13 ms·

Why I left iNaturalist

271 points by erutuon 8mo ago

gyomu 8mo ago
> They insisted the app needed to be simpler, to cater first to incidental users who wanted a quick answer, to be a friction-less path to a feeling of contribution. I don’t believe that’s possible while also serving existing users who value (don’t laugh) the power and nuance of iNat, including, among many other things, the way it doesn’t give you a quick answer, forcing you to consider options when making an identification. [...] > iNaturalist the product is fundamentally complicated, and I have watched many, many people bounce off that wall of complexity over the years, even as I’ve seen so many people enrich their lives after they climb over it. Oof, as someone working on consumer facing creative software, I feel that. There is some sort of higher calling to making tools that truly teach things to people, augments their mental models and knowledge of the world, taps into their curiosity and creativity - but demands some sort of effort in return. All those aspirations are kind of "dirty words", as they go against the currently accepted playbook of software that's as "frictionless" and "intuitive" as possible - the goal being a viral product with the potential to gather 10 million users overnight, which requires superficial, immediate results, and not really asking anything from your users unless it fits in a single screen/single tap flow. Especially relevant in the current context of generative AI, where I've heard some argue that actually expecting people to build skill or knowledge is akin to discrimination, and anyone should be able to generate a novel without knowing how to write, a song without knowing how to compose, a painting without knowing how to draw.
- japhyr 8mo ago
  Like so many others, I've gotten into birding in the last few years. I've known so many people who choose eBird over iNaturalist because it's "easier to use". But that's exactly why I don't really enjoy eBird. So many people are just running Merlin, and dumping whatever it picks up to eBird. There are way fewer observations on iNaturalist, but I know how much to trust every one of them.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- shermantanktop 8mo ago
  I have a hand in some complex e-commerce flows and it’s really difficult. Similar to selecting a cell phone plan, a cable package, or a car trim level with options, but in a different space. We have all sorts of information that consumers could use to understand what combination of products will give them only the features they want and maximize the discounts. The complexity comes mostly from third-party terms. But putting even 20% of that information in one screen is just a horrible UX. And guiding them creates rigid journeys that they can’t break out from. This, despite some great UX design talent. It’s just a really hard problem. Nobody wants users to have to learn all this crap, but protecting them from it means the optimal thing happens only if people choose exactly the right path.
teruakohatu 8mo ago
iNaturalist ranks right up there with Wikipedia in importance. It is more than one organisation, but rather a central org + a network of regional organisations. The regional organisation provides a lot of biological technical expertise. Citizen scientists alone would not be able to correctly handle the complex taxonomic issues you have in biology… or even basic identification in many cases. Where the organisation(s) sometimes go awry, in my personal opinion, is forgetting they are the custodian of citizen science data, not the source of it.
- tptacek 8mo ago
  Having never used iNaturalist, but as someone who believes that Wikipedia might be one of the most important knowledge resources created in the last 100 years, I'd love to hear more about why you think this.
  - turtle_ 8mo ago
    It’s a living biodiversity record. That kind of data has had an impact on things like: understanding human impact on the macro environment, ID new species, provide scientists with more accurate population distributions etc. Perhaps controversial, but the data has also been critical to computer science, specifically computer vision and AI algorithms. eg what’s the bird in this picture?
  - chneu 8mo ago
    I use it a lot. My ex is a biologist and they use it a ton. It's a massive dataset. There's nothing quite like it. The way people collaborate and verify information on iNat is invaluable. The best thing about iNat is the passionate people on there. If you don't know an ID, just post it and within a day someone will correct it. It's crazy. Download Seek and go try it out. Make sure to sign up for iNat and connect your seek to iNat so you can contribute.
    - kulahan 8mo ago
      Why do you recommend Seek? I’ve been using the iNat app (though since it was released, they’ve been asking me to upgrade to the newer app) and it seems fine. Take a picture or upload an existing one, get recommendations for ID, then upload to the community for further consensus!
