Educators, it is great to get students out looking at plants and posting observations on iNat. I applaud you. But, please educate your students in the importance of accuracy in scientific procedures/observations. A reminder is that iNat is for wild organisms, not cultivated or captive organisms. …

Does anyone know of a similar app that doesn’t have so many rules ? Wish I had not donated today … this thread sucks all the enjoyment I had of using the app.

Yes to this! But also they need to teach them to post one observation at a time. Often they will have 5 pictures of all different species as one observation, and it happens enough times, and within the same group of students, that they must not be explaining to them how to properly document an obse…

I’m sorry you have been made to feel this way! Please don’t be discouraged! The amazing thing about iNaturalist is that by posting observations of maybe the insects in your garden or on a hiking trip, or that interesting looking plant you saw in those woods or that park you’re: A. Helping scientis…

There is Seek by iNaturalist, which you can use just for yourself without uploading anything to the database. The moment observations are uploaded, they are shared with a bunch of nature nerds who often have opinions about what and how data should be shared with them. Hence all the guidelines. A lot…

But at least THIS problem now has an acceptable to iNat guidelined solution with a new DQA. My copypasta which pushes the obs to Casual with the DQA Only one species per observation please https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000171680-what-do-i-do-if-the-observation-has-…

geographerdave, Thanks for tracking these incongruities, especially the same photo in two places; I don’t know how that can happen if taken on the same phone. Perhaps if taken with a camera; which brings up the issue of marking captive perhaps more difficult. I know that the Rhododendron issue is…

Welcome to the forum! In response to your question about plants using in site restoration: This doesn’t affect whether the plant is native or not - this is just a question of whether the species was originally found in a given location. If it is originally found there, even if cultivated, it is sti…

@jon_sullivan Yes! I agree. IF teachers would tell their students that this is a very important step!

I have been adding hybrid rhododendrons to my listings when I know the parentage. I usually start out in the description: “Not Wild.” Hybrid and then add the parentage which frequently are other hybrids. I’m hoping iNat’s AI will start learning to tell the difference between common hybrids and th…

[image] geographerdave: ’m hoping iNat’s AI will start learning to tell the difference between common hybrids this is not currently possible, hybrid taxa are not suggested by the AI

Please educate your students in proper procedures

Educators

swampwaddler May 31, 2024, 12:22pm 43

This is incredibly fascinating. Thank you for these links!

Topic		Replies	Views
iNat or iNot: A quiz to check understanding of captive/cultivated Educators	79	3991	December 27, 2025
Relevance of cultivated species observations General	54	3148	October 24, 2022
What makes a sighting casual and other related questions? General	53	8286	July 19, 2019
Uploading garden plants as wild: The potential for false naturalization data to spread General	80	3644	November 18, 2023
What incentive is there for users to mark their observations as captive / cultivated? General question	90	4027	November 17, 2023

Please educate your students in proper procedures

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