This poll is for anyone who’s been using iNat for more than a few months so far, casual or ‘power’ users both. Please check the option that best represents the way you found out about iNaturalist. If i forgot a big one, let me know, i’ll add it.
0 voters
Dang, you can’t change your vote if you click the wrong one…??
oof. i can repost. i tried to delete what you voted for and repost it but that didn’t work.
Welp, maybe too late (NOT via a bioblitz/contest/CNC). Pretty sure I found it by googling, but I honestly can’t remember since it was so long ago.
I just changed my mistake. After voting mistakenly, I hit “hide results” and then voted for the correct one, and it took my incorrect vote off.
Great, thanks for the tip!!
it was really long ago for me too but i am pretty sure i read about it somewhere. Well, we will mentally remove one point from the bioblitz. I was kinda wondering, what bioblitz they even had in your area before you were involved… haha
Through a bioblitz in my case, though a really exceptional one. I could easily have voted for multiple options, since this counts as being recruited for a citizen-science effort, and I was recruited by a friend/peer who had been trying to get me to use iNaturalist. But the bioblitz was the main reason I got started.
I think I was googling for a non-taxidermied photo of an African linsang.
I was basically looking for a broader eBird: one that I could record mammals. After much searching on Google, I found it and just went crazy.
Searching for butterfly websites/ butterfly sightings on Google.
Same for me, except substitute wildflowers for mammals.
Cullen Hanks saw a snake image of mine. Asked for it to be added to Herps of texas project. I had no idea what that was. Took about 3 or 4 months later before I really started being addicted.
Love this place and recruit for it when I meet new people.
To add a real response I was working on a grad school project back in 2011 about smartphone use in conservation. That idea largely itself coming from helping test the Whats Invasive app in 2009 which was a little like Inaturalist but where you could only add invasives specified in a project. Anyway while doing research I found project Noah and tried it but didn’t like it for a bunch of reasons (to each their own but it’s not for me). Then I found inat probably in an article? Wish I remembered. That was it and I’ve been an obsessive user ever since. It’s changed a lot! In both ways I like and ways I don’t but the community has grown and become amazing beyond what I imagined.
Well I found it only because you told me to post my photos!
To clarify a little, I was looking for an app. I noticed the app and tried it a couple of times, but never really figured it out. When I discovered the website maybe a year or more later, I started using iNaturalist regularly.
I think I might have heard about iNaturalist vaguely a couple times before, but I didn’t take a serious look at it until I saw this on facebook: http://mikeburrell.blogspot.com/2017/05/what-to-do-with-all-of-your-non-bird.html
As a birder I was already “collecting” species and recording observations with eBird and taking photos of cool bugs and herps I saw along the way, so it was perfect and I was sold right away.
Heard about it through a class I was taking to become a student volunteer at the LA Zoo. One of the presenters was a power-user and mentioned it in his presentation (he is a wildlife biologist) and I started using the app casually. Once I discovered the website and once the AI identification came out, I became completely addicted to using iNat.
I like your use of the poll here, @charlie. It’s nice to see the public results on the chart, in addition to the written explanations.
Definitely NPR in 2016–in fact, I found the article, which I still think is a good one: