Researchers forum section?

I’ve been seeing more and more questions on the forum from researchers and graduate students in the general forum. I’m wondering whether it would be helpful to have a separate section like there is now for ‘Educators’ for questions related to research usage, citations, or analysis discussions for researchers. I see some cons, as a lot of these questions are often broadly interesting, but I also see some pros since I see a lot of people asking the same sorts of questions and a central hub might make it easier to find those answers.

I know something similar was proposed about a year ago and decided against: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/data-users-developers-analysts-section/3618

Other alternative thoughts: A more comprehensive tutorial on research usage of iNaturalist? I’ve been considering putting one together and this might help with that? Open to other suggestions.

8 Likes

Personally, I think the questions usually posed by these people interest amateurs as well as experts, and having them interspersed in #general with other topics feels natural.

Also, as mentioned in the linked post, you can either create your own tags to use as sort of a pseudo-topic, or just use the existing #research tag.

2 Likes

Seems like a cool idea to me. Would “For discussing topics related to iNaturalist and research usage, citations, or analysis for researchers” be a good definition for it?

5 Likes

If you’re going to add it, then that’s perfect.

1 Like

Yes I think so, that sounds like a good definition!

1 Like