I tend to rely more on subscriptions to locations (e.g., my state) and taxa I’m interested in than on following individual iNatters, although I do follow some folks, most of whom I know personally. That way if an interesting record is submitted from my area or for a taxon that I subscribe to, I will see it even if I don’t follow or have had no interaction with that iNatter. (Not sure if or how those notifications work if you rely solely on the phone app.)
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Well said! Following certainly has its pros and cons. :D
Well… I’m actually going to have to disagree on that part. People do click on profiles quite often, although they do it from the iNat website and clicking on the profile image. I’ve gotten tons of comments about how people do this and how they follow people specifically to use the resources they have sent.
and/or use the resources provided there
Users have contacted me because of what I share in my profile and how much they are thankful for it and follow my account because of this. Tracking based on clicking of links thru the forums isn’t very reliable. I stress not trusting that as often times people just copy paste the username and go to iNat.
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I do not follow anyone, on any playform, unless I know them very well personally.
The main reason is that I don’t want to un-follow anyone.
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I really meant “links in the profile”. Not the forum (which is a very different story).
How can see how often those are clicked?
I don’t go by a person’s level of activity when deciding to follow; I go by the impression their profile makes. If anything, I avoid following the very highly active uploaders because I like to be able to keep up – I don’t want to be notified of hundreds of observations. The most active person whom I follow uploads up to a few times a month, and seldom more than twenty observations in that time. Nor have I checked lately how many followers I have or who they are.
Lately I have been doing so more often, ever since I started my project of using the “People” option on the “Community” tab for my ID sessions. Pick an avatar from the 12 that come up, visit that profile, then go from there to identifying that one’s observations. Occasionally I find one whom I can’t help because they only observe taxa I don’t know much about in a part of the world with which I am unfamiliar; but this is uncommon.
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Self-hosting the resources, it’s easy to check the stats - which files get how many downloads etc.