. You can always edit the project later to change the requirements.
Here’s an example of a project with Places, Users, and Date requirements: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/southwest-texas-inat-a-thon