What can iNaturalist do to better support people of color?

Since I moved several replies around, I think this is a good point to recap the suggestions that have come in so far. We’ve tried to group them thematically and paraphrase with links back to the original comment(s).

For brevity, I’ve used the acronym BIPOC which is short for Black, Indigenous, People of Color.

Outreach

  • highlight more BIPOC in Observations of the Day/Week (pisum, eric_hunt)
  • proactively reach out to organizations working to support BIPOC in related realms (paloma, pisum, alecc, eric_hunt)
  • promote iNaturalist in indigenous communities (simono) and incorporate indigenous expertise (questagame)
  • more support for teachers/schools who may be serving BIPOC communities (pisum)
  • more local outreach (e.g. in Oakland, CA) (alecc)
  • toolkit/starter package/resources (simono)
  • work with vocational rehabilitation programs (mira_l_b)
  • directly fundraise/support outreach programs (teellbee)
  • develop a scalable model for onboarding school clubs (pisum)
  • tool lending library (pisum)
  • workshop/coding camp/hackathon with/for BIPOC (pisum)
  • add identifications and otherwise support users/areas/projects that are representing BIPOC (charlie, pisum)

Staffing

  • grow the team by hiring BIPOC for a more diverse iNat staff (eric_hunt, rupertclayton)
  • lose some current non-BIPOC staff and replace them with BIPOC to create a more diverse staff (tallastro, eric_hunt)
  • support CalAcademy’s efforts to diversify staff through hiring BIPOC (eric_hunt, rupertclayton)
  • support CalAcademy and Nat Geo in diversifying their boards (eric_hunt)

Places and Maps on iNaturalist

  • increase visibility of indigenous places and history (this is now a whole separate thread)
  • iNaturalist community members can add locally significant places as “community curated” places (pisum)

Languages

  • more web and app features to support the use of multiple languages simultaneously (jbbohan, robotpie)
  • more local language common names (note: anyone can add these one at a time from a taxon page or request a bulk addition using this template) (jbbohan, trh_blue, dhugallindsay).

iNaturalist functionality

  • design and build for lower-tech devices, low bandwidth, and poor connectivity (simono, pisum)
  • group accounts (questagame)

Spending

  • support BIPOC owned establishments/companies/vendors (pisum)

Merchandise

Philosophy

Does this capture all of the main themes so far? What others might be missing? Did I miss anything in this review? (If so, I apologize for the omission). Are there other useful ways to organize these suggestions?

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Thanks for all the feedback and for staying on topic. We believe that some of the comments here mischaracterize our policies regarding what kind of user accounts (anonymous, group, fictitious, etc.) are not permitted or discouraged but we realize that we don’t currently have a coherent statement about this complex subject posted in the FAQ. We apologize for that. We’re working on one now and hope to have it posted early next week.

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Thanks upupa-epops - I realise that requiring everyone to create an iNaturalist account seems, as you say, “fair, and the observer would be able to respond and have a conversation and the identifier from the US would probably back off (and have learned something new about Australian nudibranchs).”

Wouldn’t that be nice?

But that’s not reality. Each community has its own culture, its own biases. This iNat community is no different. It’s not easy - perhaps impossible - to see the contours of our own cultures when we’re a part of it.

“Come talk to us.” “The meeting room door is open.” “We’re here to learn from you.” “We’re open-minded.” And so forth.

But it’s still “your place, your culture” in which we’re discussing observations from “my place, my culture.”

It’s a common problem faced by indigenous communities (and people of colour in the US). It happens all the time here in our Australian institutions. (It’s especially bad in Canberra from my experience). Indigenous people are invited to discussions at some Australian gov institution, but few ever turn up, and if they do, they’re suddenly the token BIPOC person who’s supposed to speak for an entire community. I’m sure you can imagine what that’s like.

Technology, however, creates new opportunities to bridge these divisions. For example, from your iNaturalist platform, using your existing interface, you could come chat with another nature community, on THEIR OWN platform (discuss nudibranchs! :-) ). You wouldn’t need to create an account and sign in. You’d be able to join the discussion as an iNaturalist user named upupa-epops, part of an iNat group account. And visa-versa. This is entirely feasible. Tech allows this. It’s easy to do.

