I’m a keen iNat user, mainly for plants, and I’m also on a few useful and helpful Facebook groups about botany, wildflowers, etc. Once in a while I post an observation and get a comment such as ‘is that an app name?’ and I realise that Plants Of the World Online has a different scientific or common name to Stace, the accepted authority in the UK for most trained botanists. And then there’s a conversation about how awful apps are, and we all should be out there with our Stace key, or our Clapham, Tutin and Warburg, identifying plants the traditional way. I’m slightly exaggarating, but there are certainly people who really disapprove of apps, and lump them all together. I point out the verifying feature of iNat, that the AI has improved hugely, and that my botany has improved more in the last 4 years than in the last 40 due to the feedback I’ve been getting!
Has anyone else had similar experiences, and what do you say to try to get reluctant people to appreciate iNaturalist a bit more?
(There is an old Guiness ad - I haven’t tried it - because I don’t like it. I think that is where most iNat critics come from. Unless they left after they tried it??) Not that different to the people who say all social media is toxic … iNat is social media too. Also ivory tower - that is why the binomials are in (dead) Latin and Greek - didn’t / don’t want non-academics to join the conversation.
It’s maddening, isn’t it?
Just keep in mind that the audience you are really talking to when you push back on “all apps are bad” is not the OP, it’s the other people reading the thread. Any reasonable statement is bound to work. You made your case very well here:
I point out the verifying feature of iNat, that the AI has improved hugely, and that my botany has improved more in the last 4 years than in the last 40 due to the feedback I’ve been getting!
Keep up the good work! Some people aren’t happy unless they are grumping about something.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. I don’t consider iNat a replacement for scientific literature, field guides, etc., but as a starting point that can help you figure out where to look.
Common names differ among printed resources, too, as well as regionally, and not everyone everywhere uses the same taxonomy – these differences are not a symptom of iNat being unreliable, but of knowledge not being something fixed and absolute.
It is misleading to see iNat merely as an AI identification resource. It is above all a way to systematically record what one has seen and where and when.
You can try to persuade but some won’t see the utility of the site. I’ve pointed out to those who were dismissive of iNat that a number of good discoveries and new locality records have come from site records. And it’s a good way to learn about taxa that you might not be familiar with. And for me it’s a good way to keep track of where and when I photo’d particular organisms so if needed I can go back to my photo archives and find the originals.
In my opinion the CV (not AI) and it’s improvements is the starting of ID on iNat, the very human IDers are the real key to identification.
The forum is what I consider the social aspect and is highly educational.
I don’t use other sites for id, as the few I did try weren’t accurate. I don’t use other social platforms at all.
Mostly I think people forget that the very basic function of iNat is to engage people to go outdoors and actually engage with nature. To record what and where and when you got to see.
I was emailing a while back with a taxonomist who has a lot of expertise and would be an incredible help with identifying and taxonomy advice on iNat, but he had some pretty principled disagreements (encouraging novelty-seeking and disturbing of rare species instead of cultivating deep local knowledge; large-scale global taxonomies like POWO and iNat inevitably being full of errors and lacking flexibility; repeatedly getting into ID or taxonomy disagreements with less-experienced people; involvement with anything that contributes to the proliferation of AI in society), I think with the hopes that young naturalists should learn from physical resources and in-person mentors at naturalist clubs instead.
I mean those things frustrate me as well, he seems like a really nice guy and I respect him for being principled about it, but I learned so much more from iNat than I could have from the handful of busy naturalists who live near me, and the global connections that iNat facilitates are so productive in making cool discoveries like these (and others that I’ve been involved with) that I think it’s absolutely worth being involved in.
Plant privilege applies. There are many taxa for which there are no “traditional” identification materials.
Also, first-world problems apply. There are many places for which even plants lack accessible identification materials.
Which only highlights the disconnect in some quarters of academia: they are aware, intellectually, that people will only protect what they know about and understand, and yet simultaneously, there is an undercurrent of gatekeeping in the language and terminology used.
