What is the one thing you wish you could do on iNaturalist?

I certainly wan’t being dismissive at all. I just don’t understand any part of what they are saying and thought humour might help it not sound negative. I said that I appreciated their help, and loved how helpful people are on this site. I was talking solely about my inability to understand, not their willingness to help me.

No worries, Julie - it’s the internet; it’s hard to be clear. I’m sure as hell still working on it. Did we succeed in the end?

One thing that I imagine might make a difference: If you’re accessing iNaturalist through a web browser, you probably have the url at the top of your screen. But if you’re on your phone, in an app, I don’t know that’s true. And in any case, I don’t think you’ll get the easy search functionality that you’re looking for. So I’m sorry we can’t be more helpful! And on the other hand, if you do decide to dig into it, I hope you’ll feel good about the advice you’re getting and the effort you’re putting in.

3 Likes

I am going to try and understand it, but it will take some time. I am no computer expert. I really do appreciate how helpful people are on this site and on iNaturalist. I have learned a lot through the generosity of time and knowledge that others have given me. I hope this will be one more thing I learn, but please don’t hold your breath.

2 Likes

One thing I wish I could do on iNat is edit pictures as I’m uploading them(desktop version), or use the app to edit pictures at all. I try to go through the pictures I’ve uploaded to an observation and it always shows me duplicates that aren’t actually there and I end up deleting all my pics.

5 Likes

Thanks.

THIS is my biggest wish (and/or an in-app photo editor with circle/arrows, provided they reside on a different layer so it doesn’t confuse the AI/computer vision, but still is a nice visual for human eyes):

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/draw-bounding-box-on-photo-for-computer-vision/2554 (unfortunately, it’s closed now so you can’t vote on it but it IS being investigated)
similar to this: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/inaturalist/pictures$20star/inaturalist/HmenVLycDqQ/A565DyVrBgAJ

2 Likes

Thank you @star3 for searching out and pointing to related feature requests.

We’ll see how this thread evolves – if it starts to become too redundant with the Feature Requests section of the forum, we might just close this and point folks there instead.

2 Likes

The circles and arrows would be a fantastic idea!

I also wish I could save locations because I do tend to return to the same spots often, and I don’t like walking around with GPS active.

2 Likes

The one thing i wish I could do on the site - convince the site to drop the ‘each observation is for a single individual rule’ and build a standard easy way to record frequency for those who wish to do so.

4 Likes

Yes, I wish I could save the coordinates for a location as well. Most of my photos are from my yard. Originally I chose “obscure” so my address didn’t show, but then that prevents my observations from showing in the project location I created.
Now I use the coordinates for a city park that is basically behind my house. That way I can keep the location open and not have my address show.

Bottomline for the location though. There should be a way NOT to have to obscure a location and yet NOT have a home address on display for the world to see.

4 Likes

The thing I’ve wished for for quite some time is a way to create “personal projects”, or collections, or whatever you want to call them. I’d like a collection for things observed in my yard, and things I observed on a trip to Costa Rica, and things I observed on a trip to Iceland. A collection for all the moths I’ve added to all the years of Moth Week. If I felt like doing a “square yard” project, I’d want a collection for that.

I’ve run across projects that it appears people have set up for this purpose, where only one person is adding to the project, but these concepts are really different things. One is for public participation, and the other is for personal organization. It always feels weird for me to come across one of those “personal” projects and see that it’s just for one person.

1 Like

Is that what the life lists are for?
(I don’t really understand life lists)

Maybe something other than projects would be good, like collections or albums. Something just for the user’s personal use than a public project everyone can contribute to.

4 Likes

As someone who has set up one of those personal projects, I myself did not do it to leverage the project framework, but because it has by far the most accurate and stable species list and count tracking functionality. If lists worked properly and stayed in synch etc, I never would have done a project.

2 Likes

Search the explore tab for species I have not yet observed!

1 Like

See https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/select-a-pinned-location-on-the-edit-page-for-already-uploaded-observations/3626/4

Looks like you have already created a Feature Request for that here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/create-filter-option-in-user-interface-to-exclude-species-youve-observed/5790

2 Likes
  1. The ability to crop photos in the upload screen would save me SO much time, especially when I have 5 different things in 1 photo, and have to crop and save 5 versions on my PC before I upload.

  2. It’s easy to find the most commonly-observed species in an area, but I’d love to be able to see the LEAST observed species - both so I can look for more of them myself, and to check for erroneous IDs of things not actually found in the area.

  3. In similar vein as above, would like to be able to see what organisms are in the range map of an area but have not yet been observed there.

2 Likes

How is number 3 different than going to the checklist for a place and choosing unobserved. For instance
https://www.inaturalist.org/check_lists/7219-Ontario-Check-List?q=&view=photo&taxon=&observed=f&threatened=any&establishment_means=any&occurrence_status=not_absent&rank=species&taxonomic_status=active&commit=Filter

The challenge of course is maintaining the checklists, but those are certainly the most complete accounting of species distribution the site has.

1 Like

Number 2 sounds really interesting and speaks right to my competitive nature :) I like it!

Is there a way to do that on the mobile app? That’s what I use to upload/post.