Thanks for signing up! Here are some replies to your excellent questions:
> 1. I have the GPS coordinates for some things that I saw and would
> like to input that instead of searching for their location on the map.
When you make a new observation, you can click the "Add additional
data" link and you will see latitude and longitude fields. You can
enter GPS coordinates there, but they'll have to be in decimal degrees
(negative values for degrees longitude west). If you have GPS
coordinates in other formats like degrees/minutes/seconds or the
dreaded degrees/decimal minutes, you'll need to convert them using
something like this:
http://www.csgnetwork.com/gpscoordconv.html (hideous, but functional)
So W 121 deg 33.003' becomes -121.55005.
> 2. I also think that it would be nice if I could access the add
> observation option from any page on the site.
Good point. I've been meaning to add that...
> 4. Can you link observations, if a group of people see the same
> thing?
You can't right now, but it's a feature we've discussed. How do
others feel about this? Do you want to be able to say "I saw species
X at time Y in place Z with April, Ken-ichi, and Nate?" How would you
feel about the observations that others have added in this way showing
up as your own if they claimed you were there too? Maybe you could
limit that ability to your contacts, so only certain people could add
to your observations.
> 5. It will also be difficult to confirm a sighting of something if
> there aren't any pictures. How are you going to screen for accuracy?
Very true. Our philosophy is not to screen for accuracy, but to
enable people to screen for it themselves. We haven't quite gotten
there yet, but here are some possibilities:
- filtering observations by whether or not they have photos
- allowing users to suggest (and possibly confirm) IDs, so you could
say, "only show me observations that have been ID'd the same way by at
least 2 people"
- building this database of confirmations and suggestions through
games. Imagine a game where you're simply shown an observation
without the species (a photo, a place, a description) and asked to
make the ID. You could even have a competitive version similar to the
Google Image Labeler (http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/).
Without a photo it's definitely going to be harder to confirm.
Extensive descriptions certainly help, but there's also potential to
leverage the power of social networking. Let's say you have a private
list of "trusted contacts" or something, and you can sift through
observations based on degrees of separation, e.g. "only show my
observations made by people I trust and the people they trust." Just
a thought.
Data quality is a thorny issue. We don't want to create barriers to
creating observations, but at the same time we want to incentivize the
creation of accurate data. We'd love to hear more about what you all
think about it, and any other ideas you might have for addressing it.
-Ken-ichi
One thing that I think we should remember is that we want to provide
the community with a way to catalog, sort and manage their individual
observations outside of the scope off the larger community. That's
easy to forget because once the data is combined there are such
profound and interesting effects.
Managing data quality of the larger community has been a frequent
concern of every person we have interviewed, but ultimately we can
only do so much to allow for people to manage their data in the
context of everone else's. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that
I'm opposed to stringent data quality measures that potentially
exclude the interesting, bizarre and rare things people honestly see
in the name of commumity accuracy.
Now that's not to say we aren't concerned about quality, and in the
next few weeks you should be seeing some updates that address this
concern. One in the way that users can suggest identifications of
observations and another in how users can flag particular observations
with certain adjectives.
So bring on the wolverines, and keep the comments and suggestions
coming.
Thanks again,
Nate
And thanks for all the links! Another curious site along the lines of
what you were talking about, George, is the British site Nature's
Calendar. They use observational data to make interesting animated
maps of season phenomena. Check this out:
http://www.naturescalendar.org.uk/map/current.htm?rsid=164&reid=3&yr=2008&rs=S
I have a small collection of similar iNat-related links at
http://del.icio.us/kueda/biodiversity+informatics if you're
interested.
-Ken-ichi