contingencies 8mo ago
If you don’t like the way your data is used to train AI models, you can’t currently move your data to a non-AI service while still contributing to and using iNat data, even if such a service existed. But you should be able to do that. 100x yes! I was disgusted to learn that while the very non-profit status iNaturalist enjoys demands that they share their output, the organization thinks keeping its models secret is legitimate. https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI No, it isn't. I am a big contributor to iNaturalist and will be sharing my concerns at the next local meeting. I tried to raise the question through the forums and was censored. Frankly, it seems to me that iNaturalist is to open science as Android is to open source. That is to say in name only, not in spirit, because "legalese" and "market position" and "lack of enforcement". Not surprised to learn Google's money is assisting with corrupting them. If you contribute to iNaturalist, COMPLAIN. If you want to start a class action, count me in.
- turtle_ 8mo ago
  Do you have a copy of what you posted that was censored? I assume you mean censored on the iNat forum.
  - contingencies 8mo ago
    Yes, I do. ~Sept 2025. Subject: iNaturalist must commit to being open Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other: All URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant: https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI Description of need: iNaturalist makes a subset of its machine learning models publicly available while keeping full species classification models private due to “intellectual property considerations and organizational policy”. The community contribute far too much time, data, expertise and money to tolerate this, which opens questions about fundamental compatibility with science. Feature request details: iNaturalist should: Remove non-open data; and Commit to fully open output…within a fixed period of time, in order to maintain community support. Response was "Hi, this seems to be a general appeal to iNaturalist staff rather than a specific feature on the website or app that would be developed, so I’ve copied the text of your request here, where they can see it." No response was received, so I responded to the thread as follows. Disappointed to be effectively censored and then receive literally zero response to this after three calendar weeks. With regards to the US status of iNaturalist: Scientific 501(c)(3) Nonprofits are organized primarily to conduct scientific research in the public interest. Their research must benefit the general public, not specific individuals or commercial enterprises. IMHO it’s very hard to argue that something is in the public interest if the public can’t see it, hold it, analyze it, criticize it, and replicate it: particularly in the field of science where we have a replication crisis. If it’s a black-box service, it’s not science. If it’s replicable and open, thus provable, it’s science. iNaturalist should commit to fully open output…within a fixed period of time, in order to maintain community support. Otherwise, it risks community pushback on its consume-but-dont-give model, which is being sheltered under a false heading of “science”. No response was received. Then sent a final follow-up. Please be advised due to the lack of response I will be forced to publish my concerns in conventional botanical media. To date, no response has been received. I am looking at that option for this year.
awakeasleep 8mo ago
Is this why Seek has been broken for the past 8 months
- chneu 8mo ago
  It works fine for me on my pixel 10. It worked like garbage on my Samsung Galaxy devices.
- cowsandmilk 8mo ago
  Works fine on my iPhone…
culi 8mo ago
> Toward the end of our time at CAS we experimented with sociocracy as a way to organize without hierarchy and coercion, but despite my enthusiasm for the form, we didn’t start with universal buy-in or understanding from the whole team, we didn’t fully adopt its structures, and, like many democracies before us, we ultimately voted to abolish our own democracy when we formed the “leadership circle” and created a hierarchy. I'm convinced that "what works" when it comes to self-organization is almost always a function of how involved/educated the participants are about the principles. Every time someone on HN complains about agile the typical response is that "they weren't doing agile correctly". And honestly I believe it. I just extend this to most forms of self-organization. To be clear, I definitely do believe that certain structures are more effective than others for a given goal but I also believe that often the biggest factor in success is the buy-in and investment the members have. I even extend this (admittedly, somewhat reductive) analysis to debates between OOP vs functional codebase structures. If everyone is well versed in "proper" OOP or "proper" functional software design both strategies can be effective. If everyone is sociocracy fanatic then that can certainly work effectively. Because it's not as much about the superstructure as it is about proficiency.
