Talk:iNaturalist

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gebemis.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:47, 17 January 2022 (UTC) [reply ]

Seek uses the iNaturalist identification algorithm and allows one to keep a life list,but it does not add observations to iNaturalist. I' not a Wikipedia editor so i don't want to mess with the article - can someone change it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.223.124.241 (talk • contribs)

Seek optionally allows upload of images to iNaturalist these days - ^[1] Flit (talk) 23:17, 28 December 2020 (UTC) [reply ]

The page on Wikispecies bears no useful information, and I can't foresee anything useful being posted there in the future that wouldn't already be covered in the Wikipedia article. I've removed the link from the article. Is there some reason to include it? Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 23:51, 17 September 2020 (UTC) [reply ]

@Hyperik: Thanks. Under similar rationale I've removed {{Wikidata property }}. The Wikispecies and Wikidata pages can be accessed via the sidebar for those interested. --Animalparty! (talk) 00:55, 18 September 2020 (UTC) [reply ]

Hm, the Wikidata property does seem useful since there are iNaturalist fields on Wikidata that are heavily referenced (thousands of occurrences) here on Wikipedia. Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 21:27, 18 September 2020 (UTC) [reply ]

But consider the average Wikipedia user. Does anyone besides a few geeks like us ever use Wikdata? And linking to the Talk pages of Wikidata properties seems odd (but that seems a general quirk of the template). This page has had issues with tech clutter in the past: programmers and techies are not the target audience of Wikipedia. --Animalparty! (talk) 22:36, 18 September 2020 (UTC) [reply ]

Asking for some people around me interested in contributing to the sum of all knowledge and uninterested in claiming their copyright, thks Jane (talk) 11:53, 8 August 2022 (UTC) [reply ]

I don't know if this would work, but maybe post it to archive.org first and set it to public domain? 173.222.1.160 (talk) 06:12, 12 September 2024 (UTC) [reply ]

In 2023 didn't they form their own nonprofit right after California Academy of Sciences told them they had to be trans friendly about something? Name changes or something they had doubled down on? I'm having trouble finding the reference(s), can someone please help? 173.222.1.160 (talk) 06:10, 12 September 2024 (UTC) [reply ]

Me again. This would be something for a "controversy" section. Here is some context: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/moderation-decisions-about-several-posts-in-the-lgbtqia-thread/42122/68 173.222.1.159 (talk) 05:20, 16 May 2025 (UTC) [reply ]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 2 January 2025 and 9 April 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Daisy Mae Turnips (article contribs). Peer reviewers: PlantArtist2198!.

— Assignment last updated by PlantArtist2198! (talk) 07:08, 10 April 2025 (UTC) [reply ]

While I appreciate @Gedankenstuecke's contribution in the History section of this page, I think a few of the citations on this sentence from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=INaturalist&diff=1297671953&oldid=1297150998 are not appropriate.

This announcement, paired with the initial lack of information on the iNaturalist site, led to a wide-spread outcry amongst iNaturalist users who worried about the consequences for the environment, volunteer engagement, reliability and raised questions about the decision making within iNaturalist.

Isn't it not the "done thing" to cite one's own blog on Wikipedia? Two of the citations are https://tzovar.as/inaturalist-backlash/ and https://tzovar.as/power-sharing/ . The About page of the blog identifies the blog owner as gedankenstuecke in the contact details. I'm not an experienced editor here so please correct me if I'm wrong, but if citing your own blog isn't appropriate, these two citations should be dropped. (As an aside, as an iNaturalist user myself who is worried about the issues, these are thoughtful contributions to the dialogue within our community! I just don't think they belong here as citations.)

Also this one seems "off": https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/19/google-bribes-inaturalist-to-use-generative-ai-volunteers-quit-in-outrage/ as it is a heavily biased opinion piece with at least one glaring inaccuracy. It makes the claim "Many deleted their accounts — which also deletes their observations from iNaturalist", citing the same Scientific American article that Bastian cites in this page, yet in that Scientific American article, they only said "Some said they would delete their accounts." If you read the iNaturalist forum thread you can confirm this is a factual statement. So far as I have read in that thread, not a single user said they had deleted their account. Therefore, I think it should be dropped as well.

The remaining citation on the sentence, the Scientific American article, looks good to me. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/google-ai-grant-to-inaturalist-prompts-community-outcry/

Finally, just a minor point on wording. Is it accurate to say "led to a wide-spread outcry amongst iNaturalist users"? While it's apparent that numerous users are upset, it is hard to gauge from the sampling of users responding on the forum and the iNaturalist announcement itself exactly what percentage of users are upset by the iNaturalist announcement. Neither is "wide-spread" how the Scientific American article describes it. Perhaps "led to outcry from many iNaturalist users" would be a better way to word it? SyntheticBee (talk) 13:19, 4 July 2025 (UTC) [reply ]

Thanks for the input @SyntheticBee! I wasn't sure about how the rules are regarding self-citing academic blog posts, I know that citing ones own academic papers are generally okay, but I'd be happy if you removed them! Regarding pivot to AI: imho it's a widely read tech source regarding AI developments, and the author has done similar work in the previous blockchain hype, but again: I'm not too familiar with what counts as citeable in this context.

Regarding the SciAm article and wide-spread: maybe it can just be made clear that this is how SciAm phrases it by using a direct quote?

Cheers, Gedankenstuecke (talk) 13:26, 4 July 2025 (UTC) [reply ]

A direct quote would be good! I didn't see "wide-spread" just "... users took to the comments section of the blog post and a related forum, as well as Bluesky, in droves to voice their concerns". In a community of millions, you can still have "droves" of users voicing concerns from even a fraction of a percent of them. SyntheticBee (talk) 13:36, 4 July 2025 (UTC) [reply ]

maybe that one came from the pivot to ai text then. Please feel free to adapt the section as you deem fit, i think you have good points!

With regards to citing blogs: PZ Myers wrote an article too, which can be found here: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/06/30/keep-your-ai-slop-out-of-my-scientific-tools/ I'm not sure if he's considered more cite-able, but to me his blog and professional expertise seem to rate quite highly as it has its own article here and seems often cited: Pharyngula. Gedankenstuecke (talk) 13:41, 4 July 2025 (UTC) [reply ]

I went ahead and made some edits, feel free to further improve it! Gedankenstuecke (talk) 12:41, 7 July 2025 (UTC) [reply ]

According to https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-21/erin-patterson-trial-wrap-wednesday-may-21/105317426, iNaturalist was likely used by Erin Patterson to locate the death cap mushrooms used in the 2023 Leongatha mushroom murders. Whilst obviously iNaturalist doesn’t bear any responsibility whatsoever for those murders, I feel like the relation is notable enough to be mentioned in this article 220.244.76.203 (talk) 16:15, 7 July 2025 (UTC) [reply ]