I tried to collect some resouces here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/online-nature-courses-symposia-theme-days-lectures-events/51460/6
Unfortunately it is closed again, but if there are some people that would like to contribute, we could ask an admin to open it up again - I also have a few new resources in mind.
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That’s called the Peterson System! It is the reason I have always preferred Peterson Field Guides to the ones that use photographs.
Thanks all for these recent replies. Good to see this idea still excites new people. From the various replies it remains clear to me that people here on iNat do not lack the willingness or capacity to help document and train others to identify. There is so much written between journal posts, external sites, in comment boxes of observations… I really believe that if we were to capture and present this information in a more structured manner, it would go a long way in bringing in more people to help with identification!
PS please vote for this idea if you believe it has merit - would be great to see if we could get the team at iNat to consider this!
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I’m not sure I would support all the details of the proposal in the original post, but I think it is important for iNat to provide better support for both finding resources and facilitating IDer collaboration than is currently the case.
In this context, I can think of some useful smaller changes that would build on existing functionality rather than creating an entirely new interface.
There are already a lot of fantastic user-created ID resources on iNat. The problem is that they are scattered across personal journal posts and projects that are difficult to find or search for systematically.
So one thing that I think would make a huge difference would be improving the searching and browsing options for journal posts and projects. Currently it is not possible to search journal posts at all, and the search function for projects is very rudimentary and often quite frustrating.
First, adding a way to associate a journal post with one or more taxa, similar to the way a project can be associated with particular taxa. It would then be possible to search for journal posts or projects about a particular taxon. A link could be added to taxon pages that would take users to a list of journal posts that include that taxon (I think here it would need to be exact matches, not including child taxa).
Second, creating categories for journal posts – i.e., “identification guide”, “update”, “announcement”, “event”, “links and resources”, etc. Since journal posts have many different purposes, this would make it possible to sort out those that probably aren’t relevant to a particular query.
Third, adding a way to associate journal posts with a place, so that it would possible to filter journal posts for a combination of three parameters: taxon, ID guide, place. I guess for places including smaller units within a larger place would probably make sense (e.g. if I search for a city I would also get results for the state).
This would also be useful for other purposes, such as helping users to find announcements about events or bioblitzes in their area.
The advantage to this is that it would be automatic – if the journal posts or projects have been labelled appropriately, they would be automatically added to the list of resources available from the taxon page. It would not need to be manually curated. (This would no doubt mean that not all items would be equally useful, because there would be no quality control mechanism, but my impression is that the overall quality of journal posts is fairly good.)
The other thing that I miss is that there is no good way for IDers to have group discussions on iNat itself. Essentially the only option right now is to use the comments in journal posts, which I find rather unwieldy, since there are no automatic formatting options and comments are not threaded. Or the IDers all have to agree to use some external platform (chat, videoconference, e-mail etc.) for such discussions, which adds extra complications to collaboration rather than removing them.
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Just to mention this is what I currently do support IDying in a practical way:
I am collection ressource I use: Online Resources I Regularly Use · iNaturalist
I set up a project for observations that include idenfication aid:
01 Bestimmungshilfen - Identification Aid · iNaturalist
(I startet with a bunch, but I changed my mind. Dachprojekt Bestimmungshilfen · iNaturalist)
From time to time I create guides eg: Guides finden · iNaturalist