What is this - iNaturalist and generative AI?

[escol]

@habibrehman

Some people suggest a user-contributed wiki: I think this would actually be a great idea, and the current CV model could just link to that. Just as a note though, how many people will contribute to this? How many less-common species will get covered? Tons of my observations get no additional ID for years, and the ones that do get ID’d by people rarely have explanations.

Not sure if it was already attached on this forum thread. But I will leave it here, seems to be a similar topic (with not much activity!):
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/expand-the-similar-species-tab-into-an-editable-identification-guide/13890/50?u=escol

@zygy

I recently attended the annual conference of the American Arachnological Society and there was a lot of discussion about iNaturalist. A lot of folks expressed interest in using iNat, but a short-coming that was highlighted (and a reason many folks still preferred using BugGuide) was the lack of information about identification. As one participant explained “All the identification tips are scattered across comments in individual observations.”

It would be awesome if we could expand the existing Similar Species tab into a more comprehensive resource for taxon identification (and maybe rename it “Identification”). Even if it was only editable by curators initially, it could become a really useful resource and help to cut down on misidentifications and redundant comments explaining how to ID various species. I know we already have the Wikipedia articles under the About tab, but those are typically limited to general descriptions rather than specific tips for identification.