- consp 8mo ago
  > Every time someone on HN complains about agile the typical response is that "they weren't doing agile correctly". No true Scotsman would ever ...
  - bonesss 8mo ago
    The agile methodologies are built around adaptive and corrective iterations of work. If an org is not adapting process, if they are not correcting process issues, they are by definition ‘not doing it right’ because they are fundamentally doing something else. Agile can/should/must (d)evolve into waterfall in all but name if that’s the local optimum. The agile methodologies response to problems is to solve those issues through frequent iterative localized change. Failing to apply a methodology isn’t a methodological failure, per se. Business process mislabelling and misdirected frustration about lacking management are not examples of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Frenchmen are not Scotsmen. Not False Scotsmen nor True Scotsmen. They have a different name for a reason. No matter how many tourists confuse the flags or culture, by definition they are separate and distinct. France and Scotland are literally on different pages in the books. It is no coincidence there is a ‘typical response’ around this that has not changed for decades. Typical responses are the MBA version of RTFM.
WoodenChair 8mo ago
Business books sometimes get a bad rap on here, but I never read an essay where I more thought "wow this guy really needs to read some basic business books." Even though it was a non-profit, there is so much wisdom in them about management and leadership that was clearly lacking throughout his experience. It's too late now. But maybe if he understood some of the reasons back when they were starting the app why organizations are structured the way they typically are, he wouldn't have experimented with so many poor (and ultimately failed) governance structures. It seems like he was looking at his organization through a social lens (democracy, everyone should have a say) from a governance perspective but having it focused through a product lens (the app). That just doesn't mesh well. Social organizations typically have social missions, not products. When the two mix it doesn't always go well (see Mozilla). He also explicitly gave up his leadership position and then later wanted a say in management's direction. Ultimately, he sounds like a caring, nice guy, who was more interested in "having everyone heard" than learning some management skills. What happened later after he dropped out of the leadership circle is just a product of that and I imagine significant bad blood between him and those who remained.
- rPlayer6554 8mo ago
  Could you recommend any book in particular?
  - WoodenChair 8mo ago
    One that would've helped is "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days" which is a collection of interviews with startup founders by Jessica Livingston. Even though this was a non-profit it effectively sounds like it was a tech startup (he was building an app that was based on, at the time (late 2000s), cutting edge machine learning technology). I think by hearing other founders' stories building other tech products, he would've learned about how they structured their organizations and led their teams. I liked the book personally, but the interviews will be hit or miss depending on the participant. Here's the book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3N47TG3 https://amzn.to/3N47TG3 Here's a podcast summary of it: https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/1127af729a0d4aec/founders-at-work https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/1127af729a0d4aec/foun... But frankly even just a basic textbook or video course on leadership/management would've helped or something like High Output Management by Andy Grove (Amazon https://amzn.to/3NCAZME https://amzn.to/3NCAZME, podcast summary https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/095f226633d34496/high-output-management https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/095f226633d34496/high...). In terms of dealing with all of the personal conflict between team members, Radical Candor may have helped (Amazon https://amzn.to/4qNa7bf https://amzn.to/4qNa7bf, podcast summary https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/938d044a/radical-candor https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/938d044a/radical-cand...).
lovich 8mo ago
