Just lightening things up a bit. But really, if using an app incorrectly is the only thing you have to feel guilt and shame over you’re doing better than most of the world.
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wow. in another topic i just learned on android you can see activity other than your own observations. its a completely different app than the iOS and im jealous.
^^^ yup thats my experience with iOS.
now people are going to tell me that on android there isnt a chance that one faulty finger movement and you accidentally delete your whole observation
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Thank you! Good to know.
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Hi, everyone! I just read dallonweekes post and felt a little twinge of recognition. I am not new to iNaturalist in the sense that I’ve been using it to identify plants and critters that I have come across in my environment during this past lockdown year. Doing that has kept me moderately sane and hopeful in an otherwise dark time. But only recently did I realize that my photos were going out to the entire world. I think I figured this out when the app stopped working and in trying to figure out what the problem was, discovered that there was a website. When I started poking around on there, I was truly astonished at the depth and breadth of the tool and not a little embarrassed at my photos and the way I was using the app. I wish there had been some kind of tutorial that I’d been required to take before using the app so I knew what I was doing. Cheers to all of you fascinated and fascinating folks out there who care about the world around us!
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I’m glad that you are using iNat again, @anon83178471!
To @sedgequeen, I am not trying to be rude or anything but, why would posting a lot of photos of the common animals be helpful? To indicate trends or something (sorry!)? I can understand on tracking the uncommon animals…
Common species are most overlooked ones, common doesn’t mean well studied, local populations can be completely unknown, without learning and looking at common ones you won’t find rare ones, big territories have no data at all, it’s interesting and cool and one of the main points of iNat existence.
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another example, certain tree species such as chestnut and elm used to be very common in this part of hte world but both mostly died off due to introduced forest pests and now… we don’t really know their natural range in detail or the ecological characteristics of the species, etc, because no one bothered with them when they were common. No one knows exactly what plant species grew in the huge Central Valley of California as it is now all agriculture and no one took data on them before it was destroyed (well, and the people who knew and managed the land for millenia before that were removed/killed)
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Thanks for sharing your story and welcome to nature nerd country.
This topic is such a great example of why I spend a lot of time on iNat. The most important words in iNat’s Community Guidelines are Assume people mean well. You never know what burden someone else is carrying. Patience and kindness don’t have to be alien to social media. 
I get a few things out of iNat beyond the stuff I learn about the organisms. Not least is the calming effect of immersing myself in recording images (or sounds), posting them and naming them. There have been a fair few hard days over the last couple of years and on many of them I have found a bit of peace here. Sounds like your son and you do too.That matters. The stuff you’re apologizing for is small beer.
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Feeling hugely embarrassed after having been unaware of doing something stupid out in public … we’ve all been there one way or the other. Hats off to you for responding to it in a grand manner!
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I know there is a website, but I don’t have a computer that I can use to access it. I only have the iPhone app. So I may be one of the reckless users, but it is not because I intend to be irresponsible, it is because I don’t have all the information and full functionality.
I have seen people refer to messaging, but except for the comments on observations, I don’t know how it can be done on the iPhone. I read the introductory information on the iPhone right after I downloaded the app, but it did not give me information about the getting to the website or the more detailed guidelines that you refer to. I only can get to the forum because I get an email with links that work on the iPhone.
I do find the emails of activity I get each day very helpful. It is the only way I find out that people have commented or entered a different id on an another person’s observation with an id I made, and lets me know when I need to correct mistakes on other people’s observations.
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I wonder if you could access some website functionality on your phone. It’s kind of a pain but you may be able to at least get messages. Trying to navigate website notifications on the iphone would be a real pain though. I hope the updates to the app come soon :)
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I access the iNat website on my iPhone frequently (instead of the iOS app, which is mostly useless to me). From my phone I can see notifications, add IDs or agreements to IDs, etc. It’s clumsier than using my laptop computer but certainly doable.
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The iPhone app is pretty stripped down, but I am mystified why it does not link to the iNat website and FAQ at least in Settings, if not on every page in a header/footer.
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For me, the iOS app is mainly to upload photos that are on my phone to iNat. (I rarely observe/upload in real time with my phone, in part because I’m often out of cell phone range.) Beyond that, the app is not very useful. I do almost everything else, including editing my own records, on the website.
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you know you can add things to the app without cell service right? you just need to turn off auto sync which all but the most causal users should do because it does NOT work very well.
Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t take photos and add them later. While I find the GPS doesn’t record as well sometimes and sometimes forget what the subject of my photo was, a lot of people use that method and it seems to work fine for them.
Absolutely any editing, looking for IDs, etc i use on the website only.
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We don’t know what the future will bring. What’s common now may not be in the future. For example, I used to have Western Gray Squirrels in my yard regularly. I took few photos. Now they’re replaced by invasive Eastern Gray Squirrels and I barely recorded the change.
There are also questions of timing. When do plants flower, fruit, first emerge in spring? When do young birds first appear? When do birds molt? When do butterflies emerge? How long do they fly? (You can only get the last date by observing every day, since you don’t know which one will be the last.) How long will an individual Scrub Jay with a deformed bill survive? Does the frequency of color morphs change with time? Etc.
Of course, one can argue about how many photos one needs for these things, but for me it is also a question of encouraging interest in nature, in whatever form that interest may take. (I say as I post more or less weekly, sometimes daily, photos of common bird species at my feeder.)
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Oh, I’ve definitely embarrassed myself much worse in front of a lot more people, but feeling like an idiot is always an unpleasant thing, whether it’s in front of a crowded stadium or one person. This, I could at least take responsibility for and make myself feel relieved a bit. I definitely prefer that type of embarrassment over other forms.
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I use my phone for the app, the website and the forum. But I also am really comfortable navigating on my phone, so it doesn’t inconvenience me much, where I see how it would for others.
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This is very accurate to my experience too. The app is for uploading and that’s about it. Everything else is much more accessible/only accessible on the website.
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