I hear pisum jumping in here - “we’re not a data repository like ALA and GBIF.” Neither are we and no one’s suggesting that. “QG is only interested in helping itself.” I don’t think there’s anything I can say - even the simplest thing - that’s not going to be called out as wrongly motived or “hijacking.” I’m forced to defend my perspective no matter what I say.

This is a cultural issue with iNat. It quickly becomes us-them. In fact, pisum, just to correct you earlier, the expertise engine we’ve developed is working pretty well. In fact, some categories are getting identified so quickly we’ve decided to start feeding iNat sightings into it, because we now have a surplus of experts. How is that possibly a bad thing? I think we all agree that’s a win for everyone, no? In that sense, our win is your win, so what’s the issue?

The fact is, biodiversity connects us all, and we can’t protect it without BIPOC. (See last year’s IPBES report). iNat has some great technology, some very smart people. There’s an opportunity here to open up, truly open up, and not repeat the same mistakes that we’ve made with communication systems over the last several centuries.

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i hope you’re using the data properly. i certainly wouldn’t want my data picked up and used in your system, especially since my observations and photos are all explicitly licensed CC BY-NC. it also seems like a violation of iNat’s overall terms of service to use stuff from iNat in general, again because of its noncommercial clause.

that’s all i have to say… back to the topic at hand.

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Happy Juneteenth everyone. I hope we can make it through the weekend without this thread devolving into another lecture about iNaturalist vs. Questagame. I’m eager to hear from some other voices about what iNaturalist can do to better support people of color

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i think it may be worth including commitments that iNat staff have made in previous statements, just to put those with items for consideration on one list. i didn’t go back and look at everything, but i seem to recall that you guys said that you would meet internally periodically to discuss these items and also reach out to various groups for additional guidance on this topic. i think that latter thing will be particularly important to achieve your goal here, since as far as i can tell, there hasn’t necessarily been a lot of participation / representation by disadvantaged BIPOC here.

i did a superficial scan of some existing / old threads just to see if there were things brought up in the past that are relevant here. there are some unresolved items that i mentioned over at https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/displaying-indigenous-lands-and-land-history-on-inat/13556/19.

there are also some things are closed at this point but may need a quick review to make sure the resolution is still appropriate:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/the-default-taxon-photo-for-homo-sapiens/5668
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/ok-symbol-policy/6832
… there may be others relevant threads, but there are a lot of threads to sift through. hopefully others can chime in if there are other threads that contain ideas that may deserve a quick review.

i was also thinking that there are some common guidelines for the community online, but it might be useful to develop some additional guidelines or tips for when observing out in the world. this is not to say that BIPOC need to be told how to behave properly, but it might be useful to understand what some common standards are across all cultures. i don’t really have a good concept myself of what such guidelines would look like, but just for example, if outreach to a particular indigenous group is successful, and all of a sudden there are a lot of interesting observations from that group’s land, i wouldn’t necessarily want random people seeing that to assume that it would be a good thing to take a day trip to go and take a look at the cool things out there, without considering how others might view that.

a couple of other thoughts related to process. first, i sort of see this initial effort as sort of the literature review or focus group phase of a much longer effort. it may be worth defining that the expected result of this phase of the effort will be, and what future next steps might look like (including timing), just to keep expectations aligned.

second, the way my mind works, it will only ever be known for sure whether meaningful change was achieved if you can measure before and after a change. so it may be worth starting to think about what things you might want to measure and how to measure them. i recall a past thread (https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/why-is-inat-male-dominated/6533) where the question of how to measure a problem was debated in length and even attempted by an entrepreneurial community member (https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/results-from-recent-brief-survey-of-inat-users/6697).

one more thing… i wasn’t sure that i wanted to even suggest this, but i guess i am making the suggestion just as something to consider: in the framework of iNaturalist, i think most projects are based on an interest – a taxon, a place, etc. i’ve seen a few projects created that are half interest / half identity, such as the young birders project. i wonder if there’s a model or even a place for a project or grouping mechanism based solely on identity (ex. black scientists)? in some ways, that seems like it could change the nature of the community and maybe fragment it, but i wonder if some might find that sort of thing desirable and even welcoming?

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Interesting idea. If there could be two-way conversation (and the users on both platforms could tell who they were interacting with instead of generic anonymous iNaturalist/questagame user) I think that would address some of the major issues people have with the current/(former) system. That seems like a lot of programming effort though and would require the two platforms to already be very similar (e.g. eBird as it currently stands wouldn’t be able to work like that at all).