> Toward the end of our time at CAS we experimented with sociocracy as a way to organize without hierarchy and coercion, but despite my enthusiasm for the form, we didn’t start with universal buy-in or understanding from the whole team, we didn’t fully adopt its structures, and, like many democracies before us, we ultimately voted to abolish our own democracy when we formed the “leadership circle” and created a hierarchy. Is he referencing a bunch of democracies I haven’t heard of or is this the kind of guy whose so far anarchist he thinks that republics and dictatorships are equivalent if not equal? I tried to steel man this and looked up historical records on any democracy voting in a new, non democratic system and the closest I get is(not intending to Godwin’s law this) examples like the Nazi party being voted in and then taking authoritarian control. You could make that argument if you squint your eyes a little or hold a high bar to the electorate, but I feel like I’m missing a reference with the way he said it.
- n8agrin 8mo ago
  Sociocracy is a theory of governance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy
  - lovich 8mo ago
    I’m mildly familiar with the idea, but I was referencing this subset of the quoted sentence > … and, like many democracies before us, we ultimately voted to abolish our own democracy … The ellipses are intentional, if the fragments of the sentence before or after change how to interpret this, please let me know
    - mapmeld 8mo ago
      The US example that I would give would be the Articles of Confederation being turned over and replaced with our Constitution. In the article I read this to mean: they designed a power structure thinking it should be fully open and flat, like a company where everyone can do everything on GitHub. But once they had run the project for some time, they acknowledged that the decisions were flowing through the three people.
rurp 8mo ago
This was a disappointing read for several reasons. The product/management/PR issues are very relatable. The community good of a database like iNaturalist is incredibly valuable, both now and for untold uses in the future. I've read interesting research that made use of that data and have personally found the range maps produced by it interesting. As a user I will be very sad if they kill off Seek. I'm somewhere between a casual and a power user. I don't work in a field that would use iNaturalist but am a pretty dedicated amateur when it comes to identifying plants and animal signs, and have a stack of well worn books for such. I tried getting into the iNaturalist app several times and it just never stuck. But a couple years ago I tried Seek and it has been great! It's not perfect, but it works quite well and at a minimum gives you a starting place to confirm or reject an ID.
kulahan 8mo ago
I love iNat, and I think it has a lot of real-world value. Others seem to have a better understanding than me, but from a purely anecdotal perspective, there was a huge prairie dog colony encroaching on housing. For years, nobody did anything about it. I documented it on iNat (for fun), and within a month they were relocated safely. How cool!
thethethethe 8mo ago
> iNat’s current Leadership does not share this belief. To them, Seek is an off-brand liability that they don’t intend to improve. They think iNaturalist the product can serve those Seek users while also serving existing core iNat contributors to the detriment of neither. I am a big iNaturalist user and I think the seek/iNat is confusing and a missed opportunity. Seek feels very much like a feature of iNat that is its own app for some reason. They could just make the seek app the iNat landing page and call it a day. I'm not sure how this makes the iNat app worse than it already is. I already find it a chore to use for making observations and finding out about what's around me. It's too clunky to make observations in the app itself, so I always do it after I am out of the field anyway. Imo they should make mobile app more focused on consuming and visualizing data rather than posting observations. Seek does this for accessing identification data but I think they have a big opportunity to do similar things for seeing whats around you, identifying other's observations, and viewing trends in your own observations. inat also has terrible performance, with slow loading photos and thumbnails. I would probably spend 10x more time on the app and make 50x more indemnifications than I do now if photos loaded faster.
- cowsandmilk 8mo ago
  You hit the nail on the head. The separate “power user” interface is the web app on a desktop.
emptybits 8mo ago
Enthusiastic Seek-using family here. It works so well for our very simple needs that I admit to never fully looking into iNaturalist's use of data or my ability to export or move my observations elsewhere. I've always fed our observations from Seek into iNaturalist since I though it was the "right" thing to do. Now I'm questioning it. So thank you, Ueda, for sharing this writeup that's clearly from the heart and for continuing to work on things like this: https://github.com/kueda/chuck https://github.com/kueda/chuck
- gilrain 8mo ago
  > I've always fed our observations from Seek into iNaturalist since I though it was the "right" thing to do. Now I'm questioning it. Why? The author explicitly encourages people to keep using and contributing to iNaturalist, both data and donations. What did you read that made you disagree with them?
