I haven’t used bugguide but it strikes me as much more top down and structured than inat. Not in ways I personally like.
Nonexistent/Incomplete translation can definitely be a hurdle to overcome for identification / identifier recruitment. But in your example, just type in zawilec gajowy and Anemone nemorosa will pop up, since it’s already listed as a common name for that species.
Anyone can add common names in their native language by going to the taxon page>Taxonomy tab>Add a name.
A selection for Anemone nemorosa:
Anyone can help with translation of the site and apps, too. Looks like only 15% of the site has been translated into Polish so far (needs 75% to be released live).
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I think, but I am not sure, that Master Naturalist volunteers need to contribute a certain number of volunteering each year to keep their certificate. It might be possible to set up something where they do part of these hours as volunteers helping the iNaturalist community, for example identifying wildflowers or butterflies or trees from their home state.
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I didn’t even know about this feature and I’m quite impressed. Thanks for letting me know!
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@ jakubmamulski Jakub, one note if you want to add any names in Polish, because the site is not translated into Polish, there is actually a 2nd step you need to do. After you enter the name, when it goes back to the main screen, you need to find the entry, click edit, and then in the Places section you need to Add a Place (which will obviously be Poland in this case) and save it.
To see the names in Polish, you would need to go to your account settings and in the middle column where it says Prioritize common names used in this place, enter Poland.
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my experience with master naturalists, master gardeners, etc. is mixed. (no offense to any master naturalists, etc. out there.) if you’re going to develop a crossover program like that, i’d almost rather target boy and girl scouts – get an iNat badge after doing 100 research observations and 100 identifications for others, or something like that. maybe develop some eagle scout or gold award projects that incorporate iNaturalist (ex. organizing a bioblitz and using the data to do some sort of conservation / outreach / research). lots of kids have lots of free time during summers and breaks, and if you can get them interested in nature early in life, all the better. also, a boy or girl scout who already has an iNat badge in a class just about to do a bioblitz would probably be super helpful.
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I don’t use the app, but I’m looking at it on my iPhone now. I think there are people on iNat who almost always use the app for their own observations, and correctly ID some of their own observations, but don’t ever seem to ID for others. Maybe they just don’t know how to do it? Maybe they don’t know that there is a nice filterable Identify tool on the website? I don’t know the answers to my own questions here, but just wondering if that’s part of the reason some mid-level users don’t engage more.
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i bet a lot of it is just that people don’t know where to even begin. i think average people out there don’t know about plant keys and bugguide and that sort of thing. i’d love it if there was some sort of recommended resources list available that could be filtered by taxon and geography.
and then even if they do, i think there’s a problem of how to break things down into manageable chunks. i think for most people, it would make the most sense to break things down into smaller places (neighborhoods, parks, etc.) that they are familiar with, but most people probably don’t know how to even begin creating places in iNat. (i guess you could also break things down by going after specific taxa, but i think that makes for a different kind of experience.)
and then if you overcome that, there’s the whole thing about learning the mores and customs of the community. there’s lots of discussion on that. so i won’t rehash all that here, but one of the things i brought up in another thread is maybe having a little indicator on a persons first X number or first day’s worth of observations and/or identifications. that way, the community can be super welcoming (and very gentle in criticisms) when they see a person’s first identifications come through. there’s nothing better to promote future identifications than when other people express appreciation for a job well done. (i think that would be more effective than an identifier of the week thing, since i think the chances of any one person being selected for identifier of the week is probably relatively low.)
of course there are also ways to change up the system to make it easy to use, but i won’t get into too many ideas for that (yet), other than to say that i think the key again is to break things up into manageable chunks. for example, instead of showing an unlimited number of things to identify, maybe instead give people 5 or 10 to identify per day. (there’s more of a sense of accomplishment if you can finish off a defined set than if you do 10 and see that there are 1000 more to do.)
