Announcing Changes to Projects on iNaturalist 2018-04-13

We’ve introduced some new functionality for projects on iNaturalist! One of the most-requested features related to projects is the ability to *automatically* include all observations in a particular place or taxon across all time and in a continuously updating manner. Unfortunately, associating observations with projects has been a computationally expensive process, so we have limited “the aggregator” to a small subset of trusted projects, or to time-bound bioblitz projects, to protect site performance.  Another common request is the ability to associate two or more projects together under an umbrella, such as all of the projects associated with a single organization.

Starting next week, users can create two new types of projects using automatic collection and umbrella projects. Here’s what the page will generally look like when you go to create a new project:

We can convert many existing projects to the new ‘collection’ project type, providing that its parameters match those on Observations Search, such as taxa, places, dates, and users. We are not able to convert projects that have a “Must be on list” rule. Existing projects that meet the criteria above can be converted to the new ‘collection’ project type by project administrators when you go to edit your project.

Existing projects (let’s call them traditional) came in several flavors.  Most (82%) are ‘regular’ with a significant minority (12%) as ‘bioblitz’. A tiny fraction (<4%) were some experimental project types that never really worked well.

The vast majority of projects are created for one of these purposes:

1. Run a BioBlitz (i.e. collect all observations within space and time boundaries).


2. Collect interesting observations which couldn’t otherwise be found using Observations Search (e.g. Amazing Aberrants, Observation of the Day).


3. Gain access to true locations of obscured/private observations and/or filter observations identified by project curators.


4. Collect additional data using observation fields.


5. Create a repository of all observations for a place and/or taxon that can be branded, shared, and used for outreach (e.g. to encourage participation in a park or observations of specific taxa).


6. For educators to assemble observations made by students.

The status quo for projects has been especially difficult for the last two purposes. The limits on the aggregator have been frustrating for people who want all observations from a given place and/or taxon continuously updated. As a result, project owners, managers, and/or curators have had to manually add observations or rely on users to add their observations themselves. Educators have had to rely on students adding their observations to a specific project, which is laborious for the students and/or the educators. New ‘collection’ projects should be an improvement for both of these purposes because you can use standard search parameters to automatically include observations by date added or observed, place, or user (and more).

For example, a professor could add the usernames of all of her students to a project that will automatically capture all observations made and added to iNaturalist during the semester. Then all student observations from the entire semester will be easily visible for her review, enabling her to ensure that the observations are appropriate and identified.

These changes were made in advance of the upcoming City Nature Challenge (organized by the citizen science teams at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences), which is a perfect use case for an umbrella project. Sixty-four different metropolitan areas around the world will submit observations to iNaturalist made during April 27-30. The umbrella project allows you to easily compare the numbers of observations, species, and participants across several projects at once. For an immediate sense of what it will look like since the event has not started yet, we also created an umbrella project for last year’s City Nature Challenge.

In the near future we plan to include the ability to use observation annotations as additional project parameters, e.g. to only pull in observations from a particular insect life stage. We plan to combine this feature with improvements to the observation search filters tool.

As with any new features, there are always trade offs, and we know that these new projects will not work for all projects and needs.  Here are some major differences with new, collection projects (compared to traditional projects):

• Collection projects do not provide access to private and obscured coordinates for project admins.


• No links on individual observations to the collection projects in which they are included.


• No ability to associate additional observation fields with collection projects (fields can still be added to individual observations).

Once we open the new project creation tool, everyone who goes to create a project will be offered a choice between creating a ‘collection’ or ‘umbrella’ style project. If you want to create a traditional project because you need one of the features lacking in the new collection projects, there will be a link to the old project creation page. The aggregator will also be disabled for new ‘traditional’ projects. Eventually we hope to phase out the creation of new ‘traditional’ projects, but we are aware that the aforementioned needs must be addressed (especially access to private and obscured coordinates). We are exploring other approaches to those needs.

The iNaturalist staff have created (or converted from existing) a few projects for you to explore. Please let us know if you encounter any problems with these as we prepare to fully release the functionality.

Examples:

City Nature Challenge 2018 (umbrella with 64 projects)

City Nature Challenge 2017 (umbrella with 16 projects)

Southwest Texas iNat-a-thon (collection with 23 users over 4 days)

Below you can see the design of the project creation page for new ‘collection’ projects (note: the text below will be updated for consistency with the descriptions above).

Posted on August 24, 2020 08:40 AM by hannahsun99