  - emptybits 8mo ago
    Yes, he does. And I will. But he also suggests that users organize and that cessation of data or money or "withdrawing your data would be a reasonable form of protest".
- jyoung789 8mo ago
  Ultimately, if your interest is in contributing to scientific biodiversity data collections, I really feel inatuslist is the best tool for the average person to do this. Similarly to programs like eBird[0] or bumble bee watch [1] (both of which are taxa specific), inatuslist contributes its data to GBIF[2]. This is a large database including records from all over the world,and is made up of both modern digital observations (like those from inat), historical observations like those kept in herbariums, as well as independently published records from smaller organised research efforts. I work as in academia and do a fair amount of spacial modeling in relation to biodiversity data, and the data from iNaturalist as published in GBIF is essentially the best coverage I can find if we are talking about large geographies. I also do my own field work, tracking specific study sites and iNaturalist is a fantastic tool for generating species lists. Within about an hour, usually while also carrying out some other field task, me and my team of technicians can capture the wide majority of plant species at a given site, all with location data, time stamps, and usually high quality photos that allow me to verify the computer vision IDs. Then back in my office, I can open up iNaturlaist online, and look through all the data, as well as download it in a consistent format. I’ve also worked out methods that allow me to do something similar (albeit more focused) for bees. Seek offers essentially all the same value to researchers while also streamlining the experience for users. You are able to get a quick answer, and I still get the biodiversity data generated by you, without the clunkiness that comes from the inat app(s). Beyond scientific data, as someone who is principally a botanist, I find the accuracy of iNaturalist to be far better than things like pictureThis. So even in these cases, I still think it’s worth while for the casual user to stick with seek if you’re looking to identify mainly stationary life forms or record them for your own use. ___ [0] https://ebird.org/home https://ebird.org/home [1] https://www.bumblebeewatch.org/ https://www.bumblebeewatch.org/ [2] https://www.gbif.org/ https://www.gbif.org/
bawolff 8mo ago
> Toward the end of our time at CAS we experimented with sociocracy as a way to organize without hierarchy and coercion, but despite my enthusiasm for the form, we didn’t start with universal buy-in or understanding from the whole team So they wanted to organize without hierarchy or coercion, but their plan depended on everyone agreeing on everything? It just feels kind of silly. The hard part of organization is that not everyone will agree on everything. Its what you do when that happens that is the question and how you resolve disputes fairly. If your starting point is that there won't be any disputes, then you have already lost. Quite frankly i think the biggest problem is that the author of this piece is frustrated he wasn't able to coerce people to his point of view.
donbreo 8mo ago
Linus tech tips did something smart. He made himself the "Chief vision officer." That way he has complete control over the direction the company is going in without the hassle of CEO duties and he can focus on what matters to make his vision possible. Kudos to that guy for actually hiring his ex-boss as his new CEO :D
alexwrboulter 8mo ago
Seek is great for more casual users, but also having that ML classification option inside iNat is useful for users like myself who fall somewhere in the middle between casual and enthusiast. I actively want to contribute observations but am often doing it while out doing other things and don't always have the time to agonise over the ID, so the ML classification is great for me, plus, because it's so accurate, it avoids that unfortunately common scenario where you upload an observation with an ID you're not entirely confident in, hoping another user will step in and correct it if necessary, but then it never gets that second input and you're left wondering why you bothered.
MORPHOICES 8mo ago
[dead]
crystaln 8mo ago
I am not inclined to read this longwinded post. Anyone who writes a headline like this is not worthy of it's subject, and the popular comments would tend to agree. I'm sure the author is well intentioned and filled with integrity, however trashing a thing you created because you feel dejected is inherently self-interested and unworthy of attention.
- gilrain 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- bmackenty 8mo ago
  how would you know the author trashed something if you didn't read the article? Maybe if we made a tik-tok for you, it would be easier to understand?
ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