On iNaturalist, you can choose settings to show common name first followed by scientific name; scientific name first followed by common name; or scientific name only. There is no option to show common name only. Yet there have been allegations on the Forums that iNaturalist “favors” common names.
It amazes me that so many serious naturalists prefer Facebook groups over iNaturalist. You could mention that iNatulalist doesn’t:
- share your personal data with other companies
- spread misinformation on an unprecedented scale
- push people toward radicalization with its algorithms
- allow extremist movements to proliferate
- outsource hate-speech moderation to ineffective algorithms
- force transgender people to use their legal names
- design its products to keep users addicted to their platform
Just saying.
I’m a prolific iNat crusader on social media, both Facebook and Twitter. From my experience, the vast majority of iNat critics and naysayers have either never used iNat - having heard info about it second-hand and deciding that making all kinds of incorrect assumptions is a great idea - or have used it extremely little and so have no conception at all of how it works, its strengths and limitations, its idiosyncrasies.
A significant portion of the critics I encounter on social media consistently follow the exact same blueprint:
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The person is an expert/interested in a very esoteric taxon, eg an obscure beetle genus or family that very few people even know exists, or a taxon that is inherently quite hard to ID from photos
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A colleague or friend mentions iNat to them, and either shows them a few screenshots of distribution maps or the person actually goes to iNat themself.
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They spend 5 mins browsing iNat: they’re now the world expert in the platform.
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They take to social media and declare “Wow iNaturalist is so shit because this taxon where you can only reliably ID species X, Y and Z by dissecting genitals has lots of misIDs by amateur naturalists who don’t realise this, look at all the terrible distribution data!!”.
Or my favourite, “iNaturalist is such a garbage site, look at all these stupid peasants misIDing this genus of tiny black beetles with 75 identical species. I’ve spent 40 years working on them, and they’re citizen scientists just starting to get interested in nature, how could these people be so dumb to make these mistakes?”
- They never correct a single mistake or take any action whatsoever to improve the data, because that would then mean they couldn’t complain about it anymore.
So many of these critics are characterised by two key, contradictory elements: hyperbole and inaction. They love to make it out that a few hundred misIDs of some random spider family is bringing on the end times. Yet despite how apparently world-ending the issue is, they point blank refuse to ever actually fix the misIDs or solve the problem in any way. They want the data to be wrong so that they can continue to denigrate it and maintain the apparent moral high ground.
Initially when I interacted with these people, I would be quite antagonistic and get into big arguments with them in defence of iNat. But not only was this just making me stressed out, it obviously rarely achieved anything anyway.
So now my approach is to (mostly) be much more diplomatic, point out flaws in the reasoning, tell them I am always happy to help, and in some cases I even go in and do a few hundred or thousand IDs to immediately remove the problem and demonstrate how easy it is to fix. If they do then join iNat, I keep tabs on all of their activity so that I can add missing species straight away that they’re trying to ID, can jump in straight away when something confuses them or seems to not work, etc.
I’ve now had converts that started off as very strong iNat sceptics/critics who are regular users and strong supporters of the site; once they start actually using it properly, they come to realise its value.
Ultimately though, there will always be some people who will hate or greatly criticise iNat no matter what you say, and they won’t change their mind no matter what you say. This is just an unfortunate reality that happens for many things. When I encounter these people and realise they’re a ‘lost cause’, I don’t even bother interacting with them anymore: I know I won’t change their mind, and it’s not worth the mental stress.
Even the folks in iNat tell you to be careful with iNat’s CV suggestions. Sure we have learned stuff at a much faster rate. Picture tells a thousand words and yet there are imperfection. There are times some pictures cannot be deciphered accurately but are the only ones available to represent a species. People using apps have said some species are not accurately identified by AI at times. It is true. iNat’s system is viable in that it can dynamically improve the accuracy. and it seems to me that the system is functioning based on that same dynamism of having people constantly checking the records. Not like in other systems in which an authority such as an experienced botanist puts it down in the records and it is set. We don’t get to examine the specimens in the museum. All we have are pictures of living plants. Figuring out obscure plant species can be challenging. I respect the opinions of others somewhere out there in other forums.
