There are a lot of great observations that iNaturalist misses out on, because people post them to Facebook ID groups, to Reddit, etc. Why? iNaturalist has a lot of friction:
Do you want to learn an entirely new platform just to “put a name on it”?
Is your location exactly correct?
Which annotations are appropriate? (What is an annotation?)
Can you duplicate this observation? (What does that mean?)
Do you care about contributing to global scientific knowledge? (No, I just want to know what it is!)
And then you might get very delayed gratification, like decades in some cases before you get an ID.
Compared to:
A platform that you’re already using for other reasons, so you know how it works
Instant attention on social media (because ID requests come in one at a time)
An instant sense of community, discussions and comments about your observations, etc. (community that iNat is not really designed to foster)
A name! (Which may or may not be correct, but who cares!)
I don’t think I agree. I imagine the single biggest reason people post species ID questions on Facebook or Reddit rather than iNaturalist is because a lot more people know Facebook and Reddit exist than know about iNaturalist.
I think if someone is just looking for a quick name for the thing they saw, it’s quite common that they’re going to be happy with the CV suggestion which are near instantaneous, and are often going to more or less ignore each of
so I’m not sure that’s a great source of friction. I also think it’s probably a good thing if people are forced to consider these things, and that iNaturalist shouldn’t be targeting boundless growth especially if it’s mainly among users just looking for a quick response who are less likely to respond to questions or create quality observations.
Pointless friction would be bad, but I think the “friction” you highlight is mostly not that impeding (I don’t really see why the duplicate button or existence of annotations would put off a new user, these are not very prominent and easy to ignore), actively good (being asked to specify a location and being aware your observation might be used for research), or inherently unavoidable (if someone is a new user than this is a new platform for them definitionally). So I guess it’s just a little unclear to me what your point is?
I think there is a strategic push to reduce the friction of using the platform, and this discussion is about the pros and cons of doing so, especially compared to nature groups on social media.
Less friction in using iNat means capturing more biodiversity data that is currently not being captured on iNaturalist.
Do you have thoughts or suggestions? If you brought this up, I imagine you have thoughts on what could be improved. Is there a pain point or bottleneck in the platform for you? If so, how could it be mitigated and what would the trade-offs be?
I’ve found that most people just don’t want to go to the trouble of figuring out a new website/app just to ID a single animal; a lot of people do not have a sustained interest in observing.
This is becoming more rampant on social media, and there are also growing number of unethical observers who capture or deliberately disrupt wildlife for social media content.
The bottomline is social media is not a platform designed as citizen science. There are ways in which it can be done, but it would also require proper moderation from group admins which would translate to “friction” in this topic’s context.
But I do agree that iNaturalist (and other citizen science platforms) misses out on a lot of great observations. However it can serve as an opportunity to encourage others to contribute to such platforms. This is also where the ambasssador program can be properly utilized.
One “friction” I can think of being resolved is to allow organizational accounts to be made so that observations from a group can be added by a member who is more familiar with iNaturalist. For example I belong to a birder group who are mostly seniors so they are hesitant to learn a new platform. However the facebook group where we share our photos require in the group rules the same basic observation requirements needed for iNaturalist (location, date, time).
This is part of why many of us prefer it over other social media.
iNat is not ‘missing out’ on anything, different people want different things, and nothing is stopping those people from using one or another, or multiple platforms separately or at once.
And each platform has different data and recording requirements, making them incompatible.
I was on NextDoor the other day and somebody posted a sphinx moth asking what it is. There were 30 comments; can you guess how many of them said moth? Zero. Some people don’t care about knowing things, or are happy enough knowing incorrect things. If people are truly stricken with curiosity about the natural world, they know where to find us.
Oh yes, absolutely. I’m an unashamed advocate of growth in quality over quantity and am all in favour of a little “friction” as you define it. Will it mean that iNaturalist misses out on some interesting observations? Probably, at least in the short term. But by helping people to really see and appreciate nature, maybe it’s actually laying the foundations for more well recorded and useable observations to be made in the future. The only real advantage of Facebook groups over iNaturalist is the community aspect. I really wish there were a way to explain to new (and some old) contributors that despite its anonymous appearance, iNat is actually a community where real people will be engaging with your observation. Maybe if they really comprehended the significance of this, they might take a bit more care over how they record and post their observations. As I said, quality over quantity every time. Even if someone and/or something is lost along the way. Just maybe (I stress maybe) it wasn’t worth having in the first place.
in my opinion, it’s not a “versus”. Each participants love nature their own way and try to now more about the species. If successfull or not - that’s a second question, but they are at least engaged.