> Up to this point, iNat functioned as an unstructured anarchy. Scott and I were titular “co-directors” but we did not provide a lot of direction and most of the big moves and features were driven largely by individual initiative. While I love that anarchists and sociocrats exist, I would say from personal experience (admittedly, over 30 years ago when I was a student) that every single "anarchist collective shared living space" will get to a point where someone (even me, even if I'm attempting to be chill about everything) will grab someone by the shirt front, haul them to their feet, and threaten to knock seven shades of shit out of them if they don't take their turn of washing the dishes. Any successful business has a lot of dishes to wash.
tkuhn 8mo ago
> Those of us who benefit from tools like iNat should be looking seriously to the decentralized models being developed by the likes of Bluesky and Mastodon, because we can’t rely on any single organization to provide that benefit forever. Makes perfect sense to me, and I would like to point you to the technology and ecosystem of "nanopublications": https://nanopub.net/ https://nanopub.net/ In a nutshell, nanopublications provide a decentralized infrastructure like Mastodon, but with focus on redundantly storing open data rather than on user ownership of personal data. Moreover nanopublications are basically snippets of knowledge graphs, so they resemble database entries and can be queried as such. Happy to elaborate if this is of interest.
tonyhart7 8mo ago
I check the apps and feels very old
khernandezrt 8mo ago
The ongoing push by app developers to "simplify" everything is frustrating because it often makes tasks more cumbersome for experienced inclined users who want finer control or more advanced options. I specifically had this frustration when migrating from the original iNaturalist app to the new one. I actually use it less now because of how annoying and "simple" it is.
neon_me 8mo ago
I empathize deeply as I was a few times in a similarly complicated situation. I know, posts like this arent about seeking "feedback" but simply releasing pressure, and thats 100% valid. That said, one thing I learned from my own experience was to stop pointing fingers (build up badblood and seeking conflicts) and instead focus on the hard lessons about my own mistakes(learning!). I wish you the best in your next chapter. The path to becoming a good manager/colleague is never ending and demanding and its evident you want to be one ... Goodluck!
wt__ 8mo ago
Although I don't use iNaturalist that often (because I don't want the hassle of photographing the species I definitely know) I'm always conscious of the fact it has a relatively modern stack (Rails and PostgresSQL) whereas iRecord is still limping along on Drupal (very sub-optimal DB schema and quite a few front-end annoyances due to module limitations).
philipallstar 8mo ago
> Up to this point, iNat functioned as an unstructured anarchy. Scott and I were titular “co-directors” but we did not provide a lot of direction and most of the big moves and features were driven largely by individual initiative. We never found a great way to collaborate. This is extremely unlikely to work. We have structures and hierarchies for a reason. They aren't perfect, but they aren't pointless. It feels like when CHAZ/CHOP appeared and there were multiple child killings, but because it was based on (purported) far left principles it was sort of...fine? At least in the media.
rjdj377dhabsn 8mo ago
I just tried their Seek app with some pictures of tree leaves nearby and it failed to identify all of them. Some pictures even caused it to crash. Google Lens correctly identifies 1/3 of them and PictureThis 2/3.
kayo_20211030 8mo ago
I read the piece. Who exactly, or what, is "Leadership" in this piece? (Always capitalized). A board? Upper-management? Other management? It's hard to understand it in full when "Leadership" seems to be reduced to an unnamed player - an anonymous villain.
- culi 8mo ago
  Probably done to minimize the amount of bridges burned by avoiding names. I think leadership generally refers to the Executive Director and Heads of Product, Engagement, Development
mistersquid 8mo ago
From Ken-ichi Ueda's remarks in the OP, after graduating from Berkeley he moved into a role that resembled the loosely-structured organizational patterns of an undergraduate team collaborating on a term project. Of course, such a gloss oversimplifies the complexities of the relationships and outcomes of people working together in what would become a non-profit, but even tone of the OP seems characteristic of someone still in the mindset of high-achieving baccalaureate: laissez-faire governance, aversion to hierarchy, prioritization of intellectual freedom, etc, none of which are bad or good in and of themselves. Anyhow, Ueda's 2024 commencement address (especially the opening) bears markers of just such a mindset. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AECD7qfFAV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AECD7qfFAV0

