Guides option in iNaturalist request for extra features

[wouter teunissen]

Hi there,

I'm new to iNaturalist and was trying the "guide" option.

I like the thing very much, but I also miss certain options. As a start:

1. First of all apparently the maximum amount of taxa is 500. I was thinking of making guides for areas in the Netherlands. Problem is that most areas have species lists that exceed 500 species. More realistic is about 2000 - 4000 species! Also I wanted to make a bird guide for the Netherlands, but the list of species is also more than 500 and I don't want to split it in two different guides. I think this will be the case for more areas and countries in the world. Especially groups with lots of taxa like plants, moths, funghi, other insects, etc.   

2. In the grid option it would be nice to have the possibility of adding more short info
I mean the following:
"photo;
vernacular name;
scientific name;
status (like: feral population, exotic, escapes, etc);
rarity: common, occasional, rare, etc;
checkbox (so users could use the guide also as a checklist);
something else"

By doing this, it will be possible to see if a species is common or not. Which will improve ID's of species when using the grid thumbnail overview.
It would be nice if you could upload this immediately with the speciesnames paste option, divided by commas.

3. in the grid option, it would be nice if you could filter the pictures. Like what if I want to compare winter plumage of bird species. It would be nice to be able to do this in the grid view. 

Who is working on this? Maybe you could contact me, so I can explain my issues better to you?







  

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Wouter,

Guides were build long ago (~2013) as part of a collaboration with
Encyclopedia of Life. The aren't being actively developed.

While the pros of guides has always been any individual can create any
guide they want, the cons have been that they are completely separate
from the core of iNaturalist (sharing, discussing and visualizing
observations). Most aren't actively curated. And our analytics have
shown that guides aren't very popular.

We're currently focused more on the core of the site (sharing,
discussing and visualizing observations) and finding better ways to
visualize these observations to deliver a service akin to a guide. For
example, here's the list of 329 species represented by 1,116 bird
observations from the Netherlands
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=7506&view=species&iconic_taxa=Aves

The downside of this observation-centric approach is that it relies on
leveraging observations (e.g. if there's no observations, there's no
species list) so the approach works best where the iNat community is
most vibrant. But the upside is that iNat itself becomes a
living-breathing community curated guide that is an emergent property
from the observations and IDs themselves.

-Scott

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--
--------------------------------------------------
Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
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[wouter teunissen]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your quick and long answer!

I think it´s a big shame there´s no focus on these guides since the guides is what makes iNaturalist different from other observation platforms.
The http://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=7506&view=species&iconic_taxa=Aves
is not suited for me. You cannot focus on characters or plumages or whatever. There´s only one default picture which often shows a subspecies not present in your area.
In iNaturalist there is the option of adding fields to observations. But these fields are often incomplete or useless.
Although the link does do what I am looking for, it´s not complete and not very intuitive.
E.g. I don´t understand the way the taxa are ordered.

hmmm that´s a shame ... I was just getting interested in iNaturalist

Bye,
Wouter
 

 



Op dinsdag 7 maart 2017 20:56:36 UTC+1 schreef Scott Loarie:

[Charlie Hohn]

you can still use the guides, you just have to be creative with how you split up your species. Maybe have a front end website you link to different groupings.

I once made a huge guide trying to add all the plant species of Vermont and it didn't work that well when that big. So the limit is probably a good thing.

You can add species to a list of your area too, and they will add to the place.

[Colin Meurk]

I'm no expert on guides but there are several guides produced by tony_wills and tangatawhenua on the NZ naturewatch site which seem to cover off some of your needs Wouter.  e.g. http://naturewatch.org.nz/guides/1739   is one for nz shags and cormorants which distinguishes spp on the basis of bill colour and foot colour - and presumably one could add any other features either separately or in combination (pink feet with green ears, pink feet with purple ears etc). then there is the sea anemones one: http://naturewatch.org.nz/guides/1636 which has a greater range (and alternative sets) of discriminating morphological features; or broad taxonomic groups like nz introduced birds: http://naturewatch.org.nz/guides/1323 .  pest spp have been distinguished by nature of introduction and broad kingdom: http://naturewatch.org.nz/guides/1298 ; barnacles by tidal zone and biogeography: http://naturewatch.org.nz/guides/3002 . And they can of course be further sorted alphabetically and information provided on the 'cards'.  so they seem quite versatile if one combines any number of discriminating features. Altho not strictly a dichotomous key, they ultimately rely on the pictures at the final step (and descriptive information on the card) and these can be manually chosen (and I imagine subspecies incorporated too if you wish). altho it is extra work I guess one could construct keys/guides for a bird group separately that focussed on head or feet or body.  maybe you know all this :-)  c

[wouter teunissen]

Yes I found out some more options!
With help of Daniele Seglie.
The guides can do for a great deal what I want to do with it!


Great!



Op woensdag 8 maart 2017 21:02:51 UTC+1 schreef Colin Meurk: