NYC Inaturalist
New York City is a hotbed of iNaturalist activity. We are coming up on our 1 millionth observation, with 35,660 observers taking part. But it's clear that most people are very casual users, and the great bulk of the observations are from a few people.
@susanhewitt alone is responsible for 9.5% of all New York City observations.
She and the next nine observers — @danielatha @nycnatureobserver @zitserm @elharo @spritelink @matthew_wills @xris @irag @elizajsyh — account for 26% of all NYC observations.
The top 88 observers account for 50% of all observations in NYC, so the other 50% of posts are from 35,572 other observers. Similarly, a full two-thirds of NYC observations are by just the top 452 people, meaning that the remaining 35,208 people who have uploaded something to this website account for just 1/3 of all observations — an average of just 9 observations per person. Nine!
I think this is because iNaturalist is still sort of hard to use. It's easy to make an observation. But it's hard to edit and it's hard to learn how to really take part in the community. There are a few ways to solve this. The usual Silicon Valley way is by gamifying and simplifying the app. And sure, the user interface could use a little love. But the best way to do it would be for us to talk to one another. Something I really appreciate about iNat users is that when we see one another on the street, taking photos of leaves or insects, we often converse. This is good! I would just suggest that next time you're talking with someone, maybe ask if they understand the app or if they have any questions. They probably do.
