I was suddenly remembered some old iNaturalist posts recently, the 2019 iNaturalist World Tour. Link to post
Seeing those list of countries globes fill up with observations took me down memory lane The globes
It made me reflect on what the community felt like back then. In 2019, iNat still felt like a cozy, small corner of the internet. You’d regularly run into the same handful of identifiers on your local plants or bugs, and seeing international observations felt like opening a rare window into someone else’s backyard on the other side of the planet.
Fast forward to today, and it’s incredible how much iNat has grown. Looking at the World Tour stats page, it’s wild to realize that what felt huge in 2019 was really just the beginning of a massive global network. 20m in USA was huge!
While the rapid growth means the site move a bit faster and it’s impossible to know everyone, it’s also amazing to see naturalists from every corner of the earth sharing their local biodiversity every single day. The core spirit of curiosity, helping each other identify tricky species, and caring for the natural world hasn’t changed.
Does anyone else here remember when the World Tour was launched, or remember what the community felt like when you first joined? Would love to hear your favorite memories from the earlier iNat days!
**
AI was used to overcome non native English language barrier
I arrived on iNat in 2020 (here is my story) and I found a lovely place to settle during the pandemic, though I was unaware of the forum for some time. I spent roughly eight hours a day during those two years out of doors in my garden just observing, and Naturalista, as the Mexican site was then called, was invaluable, as were some local resources, such as CICY and Enciclovida.
But those local resources do not offer interactions and so this is where I found the ability to ask questions and experience usually kind (if not, then neutral) corrections to my often wrong best guesses.
So iNaturalist will always be special to me.
Thank you for sharing more about iNaturalist in the earliest days.
speaking from an Australian perspective, there are two things in particular that stand out to me when looking back to 2019 and comparing it to today.
First is the dramatic increase in the number of records uploaded on any given single day. Back in 2019, a typical day would usually see somewhere between 800 and 1500 observations uploaded to iNat within Australia. At that point, I was usually able to reasonably review almost 100% of daily records that were coming in (not necessarily ID them all, but just eyeball them at least to check for anything interesting).
Yesterday alone, more than 16,000 records were uploaded for Australia. I no longer look at even a fraction of every single Australian record coming into the platform on any given day.
But that’s totally ok, because it leads into my second point: the number of expert identifiers and other enthusiastic identifiers (many of them self-taught, including through their use of iNat) has skyrocketed over the last 7 years, and the consequent collective knowledge held by the Australian community has massively increased. There are just so many more knowledgeable users actively contributing to the Australian observation landscape now, I can’t even imagine being back in 2019.
So whilst the large number of records and users can definitely feel a little overwhelming at times, I think it’s far outweighed by the massive benefits afforded by growing the Australian community: so many more discoveries, learning opportunities, and collaborations and friendships that have been made possible.
I joined in 2017, posted one observation in 2018, then abandoned the app until 2021 so I missed the world tour. But since almost all I do is outside the US, I think I have added to the influx of worldwide observations. I can confidently say that in the five years I have been doing this consistently, the quality of observations, IDs, and the CV in general has improved dramatically.
Somewhere along the way I conceded defeat, and changed to IDing for iNatters who joined within the last week. That I can keep up with, and because I know these are newbies … I make my comments kind and helpful with How To links. Not - you forgot location accuracy. Again. Wild or garden ??
I used to be able to ID for Africa using the Low Growth project to eliminate my observose South Africa – but yesterday was 3K obs. And for observose … I only ID for the Western Cape.
Flora of Africa project has 1.5K obs observed yesterday
There were almost 5,000 observations added yesterday in just my small state (Massachusetts) alone. It was a beautiful day, but a Friday, not a weekend day. I don’t even try to review them all, but it makes me happy that so many people here use iNat.
In reading these responses, I think maybe only people who were on iNat on 2019 or earlier were meant to respond? I apologize if I put myself in a thread where I was not meant to be. I think perhaps I misread this:
I am enjoying so much hearing about the earlier days of iNat. I often read older threads (every time I search!) but those feel different This one feels a bit like sitting at a kitchen table after eating, this hearing the memories behind those threads.
I wonder, for those of you who were here then, did it feel a bit like world building, what you were doing? You were building this thing together, for me it feels wild to read the early threads and see the functions and tools being discussed and developed then tweaked.
Thank you for sharing, both these memories and the many years of good works.
I’d forgotten about the world tour, although now that I clicked the links, it is familiar. Reading the US post and looking at the globes, a couple of these names are people who have since passed away. It’s interesting to compare the top observers and identifiers then and now.
I joined iNat in spring 2019 and the forum pretty quickly too. Definitely all the forum regulars are different people now than back then. Different moderators as well. Also is it just me or has the number of new forum topics per day increased just in the last month or so?
I created my account in late April 2019 for a bioblitz. It was actually CNC weekend, although the bioblitz organizers didn’t mention that at all! Since I’m in California, iNaturalist has been popular enough here for a long enough time that it never felt particularly small to me. Mostly it’s my own use of it that has changed over time. At one point I used to review all plant observations in my county, and although the number of these observations has increased some, it’s more personal reasons stopping me from reviewing them all like I used to. For example there were 30,418 plant observations here in 2020 and 45,505 in 2025, so yes an increase, but not like a doubling or anything. I could still do it if I didn’t have other stresses in my life and back pain that prevents me from sitting at the computer too long.
The globes