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I really think iNaturalist should change its leniency with respect to photos of human beings that are identified as something that can be seen as racist–regardless of the identifier’s intent. I’m not saying a new user using the AI needs to be penalized, but I think the IDs should at least be quietly removed.

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Yes, we can flag those that were user added, but I think just quietly removing the CV ones makes sense.

[addendum: because I hesitate to ascribe malice when it was a CV suggestion…I think in those cases it’s more likely to be either silliness or carelessness]

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Yes, there was actually an arts initiative a year ago that gave indigenous kids a bunch of inexpensive cameras and had them create a photographic exhibition. However, I did mention that they mostly have their own smartphones and could use those, and then upload them all from a school or library.

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I have been wondering about this and thinking that things need to be relaxed a little if we want to help “create extensive community awareness of local biodiversity and promote further exploration of local environments” for all. Not everyone is going to have the best access and the best tools and skill sets to present an observation that will help it become RG in a flash. Not everyone is going to have access to the vast wilds of nature and instead live in a highly cultivated/captivated world and they may lack the freedom for what ever reason to venture. People need to start their appreciation and awareness of nature somewhere and if that means observing a potted plant on the balcony or in the community garden with a poor image and no real knowledge of what kind of detail would be preferred then so be it. It is a start. As you say @charlie, we need to help identify species. Those casuals from the balcony, community gardens, parks, and backyards may evolve to include surrounding RG flora and fauna.

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So, my students are graduating and I am proud of all of them. Each one of them had challenges. In my experience, the biggest obstacles they can face most of the time boil down to lack of economic and educationnal opportunities. With the pandemic, many lost the part-time jobs they relied on. So the college staff set up an emergency fund. They also lost all their internships. The project of documenting the local biodiversity on INaturalist for our college became their internships. So what does it have to do with this thread, well, this is them: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/biodiversite-baie-des-chaleurs/journal/37677-felicitations-cohorte-2018-2020-congratulations

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Can I just bring this down to the level of individual contributors to iNat?

Almost each time I am out iNatting in NYC parks or on the street, one or two people are curious and ask me what I am doing, or ask me questions about the organism I am photographing. Just recently I find that more POC are asking me, which is great, and very encouraging. I always do my best to explain, but it would be a real asset if I could carry with me some business-sized cards which just had the iNaturalist name, logo, and maybe a line of text explaining what iNat is, so that I could give a card out and the person doesn’t have to just try to remember what I am telling them.

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Though not strictly necessary, as you can find the site and app pretty easily by name, it might be nice to also have the URL and maybe a QR code for the Android Play store or iPhone app store as well.
Maybe iNat could create a template (for either a single or multiples on a sheet of 8.5" x 11") that we could print out?

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There is a QR code to the website, I was printing some advertisements (not made by me).

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Yeah, I was just assuming most people visited the site when they are already in front of their keyboard, where it may be easier to type it. You’re right though: if it’s a tablet or they are using the browser on their phone, they might want a QR for the website too.

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I just don’t know if there’s another one for the app, I love the idea of small cards, probably will create some later.

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We (the CitSci team at CAS) made these to give out at a music festival we tabled at, since we had an activity people could do using iNat but realized many folks might not remember the name of the platform after the festival. We figured these were easy to stick in a pocket or wallet to be looked at later.

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As I finally said in an Indigenous Development Practice Masters class in Economics (after listening to folks rail on about deColonisation), nonsense. Didn’t win me any fans. A prof in a later class offered his 3 step assessment of a problem - What, So what, and Now what. The What is that Indigenous science is not given it’s place. The So what is that excludes a form of knowledge that Linnaean science does not recognize. The Now what is to find some way to incorporate both. Indigenous knowledge IS science. No Indigenous person can claim to be knowledgeable without experience with the non-human world. If your aim is to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into mainstream science, then say so. There is nothing wrong with that, except that Indigenous peoples tend to ignore species that are not important for them. The “fundament structure” of iNat is fine. The person who has lived with plants, animals, insects etc. may have a different understanding of names and functions of these beings. It does not mean it is wrong, or should not be part of iNat. It means that we need to incorporate these concerns into the platform of iNat in some way, recognizing that the identification of the organism is may not be precise in Linnaean terms. If you have criticisms, please propose some solutions along with them.

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Those are great!

Did you create them via Vistaprint/MOO Print/etc, or do you have a shareable template?