I’ve been in touch via support with someone from a problematic CNC from this year and they referred to themselves and other participants as “contestants”. That could just be a translation thing, but if local organizers are framing the CNC as a “contest” and participants as “contestants”, that can definitely create some of the issue we’re seeing.
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I’ve created a post outlining the issues with some potential solutions. It’s more of an overall big picture post, but you may find some of it useful: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/city-nature-challenge-issues-suggestions-for-improvement/65039/2
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Thank you for compiling this. There’s going to be a CNC wrap-up meeting, I’ll share out your post as a resource as well there so other organizers can see it too.
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I’m relieved to hear you haven’t seen issues with our project!
Thank you especially for the feedback about the duress users. I know there were talks within our project specifically of coordinating with more local orgs next year, and possibly classrooms; but clearly that will require more thought on if to do it/how to do so in a way that is productive and meaningful for both the students and iNat as a whole. (At a bare minimum I would think if teachers want to include iNat in a required assignment, it needs to be one of several options to complete it.)
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The teacher needs to be an active iNatter. Before so they can explain. During so they can monitor their students. After so they can keep resolving the problem obs.
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If student participation is desired, the older the students the better, and I would recommend making a field trip out of it and busing them to a location with wild plants, as it is otherwise difficult to get them to mark which plants are cultivated. (How do I know? I once gave a talk to a local high school class about how the plants in their school garden are cultivated and it’s important for data integrity to mark them as such … the student behavior did not change.)
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The older ones are probably more adept at cheating, though, and more inclined to do so.
Fair point. I was saying that mainly because older students take better photos and are less likely to get up to pranks such as joke IDs or unflattering photographs of classmates.
I would be very careful/intentional about making iNat part of any school assignment. A large portion of the issues we see on iNat with problematic observations and IDs, including in some CNC projects, result from poorly executed school assignments (see many other forum threads).
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Perhaps it would help if iNaturalist changed the name of the CNC to something that sounds less competitive. Preferably something that begins with C so the acronym doesn’t have to change. I couldn’t think of a good C word, though. City Nature Exploration?
Collaboration
Celebration
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City Nature Choice - as in choose nature
?
Yes! You guys are good!
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Census
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I would go with Celebration. It still conveys the idea of something fun, and it is in keeping with iNat’s goal of getting people to engage with nature, not just record data about it.
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Do you ever feel like the less someone knows about iNat, the more likely they are to organize a City Nature Challenge?
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To be fair, those of us who use iNat the most prolifically are much happier sitting alone half-submerged in a bog looking at bugs than we are having anything to do with “organizing” or “people”, so it sorta makes sense :P
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I can think of exceptions (@sambiology), but this is an interesting point IMO
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This seems to apply to class projects, too.
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