271 points by erutuon 8mo ago

gyomu 8mo ago

> They insisted the app needed to be simpler, to cater first to incidental users who wanted a quick answer, to be a friction-less path to a feeling of contribution. I don’t believe that’s possible while also serving existing users who value (don’t laugh) the power and nuance of iNat, including, among many other things, the way it doesn’t give you a quick answer, forcing you to consider options when making an identification. [...] > iNaturalist the product is fundamentally complicated, and I have watched many, many people bounce off that wall of complexity over the years, even as I’ve seen so many people enrich their lives after they climb over it. Oof, as someone working on consumer facing creative software, I feel that. There is some sort of higher calling to making tools that truly teach things to people, augments their mental models and knowledge of the world, taps into their curiosity and creativity - but demands some sort of effort in return. All those aspirations are kind of "dirty words", as they go against the currently accepted playbook of software that's as "frictionless" and "intuitive" as possible - the goal being a viral product with the potential to gather 10 million users overnight, which requires superficial, immediate results, and not really asking anything from your users unless it fits in a single screen/single tap flow. Especially relevant in the current context of generative AI, where I've heard some argue that actually expecting people to build skill or knowledge is akin to discrimination, and anyone should be able to generate a novel without knowing how to write, a song without knowing how to compose, a painting without knowing how to draw.

japhyr 8mo ago
Like so many others, I've gotten into birding in the last few years. I've known so many people who choose eBird over iNaturalist because it's "easier to use". But that's exactly why I don't really enjoy eBird. So many people are just running Merlin, and dumping whatever it picks up to eBird. There are way fewer observations on iNaturalist, but I know how much to trust every one of them.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
shermantanktop 8mo ago
I have a hand in some complex e-commerce flows and it’s really difficult. Similar to selecting a cell phone plan, a cable package, or a car trim level with options, but in a different space. We have all sorts of information that consumers could use to understand what combination of products will give them only the features they want and maximize the discounts. The complexity comes mostly from third-party terms. But putting even 20% of that information in one screen is just a horrible UX. And guiding them creates rigid journeys that they can’t break out from. This, despite some great UX design talent. It’s just a really hard problem. Nobody wants users to have to learn all this crap, but protecting them from it means the optimal thing happens only if people choose exactly the right path.

teruakohatu 8mo ago

iNaturalist ranks right up there with Wikipedia in importance. It is more than one organisation, but rather a central org + a network of regional organisations. The regional organisation provides a lot of biological technical expertise. Citizen scientists alone would not be able to correctly handle the complex taxonomic issues you have in biology… or even basic identification in many cases. Where the organisation(s) sometimes go awry, in my personal opinion, is forgetting they are the custodian of citizen science data, not the source of it.

tptacek 8mo ago
Having never used iNaturalist, but as someone who believes that Wikipedia might be one of the most important knowledge resources created in the last 100 years, I'd love to hear more about why you think this.
- turtle_ 8mo ago
  It’s a living biodiversity record. That kind of data has had an impact on things like: understanding human impact on the macro environment, ID new species, provide scientists with more accurate population distributions etc. Perhaps controversial, but the data has also been critical to computer science, specifically computer vision and AI algorithms. eg what’s the bird in this picture?
- chneu 8mo ago
  I use it a lot. My ex is a biologist and they use it a ton. It's a massive dataset. There's nothing quite like it. The way people collaborate and verify information on iNat is invaluable. The best thing about iNat is the passionate people on there. If you don't know an ID, just post it and within a day someone will correct it. It's crazy. Download Seek and go try it out. Make sure to sign up for iNat and connect your seek to iNat so you can contribute.
  - kulahan 8mo ago
    Why do you recommend Seek? I’ve been using the iNat app (though since it was released, they’ve been asking me to upgrade to the newer app) and it seems fine. Take a picture or upload an existing one, get recommendations for ID, then upload to the community for further consensus!

