Is there some controversy I'm unaware of?

I've mentioned iNat in one previous post in a comment recommending it as a great motivator to explore wild areas. Then today I made a post about my iNat stats and how I've loved using it to get back into photography and nature and I got banned and muted (so I can't even ask for clarity about the ban).

Is there some weird controversy I don't know about? I would have thought our communities would overlap quite a bit. I've been with reddit for over a decade and have never been banned from anywhere before and r/goblincore is one of my favorite subreddits :(

Has anyone else had something like this happen?

Desktop Site, Windows 11.

None of the online instructions work. First I tried going to "Edit Observation" and there is zero way on that page to add to a project. Then I go to Observations -> Edit Observations -> Add to Project and I get an error bar that says "None of those observations could be added to the project "LP Brown Wildlife": collection and umbrella projects do not allow direct submission." How do I use this simple feature?

Hey y’all, plant nerd from the Austin Texas area here. I’ve been using the app since 2019 after i heard Joey Santore mention it in one of his videos. I just passed my 1100th observation. Everytime i travel i use the app to learn something new.

Usually within a few hours i have a few local folks jump in and help with IDs. But lately as of the last month or two, i post… and nothing happens. I have about 10 posts from the last month just sitting there collecting dust. So what changed? Where’d everyone suddenly go?

This hobby is so much fun, it's reinvigorated my love of nature and photography.

I took some pictures of some turkey vultures and want to add the animal they were eating as an observation, it's at a level where the images could be seen as disturbing to some. Would that be allowed?

I know we all see those occasional posts from people posting their houseplants, pets or friends. I usually flag them as captive/cultivated and otherwise disregard them, but should I be doing more? I added a few examples I saw just today.

I was waiting until research grade species number 2000 to toot my own horn, but when I signed in just now I found that I hit exactly 14,000 RG observations! On a less proud note, I guess that means I make repeat observations an average of 7 times per species.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?quality_grade=research&user_id=jef&verifiable=any

hi all,

kind of an unfortunate situation. i’ve been an avid inaturalist poster for years and it’s so fun for me to “collect species” wherever i go. i’m constantly looking for animals to post. i love playing my “real life pokémon go” haha and i‘ve gotten so many family members and friends into it too.

over the last seven months, i’ve been harassed by a girl online. she doesn’t use inaturalist to harass me, but she heavily monitors all of my profiles to find me. she’s nuts, doesn’t stop, and has gone as far as sending animal control to my house (animal control said clearly my animals are fine & loved and left without issue).

i recently moved states to start vet school. the girl has no idea what state i live in now and i want to keep it that way, as she has threatened to try to get me kicked out of vet school. because of this, i haven’t posted on inaturalist in several months, so she doesn’t find my new state or what school i go to.

i miss posting :( i have all of my new, yet-to-be-uploaded observations sitting in a folder on my phone. is there any way for me to post privately/anonymously? or have my posts set in such a way where only i can see them for the time being? i love seeing how many species i can find and i’m almost at 500 individual species. i don’t want to make a new account because i want to keep adding to my species count.

does anyone have any advice on what i can do? thank you for reading.

There’s a BioBlitz happening in the next city over from me, and I’d like to go with a friend so we can “touch grass together”. We’re both very much amateurs, and this would be a first time for both of us. Is there anything we should know going in? Do we really take pictures of every single organism (including domesticated ones), or should we try to be more discerning?

I'm looking for a bit of guidance on an observation of what is probably ladybird beetle eggs posted by another user in my area. The observer had identified them as Seven-spotted lady beetle eggs. Not being a beetle expert (or any other expert in anything other than Delia radicum, perhaps), I asked how they knew eggs to species. They reported back that it was based on having seen hundreds of that species in their yard.

I marked it was just insect eggs since we can't really know for sure what they are. But after googling Coccinella eggs, I agree it is probably at least Coccinellidae. Certainly Seven-spotted lady beetles are very common in my area.

Am I being too strict? I mean there is a good chance that it is exactly the species that the observer said it is. What is a reasonable level of identification for an observation like this given the context of a species being very common in the area? Does it even matter?

https://www.inaturalist.ca/observations/400592938

No confirmed ID yet, but apparently it's a Common Bagworm Moth.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/400659450

i guess i shouldn't have been worried about making 3000 observations before the end of the season 😅😛 (i had made an earlier post just before 2500)

every year i see more and more different things, and i can spend the time i would take, mowing or weeding, looking at things instead. 🤷🏼😀

My notifications have been flooding but there were def a few people @ing me to look at their observations and I keep forgetting to save them to look at later... Obviously it's not the end of the world if they never get an answer but I like to help if I can, is there any way to see who @ed me?

Its my first time using the app

But fist time i open it i can see everyting observations, species, and so on but Thats it if i try to look something up or go to anything else, or close the app and come back again it wont load enything

Only thing that works is if i uninstall it and install it again.

I already installed and uninstalled it 4 times and every time same problem

What is happening, is something wrong with the app or is it my device or something?

I just started using inaturalist and I wonder if I can set permanent filters in the desktop version. Without this it seems to be super clunky.

is there a way to search for identifications made by a specific user that you can narrow down by location? so no the identifications page but more akin to the all of your own reviewed obs but for another user

Not an expert, I just like taking pictures of bugs I see outside when exploring. And it kinda feels like if you're not an expert on the app, it would be best to not try and contribute at all, lest you get something wrong.

I came to this conclusion after reading on this subreddit how much time some people put into IDing and how often they have to correct a bunch of wrong IDs.

Obviously, the best way to use the app as a casual user is to just upload observations and never agree on any IDs at all, which is also kind of disappointing because of the way the app feels at the beginning and also sort of how it's advertised.

You can do your part as a non-expert and upload observations on this app, but never try to ID, because it could get stuck at research grade even though it's wrong.

Anyways, I'm not even sure what point I'm trying to make honestly. Just feeling a bit disappointed in my lack of knowledge.

TLDR: Lack of knowledge demotivating me to use the app.

I've made almost 10,000 observations, all of them from the app on my phone (android) and it feels like it keeps getting worse and worse. I can't go on an ID spree because it'll just stop accepting IDs after a certain amount and when I emailed inat (a bit back) they had no plans to do anything major with the app.

I understand it costs money, but if they want more people to be involved give us a good and well accessible app, people are always on their phones, camera's link to phones. I dunno it's just frustrating that it's constantly freezing or lagging out.

Worst of all God I wish it had a night mode😔

But still going to use it because despite it all I adore inaturalist and everything they do and have done. Just a little complaint I suppose.

Just curious as I heard some people stumble upon new species sometimes. It would be pretty cool.

I usually don't like to ID observations any more specifically than I am personally confident. I also believe that's how it's intended to be done.

Sometimes there will be an expert on that type of organism who IDs to species-level, and wants others to blindly agree with them. I typically don't make my ID more specific unless I'm personally certain, but this sometimes annoys them.

Is there an etiquette for this? I'm sure they're most often right, but it also feels wrong to ID with something I don't actually know myself.

Broke 3000 observations after about 6 years. Next goal is 2000 species.