This is inevitable. It is one of the paradoxes of growth and success: the thing loses its magic and comes to resemble society at large.
In the beginning, a small group of passionate people participate in a shared vision. It’s messy, it’s nimble, and they have a sense of ownership.
Then, with growth, the platform or movement gains visibility, funding, and institutional interest. With growth comes infrastructure: moderation, brand partnerships, etc. These are necessary for stability, but they make everything more generic.
Eventually, the platform or movement comes to resembles society at large. What was once special, becomes just another institution.
Then the passionate few break off to start their own thing, and the cycle repeats again!
I would say a better way of framing this question is “predicting the future of inat”?
How would inat position itself better such that citizen data scientist can contribute better data for researchers to use?
right now… most users only upload things they can’t identify or have never seen before (Species count fanatics).
For example, “why would I want to keep posting common species which I see everyday?” Or… “Why would I post 1000 inat posts for a photo containing a thousand individuals of the same species? that’s unrealistic!”
If we can show how valuable every data point is for certain scenarios (Data deficient species etc.), perhaps iNat’s future as a source of valuable data can be safeguarded.
It is also worth noting that the amount of contributions increased as well. The geographical presence is now worldwide, and the amount of contributions to research is also growing. Travelling to areas in China and being able to interact with a local entomologist is a huge added value.
If more people interact and learn about nature, then it’s really worth it.
I’ve noticed a bit more entitlement than before, but overall… iNat is maturing and growing in size while remaining true to itself.
There must already be ‘many’ people who remember when. I am sure there are Californians who were here at the start, and had to adjust to iNat is now the world, not my parochial backyard.
Not toxic social media rests heavily on good and careful moderation. Thanks to each moderator, and each iNatter who flags up bad behaviour. Cheating for CNC is a problem that will be tackled. Great Southern Bioblitz is coming up in October, that is not so big, and not so cheaty - altho that location is ready with a project … a lot of the worst of those users were suspended during CNC so hopefully it will improve.
I think having a “bounty” (even something as little as a badge for x observations) for data-poor or otherwise of interest species could be an interesting way to drive repeat observations vs. species bagging, but then you have to balance that with increased traffic to habitat potentially disturbing said species. Perhaps, for more sensitive taxa, the “bounty” could only be offered to the most active users in the region to limit harm. Geofencing what counts towards the bounty could be useful too. And it would probably be best if “bounties” could only be set by groups with valid interests in the species - like land holders, researchers, conservation agencies, etc. - to avoid iNat randomly selecting species and accidentally driving huge traffic to sensitive areas.
This would be HUGE for locally/globally rare species not threatened by human poaching/trade. So many species haven’t been reported on Inat that really should be, even if it’s just a local area.
I personally love gamification. It works for me! I’m very active on an app called Duolingo (language learning).
I’m new to Duolingo. I was surprised to learn that there is an entire ECOSYSTEM of browser extensions and other methods for cheating on Duolingo.
Now, you might say, “Why would anyone cheat on a language learning app? Sure, you’re winning imaginary badges and prizes, but aren’t you ultimately cheating yourself? Doesn’t it defeat the whole purpose if you’re not learning anything?”
Yes, but you’re dealing with humans.
Why am I sharing this, when gamification has been discussed in countless threads on this forum? Because I haven’t seen the Duolingo angle mentioned very often.
This is why a bounty system would probably be a bad idea. It would encourage falsification of data, something that already happens (for example on eBird) even when the only benefit of seeing a species is to move up a leaderboard. I’d rather reduce gamification on iNaturalist rather than increase it. Seeing a rare or under-recorded species is already a reward in itself.
The future of Inat is definitely something that I look forward to. Hopefully genAI never reaches Inat, and we can be a strong community of nature lovers. In the span of less than a year I went from “I’m going to the Galapagos to find the ‘endemic’ Corsola” to “I’m going to find the endemic Platanthera pallida on Long Island!”.
Fast forward five years and now I’m an ambassador trying to recruit new users. In another five years, hopefully Inat can crack 1B observations and be much closer to 1M species, if not there. Each update brings new life to Inat, and will always keep it growing.
Just keep the genAI and other “stuff” out of Inat.
I have mixed feelings about the explosive growth of iNat. On the one hand, the bigger it gets the more likely it will become “too big to fail.” Meaning that with greater size it might have greater value to a broader segment of the population and be able to obtain the resources it needs to continue. On the other hand, greater size can result in bigger problems. The shortage of IDers combined with the flood of records that come in each day is an often-mentioned issue. The site does become less personal the bigger it gets and if AI is used to better manage the enormous number of records and associated data, it becomes further removed from the individual user. Which is why I’m somewhat skeptical of the ambassador program. I’m happy to help someone who is genuinely interested in using iNat but I‘m not going to evangelize. It’s good if people develop an interest in nature but that doesn’t have to involve iNat. Most of the nature nerds I know are aware of iNat but don’t use it. And that’s okay.