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Most academics are very busy working on papers and other things that will help propel their careers. We do have some academics on here, but most do not have enough spare time to do this kind of thing. Or they think they don’t.
Many older retirees are not very computer, cell-phone, or internet-savvy. -
Some mid-level users are reluctant to take time away from their own observations in order to ID other people’s obs. Or they don’t feel confident enough to do it.
Some people care only about being on top of the relevant leaderboard. -
More recognition for hard-working ID-ers would be nice.
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Rather than recruit identifiers, I think a better solution would be to “convert” observers to identifiers. If people using the app are genuinely interested in nature, I think there has to be at least some interest in learning to identify organisms on your own, rather than rely solely on the app (and community) to tell you what they are. I think the app should help teach users how to identify a species, and in doing so they become more confident in IDing other people’s observations.
To enable this, I think it would be helpful if curators could add custom-written “Field Notes” on Taxon Pages, and have them show up when viewing taxa on the phone app (instead of the Wikipedia description, which does not always help a user know what to look for when identifying a species). It’s a similar function encouraged on the all but abandoned Guides on iNaturalist.
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I guess we could also use this new filter in the meantime to try to find responsive newcomers in this group: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/account-creation-filter-added-to-identify-page/1991
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Searching through several pages, i finally found out how many IDs i made for others … about 270. Îf that number were more visible, more people would want to increase theirs.
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You can find your ID count very easily under your profile; single click on your profile pic in the upper right corner of the page, and it’s the listed on the left under the profile tab along with no. of observations, no. of species, journal posts, etc.
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I think an underrated way of recruiting people to the site is actually just telling them how cool and useful it is and putting it in a context where it appears useful to their work. I’ve been telling my honours supervisor about iNat for months. Last week he got me to put up photos from one of the 3rd year courses he runs. I know this isn’t him engaging directly with the site, but it’s the first step to it (he now refers to iNat as ‘awesome’). In a few months I’m giving a seminar/workshop at UNSW about iNat and how to use it, so hopefully that will attract some IDers out of the professors that attend.
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Hi all,
I’m a mid-level user and try to do ID’s on an irregular basis. In fact, I had made a mental note to try to do more and then stumbled across another thread in this Forum where some folks were taking the position that it is unhelpful and even unwelcome to add in a simple ID such as “flowering plants” or “insects” when an observation is uploaded as “unknown.”
Frankly, I try to get as detailed an ID as I can, but will add the cursory category quite often since there are so many unknowns. I feel like any generalized ID helps those experts find the observations they can ID with certainty much faster.
Having said that, the thread suggesting that adding a general ID isn’t welcome really made me rethink helping in that way. Just saying…
And, I am not in favor “gamifying” the app or site in any way – doesn’t Seek do that already?
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Another mid-level user here 
Going off what @jakubmamulski said, making it easier to ID observations from the mobile app would definitely help. While I try to ID on a semi-regular basis, I know I would ID a lot more often if I didn’t have to get on the computer every time. I know there’s the “explore” option in the app, but I don’t find that useful for adding identifications to observations. What I’d love to be able to do is hit an “identify” tab in the app that would take me to recent observations that need ID, with similar functionality to the website “Identify” experience (e.g. being able to search by place or taxon). If it were easier to identify observations through the app, I could see a lot of folks (including myself) IDing in short spurts while they wait for the bus, coffee, or whatever it might be. I don’t think gamification is as important as ease-of-use.
I also want to second @bobby23’s comment regarding “converting” observers. While recruiting outside experts will undoubtedly help, there are a limited number of them. I think cultivating a network of users with mid-level expertise (whether geographically or taxon-based) will likely go a lot farther, particularly if there were easy-to-use resources, whether in the form of mini-modules, “Field Notes”, or another format, on iNat to help.
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Do you remember the thread where people said it was unhelpful to ID unknown obs as simple stuff (could you link me)? I thought the opposite would be true; general IDs nonetheless narrow it down and allow people following certain taxa to see the obs.
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I’ll try to find it