What made you stay on iNat?

General
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I was already interested in reporting for citizen science–I had been ebirding for a year before–but really it was that I finally got a camera that let me take photos of birds that got me onto iNat. I really wanted to be part of the community before that, but without a real camera I couldn’t provide suitable photographic evidence for the species I was most interested in (birds…). Once I joined, I liked being able to test my identification skills by helping other people with IDs, and then I started realizing I could use it to identify other things in my area… And now I tend to upload more bugs and plants than birds, and I’ve learned a lot and started engaging with the world around me in a whole new way…!

And also, this, haha. I have an addictive personality, and I find it very rewarding.

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22

Three main things for me:

  1. Learning about the wildlife around me. Continuous usage of iNat has taught me a lot about the animals, plants, fungi etc. that are in my area, but I guess equally as important is also the realisation of how much more there is to learn, whether its in terms of a new area or a different taxon. Which also encourages me to explore more natural areas too.

  2. User friendly website. The process of uploading observations and providing ID’s are quite intuitive to me. Plus I appreciate that some more knowledgable users are also out to provide ID tips, or justify their ID choices etc.

  3. Contribution to science. Certainly I feel scientists will value the observations we input on iNat in terms of rate, physical range, and amount of data collection.

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23

The people here. Everyone. Here at iNaturalist we are a team. We will always be together.

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24

I’ve been having a rotten day and I just wanted to say this thread is so refreshingly positive.

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Hmmm… My first impression of iNaturalist did not include any realization that this was a community where people interacted. I just figured if you saw in interesting organism, you submitted it to a nameless database. That was citizen science - contribute what you’ve seen.

I was so surprised (and not necessarily pleased) when people ~argued~ with my ID on one of my first submittals. Who are these people?!?

It took me quite a while to wrap my head around the collaborative nature of the website. After a few comments from other users on my observations to go to the website, I finally did.

Then, since I love generally forum discussions, and one of the first forum topics I came across was REALLY funny, I kept coming back for more. Eventually, I gathered the app I was using was a small part of the story. So, I began using the iNaturalist.org website more.

But, for me, it was the Forum that really nailed it for me. While much of the Forum discussion is well over my head, I’ve learned from it.

I especially love the stories and the crazy great sharing here.

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Like-minded community, global and all-biodiversity, and the integrity of the people leading it.

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27

When I first signed up for iNat, my impression was that this was a site where you could upload a photo of an organism that you can’t identify and someone would identify it for you. I had no responses at all to most of my original observations so went away for a couple of years.
Eventually, I recognized the citizen scientist value of the site and started uploading records of organisms whose ID I could make for myself. That got me hooked enough to go back to look at all my historical photos which, if there was anything identifiable in them, I uploaded.
From there, my interest in participating on iNat and in the forum just grew to the point where I was spending 12 hours a day uploading and living in that lovely world of learning.

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Yes! Please flag the family or genera whenever you see gaps, let us know, and we’ll look into it. Not every species will get added, depending on evidence, but it will get attention. I personally love filling in the gaps in taxonomy in Central America, Indonesia, Pacific Islands, Africa, the Caribbean, etc. I like to think that a new user will find at least some minimal information about the taxon they are looking to identify, even if theirs is the first observation.

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I am reluctant to start anything at first and it will be boring at the start, but if I get interested in it then getting out of it is hard. That’s the same case for inaturalist, ebird and even facebook or instagram. Many have already replied on what I wanted to say. I joined through the app and then found the website after a few days(It’s the opposite for ebird as I started using the app after years) I was not interested in any other organisms other than birds with a few exceptions. I didn’t know that we could give ID’s and thought that it is just for putting our observations just like ebird. That changed after the next day when I got notifications. I started giving ID’s after many days only. Giving incorrect ID’s helped me learn more things easily. Inaturalist helped me expand my knowledge to other organisms too which I usually ignored. Here we could actively engage in discussions which helped me stay too. I have many old observations which helped me stay at first then I started giving ID’s frequently. I was invited to a project “Young Naturalists of the World”. This project helped me connect with other inatters of my age. Then recently I joined many other projects too. Inaturalist forum helped me a lot too. I read a lot in forum which helped me know about many things about inaturalist, citizen science, taxonomy, and many more things. Now I give ID’s regularly and is following many other fellow inatters who have observations I can ID or who follow me. Now I cannot even think of leaving inaturalist.

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Because on my other social media, talking in depth about nature hardly gets as much as a “like,” never mind comments. It is nice to be on a platform where the majority of posts are not mindless memes or politically slanted op-ed pieces.

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31

Welcome back @violetii!

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32

The great and caring people. When someone started following me. Everyone.

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33

I’m a bit unique in that I joined iNat to ID rather than observe. Other people have done the same, but it’s definitely a minority position. I actually found iNat disappointing when I first joined! I guess my personality type is prone to be critical of new things.

I’m impressed by everyone on this thread who says the platform is intuitive and easy to use. I didn’t find that true at all. Within hours I decided the help pages were lacking and got busy reading forum threads. I found several things which put me off.

