Given recent events, and past decisions that have left many users unsatisfied, this seems like it is a topic that should be discussed. This discussion is not for bringing up anything about individuals or personal issues, but about the direction iNat has been drifting in recent years and whether dec…

[image] zoology123: If a user has uploaded 300 copyrighted images. There is no moderation tool to flag in bulk. You have to individually flag everything 1 by 1. If there are 10k misidentifications to fix from a single taxon. 1 by 1 it is. If you need to mark 1000s of plants as cultivated. 1…

[image] zoology123: If you want to use any of the annotations in large amounts like life stage, sex, etc. 1 by 1 it is. Well, there is this tool than can help with this (somewhat): https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/announcing-the-universal-metadata-tool-beta/53182

[image] DianaStuder: That example could be mentored away - should not be using a taxon specialist for grunt work. We need a better mentoring interface. Reliable minions are tough to find these days

[image] zoology123: It looks like too much work to deal with, so users knowledgeable about that taxon refrain from joining and helping, the issue doesn’t improve because it requires work, that work doesn’t happen because of a lack of knowledgeable / willing to help users, repeat. There’s a fl…

[image] rcavasin: This all encourages more contributions from casual observers. That can be a mixed blessing, as it means there’s more ID to work in general, and more “problem” observations that require investigation. I believe you can become the victim of your own success. If you do a good job …

[image] thebeachcomber: If the price to pay for those things is more work for myself, more IDs to make, more clean up to do, that’s fine by me I suppose a lot depends on what you’ve been tasked with or have committed to doing. If your mandate/commitment is to curate a taxon/region within a s…

I think its complicated and very fair to point out the risks bulk tools can have. If implemented they need to have some restrictions to help prevent abuse. Like how in order to edit taxon photos, you need a set amount of RG obs and other stuff. Still, if iNaturalist achieves its goal to “radically …

Yes, I feel this way, too. I offer IDs for many species I will never see in person, and I’m excited when I see some rarer ones get closer to where the CV will be trained on them or where the phenology can be tracked in a meaningful way. Among the people who engage, perhaps fumbling at first as I di…

[image] zoology123: if iNaturalist achieves its goal to “radically scale up, reaching 100 million users by 2030”, Did they say this somewhere? Sounds like a disaster!

Is the iNat directorship taking iNat in the right direction and paying enough attention to the user base?

General

DianaStuder February 1, 2026, 1:19pm 226

I minion for proteas - but no leps ;~))

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Is the iNat directorship taking iNat in the right direction and paying enough attention to the user base?

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