It shouldn’t be a iNat “versus” national datacenters, or “versus” social media - the global goal must be to share data between each other, because only together, the gaps in knowledge of species distribution could be filled much easier/ quicker and hopefully, there could be more of a chance to save a part of it for everbodies future live.
Spend iNat’s energy in moving foreward together, not in fighting against other sources of knowledge.
I agree with almost everything that has been mentioned here:
that understanding iNat’s value shouldn’t be considered from the perspective of ‘versus’ or ‘oppositional’ but rather on continuing to emphasise and build on what makes iNat unique;
that different people have different needs and different platforms will/should cater for that;
any initiative that has a clear goal in mind (eg. citizen science) will automatically have parameters or scope - which means absences and therefore perceived ‘friction’.
I also find it interesting that the debate was framed by the notion of commitment and reward - as though reward on iNat is an end-goal only only achievable after a period of time (a period of ‘non-reward’?). I find that adding my own observations, identifying observations for others, learning about the wonders of the natural environment, being able to appreciate the adventures and observations of others in their own geographic location, and interacting with like-minded individuals is reward enough. So for me, the commitment is to myself (technically, iNat doesn’t ‘ask’ for anything) and the reward is seeing that commitment bring value to others.
This is one feature that I believe has been raised on previous threads and remains one of interest for me…because I do think that this could improve the number of (good) observations as well as the community interaction.
Lastly, I’d just like to mention that this is my first time posting on the forum but not my first time reading and appreciating all the honest viewpoints that individuals are courageously sharing. This respectful and curated dialogue around issues that directly impact the users/contributors is exactly why I prefer iNat over certain social media platforms :)
I don’t understand what you mean by “friction”, which suggests resistance or conflict.
iNat has a completely different purpose than sites like Facebook or Reddit. If there is friction in the sense of conflicting purposes or desires, it is often the result of people coming to iNat expecting it to be something it isn’t (i.e., a site like Facebook or Reddit, or an app where you can take a picture of something and it will tell you what it is).
I think the apparent decision to not continue development on Seek was a mistake for precisely this reason, because Seek serves a fundamentally different need than iNaturalist – not everyone wants to share their data; some people in fact simply want to put a name on what they saw.
iNat (ideally) requires a certain amount of conscious effort; it also has a (potentially substantiallearning curve. I don’t see these as frictions. This is a normal feature of participation in a collective undertaking. It is no different than being part of any other club or volunteer group.
Why is this a problem? To put this another way: what is wrong with a photo just being a photo (or a memory, or an experience shared with others)? Why does it need to be turned into data? Why is it a “loss” if this does not happen?
I have a friend who likes to take pictures of the insects in her garden and sometimes sends me photos for ID. I’ve talked about iNat; she knows what it is and how it works. She has never shown any interest in creating an account. Not because she isn’t interested in nature or because of privacy concerns or because she doesn’t understand the idea or the value of citizen science data collection, but because she doesn’t personally feel a need to document what she sees in this way.
infinite growth and glassy-eyed frictionless scrolling are both symptoms of rampant capitalism that values nothing but your data to sell advertising. it’s not gatekeeping to ask a contributor to demonstrate a minimal degree of sincerity and interest.
I have yet to wait decades (see footnote) but there are some observations I have made for which I suspect I could wait centuries.
And I am OK with that because I do not need
I think for someone who does, for someone who craves
who only seeks
this likely would not be the correct platform, and that is OK. Not all platforms are for all people, which is to say I do not think everything should be gamefied into a popularity contest or given rankings or sorted into categories based on age, education, etc.
footnote: I have waited years and honestly? Those are sweeter when they come. “Delayed gratification” is a thing.
This a variation on a very old and bogus argument that many people from the world of open source software will be very familiar with. It usually goes something like this:
The author of some software offers it for free to anyone who might find it useful.
A user tries the software, but complains that it doesn’t have features X and Y that some other software they use has.
The author says they have no plans to implement features X and Y.
The user claims the free software sucks and will never become as popular as the other software they use.
The author says: okay, no problem! Have a nice day.
If iNaturalist changed to become more like social media, it would certainly drive me away, and I suspect a great many others would follow. I utterly loathe social media. I have never had an account on any social media platform, and I am very happy to “miss out” on everything they have to offer.