I agree this is true and also very sad, in my opinion. Sometimes we get so caught up in the need to identify and put species names on everything we see that it gets in the way of our interactions with nature. One’s enjoyment of finding a neat organism shouldn’t be hampered by how difficult the organism is to identify to species. I’ve even heard people on the forum say things like “I left an observation up for two years and no one identified it so I deleted it”. This is tragic. As great as it is to get things identified, identification isn’t the only goal of an interaction with nature. Deleting a record of something interesting that I saw, or neglecting to document it on the grounds that I probably won’t ever know what species it is, just seems sad. I would always encourage people to post as much as they can; even if there’s currently no one knowledgeable to ID them on iNat, or no known way to ID them from photos, that doesn’t mean the situation won’t have changed a decade from now, and it will be worthwhile to have that backlog of unidentified records to look through.
I don’t think this is necessarily the case. For most people it is going to be more interesting to submit observations that get some kind of interaction, whether it’s an agreeing ID or a species ID or “just” an ID that gets closer to species.
If your observations never get any response, it’s difficult to tell if what you are submitting has any value. (Maybe I’m just taking the wrong kinds of photos???)
The goal of iNaturalist is not just to generate useful data, but to get people engaged with nature. Interaction is more engaging for most people. Most people are more likely to do things that get them some form of affirmation. This platform uses, even depends on that tendency. It’s a feature, not a bug, as they say.
In my case that effect comes from overthinking: inat observations are digital activity, thus requiring energy and space, which has an environmental impact. I then start feeling guilty about that, which leads me to more carefully consider my use of inat. In general I am most likely to post observations of something I do not yet know the species/genus of, followed by things I have a particular interest in documenting. So if I have already posted what seems to me an okay photo(s) of something but it has not been identified, the guilt may prevent me from making another observation.
I also sometimes prioritise just enjoying the experience over taking a photo, especially when walking or drawing specifically in nature.
Of course there are very good arguments to be made against the feeling that extra observations are a burden of some kind, but knowing something and feeling it are very different.
either way, more experts are still a good thing!
Not only I agree with everything you wrote, I also have data that confirms this: when I started using iNaturalist there were only 353 phasmids observations for Brazil (that was in 2020), and talking with users they said that the main reason they didn’t photographed stick insects was the fact that no one identified them. So not only I and some other researcher friends started using iNat often, we uploaded a ton of phasmid records we had, constantly revised all records and engaged intensily in all social media recruiting people to use the app, submit their records of phasmids and we even got to the point of uploading many sightings of people that coudn’t use or didn’t have the time to use the app (they authorized us). The result was that in less than a year we had almost 5 times ther ammount of stick insect records for Brazil, and now we have the second largest number of records for Phasmatodea in South America. We even got the chance to describe new species and genera based on iNat observations.
I don’t think this is a comfort, but if you took and uploaded a thousand high-res photos a day every day for the next ten years, you’d probably do less environmental harm than Elon Musk accomplishes in one day.
plus you are contributing to science.
Yes, all life activity comes with a cost. iNat is probably one of the better uses of resources out there. I wouldn’t worry about resource use for iNat unless you’re doing something massive, like trying to train an AI model on the iNat open dataset or something. I’m sure an hour of posting observations or IDing on iNat uses way less energy than streaming something for the same amount of time, etc.
I suppose everyone is different in that regard. About a third of the observations I’ve posted (~11,000 if I’m using the search parameters correctly) have gotten no response, and until reading this thread I never considered that to be a bad thing. They’re still putting dots on a map and providing something for someone to look through years from now if they want to review the taxa depicted. And more importantly, they’re documenting things I found in nature. If, as you say, “The goal of iNaturalist is not just to generate useful data, but to get people engaged with nature”, then what matters most is that the observation I’m posting has value to me- whether anyone else cares about what I’ve posted is secondary. Id argue that the tying of an observation’s “value” to whether other people find it useful/identifiable/interesting puts too much emphasis on the “generate useful data” aspect of iNat.
If anything, my observations that no one else helps to ID are the ones that I end up engaging with the most, as I have to try to find references and key them out myself, rather than having the ID and diagnostic features handed to me by someone with experience.
I agree with you that focusing too much on that green RG label or whether an observation can be ID’d to species or not can be detrimental to the goal of engaging with nature.
I’ve found that increasingly, posting observations on iNat is a way to bear witness – to affirm the fact that, in spite of everything, all the troubles and violence and stupidity and humanity’s best efforts to destroy ourselves and our planet, there are all these incredible creatures who are still going about their lives, blooming in sidewalk cracks, visiting flowers, thriving and producing offspring in places we never intended them to be. The photos say: look, it is there, it exists. Regardless of whether I can put a specific label on it or not.
However, there is a social element to iNat that I think shouldn’t be underestimated.
If we were merely using iNat as a way of collecting data, it arguably wouldn’t matter if our observations get much direct response or not, because the mere act of posting them means that they are saved and available in a database. But we are posting them on a website that is based around a community. The observations are not anonymous lists that we send to some environmental monitoring office. They are documents of our personal experiences, and most people find validation in knowing that other people are interested in what we have to share.
When I joined iNat it was during a time of year (late Feb) when things were fairly quiet, both in terms of observers and IDing activity. Along with the fact that I happen to be in an area where there is not a particularly robust community of regularly active local users, it meant that the initial observations I posted got very little response at first. I also had to adjust my perspective to realize that just because I thought it was cool that I had bees nesting on my balcony didn’t mean that this was anything special or exciting to the people who regularly ID such observations. So it was, at first, a somewhat discouraging experience.
One thing that helped me find a place for myself on iNat turned out to be IDing, because it is something I can do that quite undeniably makes a difference and has an impact for the community. And gradually IDers started looking at my observations and my photography got better and other people found some of my stuff interesting (even if this was rarely the things I found most interesting myself).
What I also know is that if an organism isn’t of particular interest to me on its own account, but is one where there are active IDers or enthusiasts, I am more likely to make an effort to make observations than if it is one where I post them and never get any response at all. This again is not about whether the data is useful or whether I get a species ID, but simply the effect of experiencing that other people seem to care about it (and the fact that getting information from other people about what I saw enriches my experience – it is no longer just a member of some undifferentiated collection of bugs or fungi or whatever, but one that I can learn something more about).
This is absolutely a very fine ideal, and one which I agree with in principle.
In practice, not everyone finds it easy to sustain that kind of ideal all on their own, without any form of external validation. Getting interactions from other people can provide that, which is part of the power of iNaturalist as a platform!
Observations that don’t get any interaction absolutely do still have value. I’m just saying that the interaction, when it does happen, also has value, because for many people, it helps to motivate them to keep observing, keep identifying, keep engaging.
INaturalist is my social medium. I’m not on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, what-have-you. This is where I spend my time online. I can indulge my passion for insects, learn, sometimes pass on a little knowledge to others, marvel at nifty photos, watch animals I’ll never have the good fortune to see doing neat things, and generally feel more-or-less at home in my little niche.
This may seem a far cry from the forum topic, but by being the welcoming, sharing people most identifiers are, they build confidence in others to learn enough to contribute, too. Training observers and identifiers on the ‘common’ stuff in your chosen taxa tends to propagate. People remember the tips they’re given, and can cite them later on. Lastly, knowing that an expert has your back if you venture an ID is a great feeling. It’s not all on you when you make a mistake. You should still know your limits, but you have a little more freedom to fly.