There’s a saying that, “It’s not a bug; it’s a feature”.
You mean iNat is encouraging engagement with nature?
You mean on iNat, they can be cultivating GLOBAL knowledge as an identifier?
You mean iNat lacks an ivory tower, which has resulted in the most powerful tool for SURVEYING BIODIVERSITY that has ever been created?
You mean iNat is a synergy between computer vision and crowdsourcing, which has resulted in the most powerful tool for LEARNING ABOUT NATURE that has ever been created?
Thank you for being a prolific iNat crusader! 
I’m impressed by your hard work in converting sceptics into regular users. You deserve a lot of praise for showing people how amazing this platform is! 
It’s inevitable that something new happens and certain types of people get all curmudgeony about it. I know I do it, and tend to try to take it less than seriously, as I know it’s “one of those things”, and not make it into some one else’s problem. But it’s good there are people who take the time to straighten up the info out there for people who would otherwise never hear a differing view.
For me, the biggest thing in iNat has been when I get to have a conversation with someone who has deeper knowledge about something. And I’m not just meaning a degree holder, but more versed laymen as well. I’ve learned so much about common urban bird species from a hobbyist. I also remember a conversation I had with a German aphid expert, who told me that a lot of the time you can’t tell anything really specific about an aphid species without a gene sequencer as they have such varied life cycles and minor differences. She continued, that if you get to an accurate genus level from the image of the aphid and the plant the specimen was found on, you can congratulate yourself. “I sometimes wonder why on earth did I decide to focus on aphids instead of any of the other species, but then I find something interesting and get back in the saddle.” 
Because I like the science part of iNaturalist, I like to point out that the data really is used by scientists to do various different kinds of studies. Sometimes that interests people.
People who dismiss iNaturalist because the CV is often wrong don’t realize that real human beings check the observations. They’re often surprised when I tell them. That can raise their opinion of iNaturalist. Of course, then I feel it necessary to disclose that ID’s may be slow in coming for some groups and that humans make mistakes too. Oops.
Oh goodness yes, more times than I like to remember… and not just on social media, also in “real life” (whatever that is). In my experience, it all comes down to the misunderstanding that iNat is just another IDing app. How do I counter this? By stressing over and over again the fact that iNaturalist is in fact an international community of real people, many of whom invest a great deal of time and energy in helping others with their IDs, and that the initial suggestion from the computer vision is just that… an initial suggestion and merely a first step in what can sometimes be a lengthy and participated process.
Many people are also very surprised to learn that the iNat app and iNat website are one and the same and just two ways of interfacing with one central database. When they do grasp this, it seems to go a long way to improving credibility as the general feeling seems to be that a website is intrinsically far more authoritative than a smartphone app. I hate to admit it, but when I first heard about iNaturalist, I too thought it was just an app and I only started believing in it when I realised I could also access it on the computer through the website. Alas a sign of my age I suppose 
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The only massive criticism I hear on social media about iNaturalist comes from herpers in relations to the how easily exploited reptiles are, how sensitive location can be and how they claim iNaturalist damages retile populations, and that reptiles are being actively damaged by iNaturalist data.
That’s most of what I see too. But some of that’s selection bias.
I do think you ought to be able to obscure a batch of records as you upload, or set it to default in your profile; I actually think that’d help a lot with herpers.
this is already possible
iNaturalist in the year 2024 is probably for many regions and taxa better than other social media gropus, but still some taxon experts are active on FB groups and don’t participate on iNat which makes some FB groups better than iNaturalist for certain taxa.
Perhaps people who dislike iNat have not noticed the beeeg improvement over the last 5 years and one should tell them …
how? I have to do it record by record as I put them in.