Very wary of a bounty system for rare sp. There was a ‘pink dolphin here’ - and after enough selfies, that dolphin died of stress. Don’t want that situation to be actively triggered by iNat.
I would rather we encourage the engage with nature aspect. What is that - green stuff - too many legs - is that blob alive, if so, what on earth is it ??? Yesterday we saw a gardener, told to grub out the spring daisies ‘spoiling’ the lawn
As one of those people, I’m definitely nostalgic for the days when iNat was smaller, but that kind of change is pretty inevitable and I think it’s great that people all over the place are using it and creating their own cultures around it, making friendships around the world, and providing data from places that aren’t just the original iNat hotspots of California, Texas, Vermont, New Zealand, Mexico, etc. When in Ecuador last year I talked with an orthopteran specialist who’s collaborating with entomologists in Croatia to describe new species he finds. That kind of collaboration is made more likely via iNat and its growth.
For a long time, Western Fence Lizard was the most-observed species on iNat but now it’s at 42nd! It’s still by far the most-observed species in California but it’s dwarfed by more widespread species when you look at the global list. I think that’s a cool and shows the breadth of the iNat community (although to be sure it’s still very North-America centric).
For sure, and we’re seeing those and trying to tackle them. I suspect there will still be a lot of person-to-person interaction on the site but it may be more atomize and won’t ever be as tight-knit as it was in the beginning.
I think the best bounty system iNat has is filtering by taxa you haven’t observed. This only really works if you actively observe all animal groups though, or you’d get a ton of common plants or birds choke it up. It’s good awareness of things you haven’t seen, and places you haven’t explored, and generally moving towards garnering a more in-depth knowledge of your region.
Understandable feelings. However, as someone who works on identifying Unknowns in my county, I see a problem that could be addressed through the Ambassador program. It looks to me as though many (maybe most) people come to iNat by randomly downloading the app, and then using it poorly – posting low quality photos, not putting an ID on an observation, not looking for messages or comments from IDers, basically not understanding how the iNat system works. (Example: the relatively new user, now over 200 obs, who still doesn’t put IDs on their obs.) The Ambassador program represents a way to reach potential new users before they get into bad habits, and give them enough knowledge about iNat that they can become contributing users.
This is why I signed up for the Ambassador program. In my presentations, I’m planning to tell people – iNat is great, but if all you want is an ID app, then get Seek. And if you choose iNat, please commit to being part of the community – that you, you’ll get way more out of iNat, and have a lot more fun.
For me, the future of iNat must include a robust educational core. Speaking as someone who spent 25 years in non-traditional education in a nonprofit setting, I believe iNat education should be delivered to users in a variety of modalities: through the structure of the app itself; through static help pages, video help, etc.; through dynamic online offerings such as synchronous webinars; and also through in-person programs. Different people will benefit more from one or another of these educational modalities, but based on my own experience in how adults learn, in-person offerings should be the second most important educational modality (after the structure of the app itself).
This is the dark side of bringing people closer to nature and it’s such a conundrum: people do things like this because they don’t care/know about nature. I’ve experienced this a lot with tourism. In the same way that if you travel to an iconic area to take a selfie and come back without interacting and learning about it, you don’t protect it and you don’t care about it. Been there, done that. But people need to be exposed to nature to care about them. I tend to see it as a transition phase, but in a world of 8bn people… the transition can be so damaging. But the damage of having most people ignoring nature would be so much more detrimental.
City Nature Challenge. Onboarding needs to explain that iNat is less sprint to the finish, more a meander and linger, slow marathon till the cutoff. The project I tripped over, took me a while to realise that the subsequently suspended users were deliberately IDing as random (as in hopelessly out of range!!) sp not seen here yet in this CNC. Closing out around 3% RG which is EMBARRASSING, very. And so unfair to all the good faith observers and identifiers.
I was speaking about challenges like the “City Nature Challenge” and similar iNaturalist events. I am not sure which topic it was here, but I was reading about an issue where people were “cheating” on these challenges and it was causing some frustration, especially for those trying to keep up with making IDs.
I “assumed” the reason people cheat would be to get to the top of the leaderboards. The urge to “win at any cost” I find contrary to the spirit of iNaturalist that is (for me) about encouraging people to get out in nature (learning to love and appreciate it) and fostering a safe place to learn (even when sometimes we learn by making mistakes with IDs…situations I believe should be treated as an opportunity to learn and/or educate rather than to attack).
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