Only 3 weeks to go! What are you watching to prep for the City Nature Challenge?
The most powerful thing about iNaturalist is the community. If you're reading this, that's you! The City Nature Challenge is going to be a time when many, many new people join this virtual community. Not everyone will stick around, and that's perfectly fine, but I want to encourage everyone to think about what you can do to be a welcoming face in this virtual space. And I want you to start practicing.
Remember, iNaturalist isn't magic, it's people! Even the suggestions that come from the computer vision tool would not be possible without millions of identifications made by real people. People like you! We need everyone to do their part to nurture local participation on iNaturalist.
Do you know which users are most active in your favorite park? Do you know who makes the most bird observations in your county? Who is most likely to identify local mushrooms? This is the time to learn!
But how? Go to the observations search and type in your county. All of the counties should be there (cities and parks are less reliably included). Then use the filters to include or exclude organisms of interest. If you want to be able to quickly review many observations, click the little "Identify" button from within the filters box to take you to another view of the same results. There's a short video that explains more about how to use it.
What have you bookmarked? Leave a comment and let us know! I'm personally watching the Identifcation interface for all of the newly added observations from the District of Columbia. At least once a day I go through and add IDs, make encouraging comments, and welcome new users (you can now easily see how many observations a user has).
Can we have at least one person watching each of the 24 counties in the metropolitan area in the lead up to the event?
What else is happening for the City Nature Challenge? We have more than FIFTY events planned in the DC metropolitan area and more than 100 people in our Google Group for coordination. We're having calls every Thursday from 2-3 PM if you want to join.