Newbies to be encouraged to come back, to stick around, to read comments and questions. Join the family? Seems that CNC is partly treated by observers as ‘just for this weekend’ done, tick, next.
Perhaps your dedicated identifiers can reach out to somewhere nearby, or the taxon specialists can range wider. Every little helps to make a difference.
I will definitely tell our identifiers their efforts are very much appreciated and by the way, take a look at the neighboring projects (and the rest of the world).
Multiple observations of a single organism by multiple users: is there an iNat protocol one hypothetical goldfish observed by 47 different people from becoming a statistically significant local population?
I was wondering about this over the weekend when, far from this project and its captive cactus, two users almost simultaneous posted a gopher snake crossing a path. The photographers had been on opposite sides of the snake, so for a brief moment I thought I’d missed a parade. That example is completely trivial, but it must happen a lot on a larger scale during ecoblitzes.
In general, iNat data can’t be used to measure the numbers of individuals in a population (at least not in any simple way). It can be used to establish presence in an area, but not absence, which might be due to lack of observers. So, it’s fine if several people make observations of the same individual at the same spot at the same time. If nothing else, there’s no way to stop it. Researchers simply have to understand that data from iNaturalist will have constraints on its use (as does all data, really).
And one of the missions of the City Nature Challenge. Also having fun is one of the other goals, so I hope the youth are having fun.
There were 445 cities last year, 485 this year (at least that is what we have numbers wise as of our last count).
Hi @dianastuder I’d just like to invite you to think about using other language than “Darkest Africa”. It is Eurocentric and colonial term which presupposes that the unexplored and unmapped-by-white-man areas of Africa were dark and/or dangerous, and therefore open for exploitation and colonial
occupation. I don’t think using terminology that upholds this colonial viewpoint is in the spirit of the City Nature Challenge, particularly when we do have so many organizers come out of the continent of Africa organizing their communities to take part.
I live in Africa. Look at a map of the world and see how the First World (USA, Europe etc) is lit up like Christmas at night.
And how dark Africa is at night. The big cities are lit. I am in Cape Town - that white spot way down South in Africa!
Thanks to our Dark Skies we have 2 huge astronomical observatories.
Please can you help to motivate identifiers to come to CNC in Africa (South Africa is okay but I have a huge backlog accumulated from CNC22 for the Rest of Africa) About 4.6K obs waiting in hope
Heh, a good chunk of that looks like it will be a later phase of my “Tony’s Trees” project- I’ll get to those eventually. ;)
You could add these to make it more interesting - mostly trees - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?user_id=bahanla&place_id=any
I am loath to dump them all in dicots, to be ignored, again. Haven’t attempted opening any - I hope for - flag for curation for missing species - if you find any, please @mention me - I enjoy helping those forward!
@lhiggins As the CNC organiser for Botswana I would like to say that we are really in the dark here in Africa when it comes to identification of some taxa. We need to attract expertise from the light polluting countries to gve us much more help and enlighten us with groups like staphilinidae, leafhopper, miridae, tiny moths (eg phyticiinae, gelechiidae) rutelinae and melolonthinae.
170 melolonthinae in Botswana and none IDd to species !
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=7105&subview=table&taxon_id=48200&view=species
In Southern Africa
17 miridae ID to species out of 1694 observations !
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/miridae-plant-bugs-of-southern-africa?tab=species
Staphylinidae 855 observation but only 2 observations IDd to species level in southern Africa.
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/rove-beetles-staphylinidae-of-southern-africa
We need to attract the attention of expert staphylinologists, miridologists and microlepidopterists to get us out of the dark. Since these groups are so hard to identify people dont bother to photograph even though they may be the most abundant insects and the easiest to find. We also need loads of help with fungi and lichens as well, Hoping more enlightened, expert entomologists focus on the entomologically darkest continent. Please steer them our way !
And the high school and college students in New England in the US are practicing today, too - lots of classmates IDed as “Great Apes” (at least it’s true), lots of observations uploaded without IDs, lots of cultivated plants being uploaded without being marked Not Wild. I really hope the teachers respond swiftly and appropriately.
Im marking about half the observations for alabama as captive cultivated now it seems. Chickens in pens without ID attached yet even. Do kids really not know what a chicken is? I grew up doing 4H so im familiar with farm animals from a young age but ive def met kids wven young teens who dont know chicken doesnt come in a pack at the grocery store freezer isle in nugget form. Im just more surprised auto CV is missing it.
Besides not knowing how the “mark captive” part works, another issue we typically see in big participation events is new folks not knowing how to keep the observation separate, so that they send a spider and a flower etc all in the same obs.
If you want to tuck this weekend’s worth of those out of the way, I invite you to add such CNC23 records to this project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/variable-species-and-other-life
Whether or not you add photosets, any that do get into that project can be omitted from your favorite id’ing url, with some chunk that I’ll add below once I figure it out. ;)
edit: ¬_in_project=variable-species-and-other-life or if using project numbers in urls, it’s
¬_in_project=160531
Please between @bobmcd 's Low Growth countries, that I filter for Africa
and @lotteryd 's carefully crafted URLs
I need this URL to tweak down to CNC23
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=unknown&per_page=10&order_by=observed_on&project_id=123926&place_id=97392
I can filter for the correct dates, but for CNC too?
For CNC22 I was swamped in Western Cape obs and didn’t get to my Rest of Africa till the challenge was ancient history. If I can only keep up with CNC23, I may be able to start chewing thru a year’s backlog.
I think multiple observations of a single organism are a sign of success! As the top tier iNat mission is to connect people with nature, I think such multiple observations of the same organisms show that its working.
iNat records encounters between people and nature.
Scientists can learn something from the data, but it is not offered up to them as statistically significant representations of populations.
I would certainly take a picture of a snake someone else spotted first - I observed it, too. 
Albuquerque CNC just passed 1,000 observations. I’ve done 400 IDs plus marking a bunch of casual garden plants (46% casual so far!). Since I actually need to work on my day job this afternoon, it will be quickly out of control. Good luck to the rest of you!
La Paz is already out of control. Over 18,000 observations with over 8,500 of them unknowns, many of those unverifiable. They may be top of the leader table but they’re not really playing the game. Time for someone to speak to the organizers.
I’ll try to pitch in throughout the next week/month/year. All the talk locally is about getting more participants and observations than last year, with no additional support or training for identifiers 
By the way, I think you gave a presentation on Andean cactus to the CSSA? I watched that, lovely pictures.
Good gravy, that’s… so much. How many days does the CNC go for?
