iSpot background? Can someone give a summary?

[Charlie Hohn]

Hi all,

I've been very confused, and maybe too cranky, about this influx of iSpot people. I have no idea what iSpot is other than it appears to be popular in South Africa and has a reputation system. I have no idea what is going on with it but it sounds like it is getting deleted or for other reasons people aren't using it any more. I have no idea whether inat is formally absorbing iSpot, whether people are just randomly coming here, or whether something else is going on. I've just seen a ton of new people on here requesting (or demanding) new features. I want to be welcoming and not cranky, but unless there's some directive otherwise, I also don't want to start adopting iSpot features without the existing community having more say. Some of them don't seem to me like a good fit on iNat. However, new people is great! Reduced duplication is great! new ideas are great, as long as new people aren't pushing them too hard (and yes sometimes i push ideas too hard too).

So... can someone explain in one place what is going on here?

Thanks, welcome, etc. :) And sorry if I misunderstood what is going on, too.

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Charlie,

www.ispotnature.org is a site somewhat similar to iNaturalist that is
based at the Open University in the UK but has a South African node
(https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/southern-africa) run by
https://www.sanbi.org/

SANBI is considering leaving iSpot. They are also potentially
interesting in starting a South African iNat network node
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/network administered by SANBI
(similar to how the http://www.naturalista.mx/ is administered by
CONABIO) and potentially trying to transfer over some existing data
from iSpot. But none of this has been decided or is formalized. The
two major issues are (1) functionality differences between iNat and
iSpot and whether the SANBI and their community can achieve their
goals using iNat or not / whether iNat will implement any of the
functionality they want (e.g. a system for measuring reputation), and
(2) some cultural differences between iNat and iSpot - I think its
fair to say iSpot is a bit more top down and a bit 'rowdier' in tone
than iNat.

At this point, Tony and the iSpot community are mostly exploring
iNaturalist to get to know the site better, understand the extent of
these issues, whether its suitable for there needs, and potentially
move forward if it seems like a good fit. If its not a good fit, than
no hard feelings. I'm cc'ing Tony Rebelo from SANBI who can correct me
if I got any of that wrong.

In any interactions here on the GoogleGroup or on the site with this
new SANBI community but also more generally as new communities and
individuals join iNaturalist, my personal plea to everyone is to be
welcoming, to try follow our new community guidelines
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/community+guidelines, to give people
the benefit of the doubt, and have a spirit of compromise/finding
common ground. Lets keep this community awesome! Assume people mean
well and that most issues can be attributed to misunderstandings or
unfamiliarity. I've also asked Tony that he encourage the SANBI
community to recognize that iNat strives to be less rowdy than iSpot,
to be respectful towards the established iNaturalist community, and to
follow the community guidelines.

From my perspective, this South African experience is a pretty stark
examples of the costs/benefits of iNaturalist growing to become a
larger, more international site. The benefits are that the site is
reaching more people and cultures and thus generating more data and
having more impact. The costs are that we have to find a way to
maintain what I hope well all agree is an awesome, polite,
knowledgeable and helpful community as things scale. From the staff
side, we're well aware that these community scaling growing pains will
be some of the biggest challenges we will face in the next few years.
We're taking several steps to invest resources, staff time, and
functionality in trying to address these community scaling challenges.
In the meantime, we very much appreciate all the work everyone is
doing keeping iNaturalist awesome, polite, knowledgeable and helpful!

Thanks,

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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[Charlie Hohn]

Thanks Scott!

I think I am bumping against the 'top down' thing here way more than the rowdiness. I mean I'm probably one of the more obnoxiously rowdy (or something similar) inaturalist members and probably shouldn't be as much so. But I probably wouldn't have stayed at iNat very long, much less many years, if it had a top-down emphasis.  If I'm gonna have a boss, I'm gonna wanna get paid. :)  So that's my plea to iSpot i geuss.  You can be as top down as you want in your own network but please don't try to bake that stuff into iNat functionality.

Scaling IS really hard, I know I struggle with it here too, as well as the 'audience'. In terms of user type I suspect I'd be closer to a lot of the iSpotters than some of the most casual iNat users. But... you've heard me expound on my opinions for iNat enough for now :) 

Thanks again for the info and all your hard work.

[Scott Loarie]

Thanks Charlie,

I also wanted to say that we're very grateful to Johnny Wilson
(@johnnybirder) and Jakob Fahr (@jakob) for all their help orienting
and troubleshooting with SANBI community these last few weeks. Johnny
and Jakob are both longtime iNaturalist members who also have a lot of
experience working with the southern Africa conservation community. As
such they've got a good handle on both the iNat and SANBI worlds and
how they intersect and would be good people to help answer other
questions / continue serving as bridges between these communities.

Best,

Scott

On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 10:14 AM, Charlie Hohn

[Erwin Gruber]

Hi Charlie, Scott and all others. 

Surely we all may be happy to welcome naturalists from South Africa and all over the world! But there will be limits and rules to be accepted for all of us using this great platform of iNat.

As the one having been? curator at iSpot acts weird and despotic in my mind, i reacted with meanwhile suspension of this account. Why? I am sure we don't need or want this kind of diction and acting at iNat,e.g. one ex-iSpot user apologized for intentional joke-identification, telling he wants to learn the rules of iNat. As result the suspended user is upset, not regarding the resposibility of the other one. 

I do think this ex-member of iSpot is the exception of the rule, no one needs self-invited "guests" who liked to dictate their own rules. Otherwise they ought better to create a new separate institution.

However, the diction and way of acting of the suspended person is most suspective to me, so this is my sign to calm down and prove for diligent reaction.

[Paul Bailey]

 Scott Loarie wrote:

I've also asked Tony that he encourage the SANBI community to recognize that iNat strives to be less rowdy than iSpot, to be respectful towards the established iNaturalist community, and to follow the community guidelines.

I'm looking forward to this, as, quite frankly I've been rather off-put by the tone used by some of the iSpot users who have posted here.

As an example, I'm not sure that, as a new user to a site, I would make a feature request by using elongated spelling (Pleeeeeeeeeeeeez), bolded text, multiple exclamation marks (!!!!!), and words spelled in all caps, let alone all of that within two short sentences. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/inaturalist/UkSmQjEoU2A

Also got a vibe of 'iNaturalist is nice but you should improve it by making it more like iSpot' from a few comments as well. I understand bringing up issues that could be improved or suggesting ideas that you've seen work elsewhere but at the same time, shouldn't migrating to another site mean accepting that things are done differently and realizing that you may need to adapt rather than forcing your old habits and preferences on users who have already been using the site for years?

[Calebcam]

I agree, iSpot users have been a little rowdy. Hopefully this all cools down after the SANBI network is made?

Caleb