The next CNC is coming soon, and it will be completely in one month, namely in the months of April, not including the “Day of work” on May 1st. As it is named “city contest”, i wonder if there are any rules what can form an entity? Town an its surrounding, but where to draw the line?
Graz and the political district of Graz-Umgebung /sourrounding of Graz) is an obviously together-belonging geographical unit, but in the last years it was stretched, and not every year in the same way. To put the question globaly: Would it not be useful to create different groups of geograhical areal competing against each other? Like towns and their sourroundings on one side, and rural areas on the other side?
And I am very curious not only how Graz and Klagenfurt will do, but how the winner of 2023 La Paz in Bolivia will perform!
Some countries may be large and mainly empty but have lower populations than many cities. Perhaps to level the playing fields ,CNC could ensure that all areas have the same population. Perhaps 2.5 million. Which could be a city or a country or a town wiith its surrounding rural area. How can areas in Africa compete with USA cities, if they have few people who can afford the more expensive internet costs of African internet and higher smartphone and camera costs ? If countries in Africa, other than S Africa, are not allowed to compete as countries, then I dont think they shall compete at all in the CNC. It would be great to have 2 or 3 iNaturalists joining in the CNC from each country like Angola, DRC, Togo, Somalia, S Sudan etc. Sadly in much of Africa I dont think iNaturalist and the CNC has managed to drum up support from government institutions as in many European and N American. areas. Some African countries do get a flood of iNaturalist tourists at some times in the year, but generally local iNaturalists who can afford the costs of being an iNaturalist, are a rare breed. I think more should be done to encourage the entry of whole countries into the CNC and GSB, like Papua new Guinea, Antarctica, Tanzania, Gabon, Gambia, Timor, Palestine, Chad, Niger , Equatorial Guinea etc
Or have fresh targets (altho CNC is hosted, but not organised, by iNat)
First obs of an expected sp.
First obs of a sp.
More interesting targets than Buy Bulk and Save - most obs or most observers. That is not a level playing field. Not a playing field at all!
Africa needs more identifiers to be active in those crucial weeks before the deadline. There are observers, but if nobody cares to ID, does the falling tree make a sound?
There are no rules about what can be an entity for the CNC. The “city” can be a town, an actual city, a region, a state or province, or your backyard. The global organizers for the CNC put out results each year that compare “cities” with more or less the same area or more or less the same population.
If some researcher is interested in comparing areas of the same size or population, they can query the iNaturalist database specifically for that purpose, whether during the CNC event or not. Of course, competition between “cities” can encourage participants to make more observations or find more species, but who “wins” has more to do with how many people participate in each area than with the actual biodiversity of each “city.”
That’s becoming increasingly true everywhere, though. And are we really helping here on the forums when we advise a would-be new identifier also, in effect, to Buy Bulk and Save – meaning start with the common, easy taxa?
My point exactly. And not just the unknowns, but the Dicots, Flowering plants, and Fungi Including Lichens, too. We tell observers that adding these initial IDs makes it more likely that a “specialist” will see them – and then they sit at those initial IDs for years. What is the observer to make of that?
Cataloging and protecting biodiversity requires finding and recording the rare species. Well, the rare species are right now just generic “Dicots.” They’re already here, but we don’t know it yet.
So very true. I used to think - throughout my life, not just since I starting making IDs - that if I worked hard and kept at it, I’d make some progress now and then. It’s really hard to hang on to that thought right now.
I have fought that battle. It is worse now because iNat has added that red frame - add a broad ID … you can override it, but more plant or animal IDs coming thru now. Life will also remove the red frame.
I will clear the broad IDs for the Cape Peninsula. With @lynnharper I UNsee the rest.
@jasonhernandez74 I do pull please add missing species from African Unknowns. I despair of the broad IDs - because iNat helpfully disappears the placeholder text - which might have SAID the missing species. Gone. If iNat would make it clear tto iNatters placeholder is TEMPORARY. Another battle lost.
Red frame??? Is that on the apps? (I rarely use the app.)
I will say that it gives me pleasure right now to look at the Flowering Plants for my region and ID quite a few right to species or genus. I should get in the habit of looking at that taxonomic level (and Dicots, Monocots, etc.) more often.
All the red frame does is make it easier to find the thing thing that triggered a missing information warning. I don’t see how that could be changing the proportions of things identified as this or that or unknown.
Which is great, thanks for the help in getting things up to there! So right now, that means these are already presorted a bit - and human-curated - to make it easier to aim a later month’s or year’s AI tool(s). at that dataset. Or whatever. ;)
Makes iNat easier to use for established users.
But newbies are coerced to add something / anything. They may not realise you can go ahead and upload as - I don’t know … waiting for an ID.
I see more of the broad IDs on the bookmarked URLs I clear each day.
