I’m not sure that that makes sense? Because the survey participants can only be people who are still here using iNat. This isn’t a survey of recruitment, only recruitment and sticking around, or something like that? It might be that way more men joined in those years but even more than that got bored and left, for example! This is surprisingly hard to describe, I hope it makes sense.
no, I’m not
2 Likes
I think it’s interesting, but really highlights who chose to fill out this survey. Just the fact that you have much higher ID numbers than observation numbers across all gender categories shows me that this was a survey primarily of very engaged iNat users - since across all of iNaturalist, the “average” user tends to have some observations and probably no IDs. I’m not surprised since the forums/Twitter seem to rarely represent/engage the “average” iNat user. So I think with the caveat that this is a survey of self-selected iNat users who are from another pool of self-selected iNat users, it can still be interesting… a survey of engaged iNat users who already tend to be more involved in the online social side of iNaturalist? :)
15 Likes
Yeah, I definitely agree with this! I did tweet about the survey when I opened it, and someone replied to say that they use iNat and they didn’t even realise that there were forums! It’s a survey of mostly forum-users, for sure.
5 Likes
it seems like a broad take-home is that women are in the community at similar levels to men but men’s voices are louder and men are both observing and identifying more. This seems reflective of greater society too, right? There are all kinds of biases in thsi or any survey but I think it’s worth keeping that take-home to heart, how can us guys who are super enthusiastic and active (such as me) keep our passion and keep being helpful without drowning out the voices or being unwelcoming towards women or other groups.
Instead of feeling threatened by that, it’s really just a good policy in general, for everything. Seek out the voices of those who often aren’t heard because they are the ones whos important ideas are most likely to be missed. The loudest people are the ones who are already being heard. And as a ‘loud’ by nature person, i still struggle with when to say things and when not to, but it’s something I do think about, even if it doesn’t always show (sorry).
So why don’t we just set mental intentions as we use iNat to be inclusive? You don’t have to feel guilt or like you’re being called out. Just keep it in mind when you interact with others? I think that’s valid regardless of the scientific rigor of this one little survey.
16 Likes
I’m surprised how high the average number of observations & identifications are. I suppose with ids there are people with 100k+ ids and you don’t need that many of them to respond to the survey to push the average up a lot. I’m surprised how high the average number of observations is though.
2 Likes
Actually I was replying to clay_s to caution that this was not a random survey. Interesting how it spun into something else.
3 Likes
the thing that stands out to me in these results is how the age distribution for women seems more concentrated at the midpoint, while the male distribution is more widely distributed, even though the median category for men is the same as for the women. if this holds true more broadly, i wonder what explains that? might that reflect greater work vs leisure usage for women? it might be worth exploring that more in any future research.
It is of recruitment and sticking around, you think it shows the latter, I think the former. Nothing in the survey can actually point at either as being correct. But the previous years shows more women sticking from those years, and then a drop. What caused the drop? If it were just a sticking around issue, it would have affected the years before even more profoundly.
i’m not sure there is actually a drop. if you remove the 2014 9% number in the woman column, all of a sudden things look more like a continuous uptrend. but i agee it’s worth investigating whether women drop out sooner, or women have signed up in greater numbers in recent years, if it’s something in between, or something else entirely…
Ohhh I see! My apologies, I didn’t realise at all! Please disregard my stuff. 
Yes, I agree. A light bulb went on in my head when I read the comment from the person who would like to be able to make more IDs at genus level, but couldn’t where there was already an identification at the species level. This is written into the Identification etiquette (paragraph 3 of https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identification-etiquette-on-inaturalist-wiki/1503). I think it is worth asking whether some categories of people on iNaturalist are more impacted by the rule against making coarser IDs than other categories of people are, and, if so, whether this is really a necessary rule.
3 Likes
It is speculative I agree, again.
Thanks for the reminder to revisit that wording! It wasn’t intended to come across as a hard rule, but clearly it did, so hopefully the edit I just made helped clarify that. If not then definitely discuss further (or edit the wiki) in that topic.
2 Likes
My take on that is that prolific observers, maybe more so than identifiers, often feel a personal investment in iNaturalist that makes them more likely, on average, to want to be active forum participants. Generalizing from my own experience anyway… 
6 Likes
Men observe more. I know that women have indicated that, since they are working and childrearing, they have less time to observe. This is true. As someone not raising children, I have another angle to add. It may just apply to me as I cannot speak for other women, but I find myself considering very carefully when and where I do observations. I don’t go out at dusk or night or dawn to most locations. During daylight, I try not to pick very isolated locations. It’s not an issue of time or a dislike of solitary spaces; it’s an issue of safety. With hours limited and places limited, my observations become more limited to a degree. I still do pretty well, I like to think, but I do wonder sometimes what it would be like to not have to worry so much about other humans and their intentions.
17 Likes
I don’t really care that much about all this - I treat an observation as an observation - gender doesn’t enter into it (or other, because I don’t care about gender preference). If a person wishes to disclose their sexual identity, fine, but to me it is irrelevant. A person is a person.
One of the things that I have wondered about though, is how many observers/commentator are not white. Judging from avatars, not many. I mainly work with observations from Canada, and rarely see a non-white avatar. I don’t think the purpose of this group is to conduct a demographic survey about who joins or not, but perhaps reaching out to a non-white audience may be beneficial.
2 Likes
@mamestraconfigurata I guess I could go through threads you have started and say on each one “I don’t really care that much about all this” but I won’t because that would be rude. This is a thread about a survey about gender. Why not start your own thread about race if that’s what you want to talk about?
4 Likes
If you did it specifically as a retaliation, then yes, that would be rude… if you encountered the posts and shared your ambivalent view, then that would be constructive. And yes, I mean constructive!
There was a similar discussion recently around roadkill, and sensitivities that people might have to images in iNat. Out of that discussion we can get a feel that some people are “meh, it’s a nature site, get over it!”, while others are “we should be as welcoming to all members of society as we possibly can”. All points of view are relevant, and any implemented changes will take into account all of those views.
I think it is irresponsible to be drawing conclusions from flawed surveys. At best they can suggest further, more robust investigation would be beneficial.
I personally am in a state of philosophical turmoil over all this. I was genuinely shocked when Cassie indicated she was uncomfortable over James’ post, and given that I perceive Cassie to be the calmest, most grounded person in iNat, I now have to re-evaluate my beliefs around what is “barrier behaviour”
Carrie has indicated that there is a formal statement from iNat regarding all this being prepared, and I think we should all just step back and see what that says. Easier said than done of course!
1 Like
@kiwifergus There is a lot of what you say that I agree with, and I appreciate that you at least mentioned the survey that is the topic of this thread in your comment. But I think it’s telling that on this particular topic there seems to be a tendency for people to jump in and act like no one should have an issue about how this site may in fact not be as welcoming as people like to believe. To me, at least, it is starting to not seem like a genuine “I’m neutral” movement but a “let’s shut this conversation down” movement.
6 Likes