Description of need:
Currently many projects have an overarching goal of surveying for targeted species whilst still being a larger scale project. Trying to get people to focus on specific groups or targets is currently difficult to coordinate. For Example BIAZA, The British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums is focusing on Glow worms despite being a generalist project. While their project does look at all Taxa having an ability to set a focus could help to encourage the public to look for specific things. This could also be useful for projects focusing on various groups in set areas that have under recorded species. For example a spider project targeting Clubiona* *Genus spiders that may otherwise be unrecorded.
My idea would be that this would allow for project coordination and further target key taxon.
This hopefully wont come across as gamifying INaturalist but rather allowing project leads to set key goals and coordinated survey attempts in a user friendly way.
Feature request details: This would be in a similar format to the missions on the app allowing for it to show a set target/ targets for a project. In my BIAZA example you could set glow worms as a specific target or leave it open so that any unrecorded/under recorded species within that project parameter is a mission. Another benefit of this is that it would allow for missions to be brought to the website as the main reason it has not been is due to requiring your phones geolocation.
The missions would be set by the project creator/admins and could either pick specific taxon or target species
First of all, to my knowledge, missions are currently only a feature in Seek, not in the iNat Classic or the newer iNaturalist app. That being said, there is generally nothing wrong with gamification. On the contrary, many users (and not just kids) love it, and it’s already being practiced on iNat anyway—whether it’s reaching the next 1,000 identifications or grinding for the #1 spot for a specific species in one’s country. However, we have to keep in mind that gamification also attracts users who might try to game the system just to get the next achievement (e.g., using AI-generated photos). It has the potential to lower the quality of uploads and ID suggestions. But as I said, I generally agree that optional features like this can be useful in Citizen Science to keep people engaged.
Regardless of that: The project you linked is an Umbrella Project. It functions strictly like a folder where project admins bundle individual Collection Projects. You cannot set any taxon or location filters inside an Umbrella Project itself; it simply aggregates the data of the sub-projects you add to it. To run a specific campaign, you would create a dedicated Collection Project, set its requirements strictly to glow-worms (or whatever your target is) for that area, and add it to your Umbrella Project. This gives you your “mission” with its own stats page. Additionally, you can always use the project’s Journal to inform members and visitors about these current focus tasks.
It’s also worth noting how projects work fundamentally: A Collection Project is essentially just the visual output of a search filter, similar to what you do when using the “Explore” or “Identify” tabs. Any observation that matches the project’s parameters will automatically appear there for default—regardless of whether the observer has ever heard of your project, is a member, or likes it. The observations don’t “live” inside the project; they live in the main database, and the project simply filters them out.
So, all of that is already possible with the current tools. What exactly is the feature you want to add on top of this? I’m still not entirely sure if I fully understand that part.
It looks like you want to preserve the identity of each project within the umbrella. They each have their own location, their own journal, and sometimes their own excluded taxa. It seems like you want to run missions across all collection projects in the umbrella.
You could possibly set up a second “missions” umbrella where each sub-project lists all the places from each project within the main umbrella. The exclusion taxa filters wouldn’t matter because each project within the new mission umbrella would only include one taxa (e.g. glow worms). The downside is… the mission umbrella wouldn’t reflect the place from a new project being added to the main unbrella (this would be manual).
I don’t think there’s a “satisfies selection criteria for” field that you could set on the mission umbrella that would require observations to meet the geographic requirements of the other umbrella.
While i agree projects function simply as a folder for related data that does not seem to be how a lot of them are used. Many nature reserves and zoos use them as a way to collect and monitor taxa within there sites but also as a public engagement tool. Umbrella projects and the projects within could benefit from not a strict taxon filter but an ability to clearly communicate targeted groups or species based on whatever event or focus is on (Without disrupting the project as a whole) . This is aimed more at a general public person who installs the app to get involved with a specific project and a target within the project. The problem with taxon filters is they require you to know enough about INaturalist and you still have to go out of your way to achieve this. I do not feel sub projects adequately cover this as it becomes another layer and obstacle for the often not tech conscious public to get stuck or confused on. While i had not considered people using AI etc to cheat photos i still think it could be a net positive option. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be the missions format that just seemed to translate well and being on android i had not realised not all of the New Inat phone apps had it. Essentially just a tab/page like missions on android where within a project it gives you a list of things a person should be searching for while involved with a project
Yes essentially it would be a soft filter/target to encourage certain observations without taking away from the main project. This would keep everything neatly in one project as oppose to several smaller projects. The problem we have found with sub projects is they get lost and don’t get anywhere near as much engagement. Especially with niche goals and targets like glow worms.
iNat centric solution…
Add a link list to a journal post on the umbrella project that looks something like this…
Spotted on Site Missions: glow worms mission ~ we’d like to see and increase in glow worm observations. butterflies mission ~ because they’re always fun.
Third party solution based on a simple viewer with fewer things to click and a simple custom flow… Spotted on Site Missions