One was the dichotomy between the “experts” and the general community, wherein the experts feel the general users are foolishly ruining the datasets, and the general users think the experts are rude and condescending. Ouch.

Another was what I felt was a total lack of organizational structure. In my head I had imagined there must be some coordinated, mutually-agreed approach to identification in terms of who covers what kind of observations in what areas. I asked people, “Where can I help?” and was pretty shocked to get back the answer, “Start anywhere–it doesn’t matter, ID what ever you feel like.” Um, really?

Another was the near total dismissal of cultivated plants. I was annoyed by the way the website lumps cultivated plants into the same category as observations missing date/location/photo, and how there is no “needs-ID” for cultivated plants. Pretty much immediately I got into an argument with a forum moderator about this, and I was shocked by what I felt was rude wording coming from someone with “moderator” next to their name. I considered leaving the site, but the observations themselves are interesting and there aren’t really any comparable competing platforms to defect to. In the end I decided to stay, but to stay away from cultivated plants. Fine, I also know plenty of wild species. It took me about a year to creep back into cultivated plant ID, and even still I don’t do it a lot because the website just makes it so difficult.

I also felt as a “newbie” with no track record or graduate-level education to back me up, I was having a hard time getting people to take me seriously, either on the forum or just in general with my IDs. Fortunately the latter issue was pretty easily resolved just by my continuing to offer consistently correct IDs. The local “old boys club” of botany in my area turned out to be quite welcoming and quickly had generous things to say about my knowledge level (too generous in my opinion, but it’s definitely nicer to have one’s skills overestimated than underestimated!)

So what made me stay on iNat? I mean honestly, I like to ID stuff, and learn new things! As Diana said,

And that’s pretty much it! Now that I’ve been here a while I do agree with you all that the community is lovely, but I don’t think that was a factor for me at first. I’ve met great friends and participated in cool projects, but all that takes time.

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34

Thanks for the different perspective. Hopefully we will be able to address these shortcomings as a community :)

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35

Welcome back violetii!

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I am also mostly ID rather than posting my own obs.

That learning curve. I was active during Cape Town’s first bioblitz. Swamped, drowned, inundated with notifications from those IDs. I ignored the notifications and it took me almost a year to learn to play nicely here and stop stomping on toes.

That cultivated plants are casual and don’t need ID makes me angry. Given that iNat’s stated aim is to encourage ordinary people to notice nature. And, most people are not field biologists, they live in cities. The nature they can be encouraged to observe will substantially be cultivated plants. There is a logic fail between, observe nature, but not that, only wild nature is welcome.

The dichotomy between scientists who want valid data, and iNat is actually social media - can be hard to bridge.

If iNat was friendlier to cultivated plants, people would be willing to put that information up before being sidetracked by iNat’s hopeful seen nearby suggestion - which is meaningless if it is planted, not wild. Then too - it would be easier for the serious scientists to filter out cultivated. And we could all be happier.

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37

I joined, as I said above, for many reasons, but find I love to ID. Which is mostly what I have done. I also found the site hard to navigate, and the worldwide aspect of it kind of threw me for a loop. I was trying to identify moths from India and Malaysia, Texas, places I had never been to. After getting frustrated, I finally thought ‘focus on what you know’, settled on Canadian Noctuids, and I’m a happy camper now! I can empathise with the cultivated/non cultivated aspect, from a different perspective. Most folks stop taking photos of common things. Moths are not cultivated, but the more common ones don’t get a lot of attention. Those are the ones I tend to gravitate to. I don’t know your profile page, but if you add something along ‘special interest in cultivated plants’ that might help deflect detractors.
BTW, do you identify cultivars of crop plants, like wheat, beets, etc? Or is it impossible to tell differences?

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Cultivars have characteristics that define them. These features may or may not be visible in the photo, and the identifier may or may not know what to look for. Personally I’m a horticulturist, so I’m more familiar with plants that are ornamental (like landscaping flowers) rather than agricultural (food.) I can name home garden veggies, but not in great detail.

If I see something whose cultivar I am certain of, I ID the species and type the cultivar name underneath in the comment box. You can also put it as an annotation, but I find that clunky and never do it. If you really want to get down to it, cultivar names are more fuzzy than actual taxonomy: it’s possible for the same cultivar to have multiple names. For crop plants, which are more often patented, sometimes one name is used to define the patent and another name name is used in stores; for example there’s an apple Cripps Pink sold under trade mark Pink Lady. Sometimes people also confuse the brand name for the name of the product; for example “Cuties” is a brand name and there are several possible mandarin cultivars which could be in the bag, depending on the location and time of year.

We’re off on a tangent here, so if anyone would like to continue discussing this we should have a moderator split of a new thread.

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39

The long-awaited notification system overhaul will be a big help to identifiers, for sure!

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40

If you’re the one doing the taxonomy for the maritimes, thank you so much :) I learn so much from updated taxa on iNat.
I recently learned of a subspecies of plant that way.

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