Curious on what yall think about the day iNat shuts down. How far in the future do you think itll be? What do you think will happen to our observations. Do you think we will be able to download our observations?
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I try not to honestly.
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What an unusual first post. I cannot say as I think about this.
You may want to investigate other threads regarding methods to back up your data if this is something on your mind. Here is one, for example.
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I’d like to think they’d be backed up in some sort of database or whatever for researchers to use. It’d be really sad not to be able to post any new observations, but I should hope all of the amazing data here would be preserved.
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Do you have an iNaturalist account? I don’t see an alexanderthebest account.
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iNat is not a business or a game, it is a scientific database as well as a social media that is quite unique, valuable, and does not compete with anything else.
I don’t think it’ll ever shut down, unless the world ends or something.
In maybe 10 or 20 years or so, our data storage methods will be substantially evolved compared to now on - I think iNat data could eventually be preserved eternally, even after humans go extinct, so I don’t really see the point of thinking about the day iNat ends.
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I have thought about this many times, and I think it is not a topic to discard as a non-issue.
Not because of any fault of the platform itself, but because the internet is less forever than we like to think it is.
Our technology evolving past the point where the internet as we know is useful is likely, in which case INat is likely to evolve with it and its info preserved.
But lack of funding, government intromission, malicious attacks, dissolution of the head organisation, catastrophic events from a solar flare to a war that could destroy the information, etc. Those are all situations that could happen one day. Hopefully, they never do.
I don’t have knowledge of how many redundancies and (external/offline/far away from each other) backups there are. Preserving the information and potentially bringing the platform back from a destructive outage highly depends on that.
I’m not mentioning all this to catastrophise, but because I’m surprised by the current answers. I hope solid measures are being taken to avoid data loss in case of a catastrophic event or other situation that could mark the end of this amazing resource.
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There is this related thread on the same topic, although IMO it contains no satisfying or definitive answers . . .
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/what-happens-if-inaturalist-folds/46213
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Never? Can never be an answer?
While this current configuration of a database has a lifespan, I like to think that future will find it valuable enough to convert into whatever format the future dictates.
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Well said!
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From what I understand — and compared to many users here, I know the least about this topic — digital data, backed up and distributed across multiple servers around the world, is theoretically immortal.
The greatest threat is apathy. A lack of caring about the data, so that the storage systems and technologies are no longer updated or maintained.
It’s up to all of us to make sure that people care about global biodiversity and iNaturalist!
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Always a possibility. Imagine a future when robots or some devices are very advance that they can detect the DNA of creatures without human as identifers. I got onto the internet in 1994. Yahoo was very popular back then and some forums. I don’t use forums a lot these days, as social medium has taken over the function of forums. Social medium can end suddenly if gov bans some apps. I’m thinking iNat is a business. I think it is like a social enterprise. At the back end, there could be a business side dealing with big data. They have ties with various organisations, academic institutions, they have merchandise. Data are stored in big data centers throughout the world in a distributed network. In the event of a big war like WWIII, perhaps part of the network may be affected. or perhaps a change in technology may make the big data centers outdated, and a shift may happen. Data may be lost like when a SSD suddenly stop working. Current development is in AI technology. It is very rapid. Governments are crazed on AI that I do not dare to think too far ahead.I live for the present. To preserve the species the best way is to have the natural habitat intact.
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The OP asks about when iNat ends, not if iNat ends. So I feel obliged to address the authentic inquiry as-is.
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How far in the future do you think itll be?
Depends on how management meets/exceeds/fails the expectations of members. Could fizzle out like MySpace or could get embedded into bedrock like Facebook. Sooner or later all social media evolve; sometimes onto bigger ventures and sometimes towards obsolescence. If I had to guess, I would say 10-20 years. -
What do you think will happen to our observations.
The “fine print” that all members agreed to will determine what happens to all the IP. Along with the “settings” each member configured their accounts with. -
Do you think we will be able to download our observations?
Yes.
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This is a good point. In 2007, MySpace had 300 million users. It was once the most-visited website in the USA. Today, it still exists, but no one uses it.
MySpace died, not with a bang, but with a whimper. We didn’t stop using whale oil because we killed all the whales; we stopped using whale oil because we found oil in the ground. The same thing is happening with coal and green energy.
iNat won’t die with a bang; it will just be replaced by something that does the same job, better. It will gradually fade into irrelevance.
Hard to say. Technological cycles keep happening faster (accelerating). It should be a decade at least, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it happens much faster.
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I think MySpace should be a mandatory case study for any team that is running a Social Media platform. They certainly had the technology and financial backing, but their downfall began by ignoring user feedback. Once it gained momentum, it was irreversible.
At this point I am a nobody here, just barely 71 days into iNat. Looked around and noticed I could both learn and also contribute. So began helping with IDs. Averaged 25 IDs/day, each one taking from a few seconds of thinking to several minutes of research.
Noticed the lack of a tool that could optimize my efficiency to help the fungi community. So submitted a Feature Request. It was very politely and very quickly denied, so my proposal didn’t even make it to the public forum to have a chance to get community votes.
This is a small example, yet may be an indication of the tone of the evolution.
Overall, I love iNat so far. It is an incredibly useful platform. There are also areas that need improvement rapidly.
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I was on Google Plus. That was also a huge number of users, across the world, but not constrained to naturalists. In retrospect we were Google’s lab rats, in a maze the size of the world we live on.
They gave us about 6 months warning, and I deleted my posts one by one. Keeping a page of comments that I like to remember.
Nothing is forever. Especially now.
2020 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/10/us-national-parks-dismantling-under-way
2025 https://www.npca.org/articles/6713-parks-group-responds-to-new-order-threatening-national-monuments
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You can already download all your observations today, although very large downloads are discouraged since they slow down iNaturalist for everyone.
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what was your feature request?
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You would be able to recover the records from your notebooks and the photos from your computer.
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I think that day is likely to be much further off if everything has backup servers in multiple countries. In the US many things we thought would obviously last are now in questions.
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