contingencies 8mo ago

If you don’t like the way your data is used to train AI models, you can’t currently move your data to a non-AI service while still contributing to and using iNat data, even if such a service existed. But you should be able to do that. 100x yes! I was disgusted to learn that while the very non-profit status iNaturalist enjoys demands that they share their output, the organization thinks keeping its models secret is legitimate. https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI No, it isn't. I am a big contributor to iNaturalist and will be sharing my concerns at the next local meeting. I tried to raise the question through the forums and was censored. Frankly, it seems to me that iNaturalist is to open science as Android is to open source. That is to say in name only, not in spirit, because "legalese" and "market position" and "lack of enforcement". Not surprised to learn Google's money is assisting with corrupting them. If you contribute to iNaturalist, COMPLAIN. If you want to start a class action, count me in.

turtle_ 8mo ago
Do you have a copy of what you posted that was censored? I assume you mean censored on the iNat forum.
- contingencies 8mo ago
  Yes, I do. ~Sept 2025. Subject: iNaturalist must commit to being open Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other: All URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant: https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI Description of need: iNaturalist makes a subset of its machine learning models publicly available while keeping full species classification models private due to “intellectual property considerations and organizational policy”. The community contribute far too much time, data, expertise and money to tolerate this, which opens questions about fundamental compatibility with science. Feature request details: iNaturalist should: Remove non-open data; and Commit to fully open output…within a fixed period of time, in order to maintain community support. Response was "Hi, this seems to be a general appeal to iNaturalist staff rather than a specific feature on the website or app that would be developed, so I’ve copied the text of your request here, where they can see it." No response was received, so I responded to the thread as follows. Disappointed to be effectively censored and then receive literally zero response to this after three calendar weeks. With regards to the US status of iNaturalist: Scientific 501(c)(3) Nonprofits are organized primarily to conduct scientific research in the public interest. Their research must benefit the general public, not specific individuals or commercial enterprises. IMHO it’s very hard to argue that something is in the public interest if the public can’t see it, hold it, analyze it, criticize it, and replicate it: particularly in the field of science where we have a replication crisis. If it’s a black-box service, it’s not science. If it’s replicable and open, thus provable, it’s science. iNaturalist should commit to fully open output…within a fixed period of time, in order to maintain community support. Otherwise, it risks community pushback on its consume-but-dont-give model, which is being sheltered under a false heading of “science”. No response was received. Then sent a final follow-up. Please be advised due to the lack of response I will be forced to publish my concerns in conventional botanical media. To date, no response has been received. I am looking at that option for this year.

awakeasleep 8mo ago

Is this why Seek has been broken for the past 8 months

chneu 8mo ago
It works fine for me on my pixel 10. It worked like garbage on my Samsung Galaxy devices.
cowsandmilk 8mo ago
Works fine on my iPhone…

culi 8mo ago

> Toward the end of our time at CAS we experimented with sociocracy as a way to organize without hierarchy and coercion, but despite my enthusiasm for the form, we didn’t start with universal buy-in or understanding from the whole team, we didn’t fully adopt its structures, and, like many democracies before us, we ultimately voted to abolish our own democracy when we formed the “leadership circle” and created a hierarchy. I'm convinced that "what works" when it comes to self-organization is almost always a function of how involved/educated the participants are about the principles. Every time someone on HN complains about agile the typical response is that "they weren't doing agile correctly". And honestly I believe it. I just extend this to most forms of self-organization. To be clear, I definitely do believe that certain structures are more effective than others for a given goal but I also believe that often the biggest factor in success is the buy-in and investment the members have. I even extend this (admittedly, somewhat reductive) analysis to debates between OOP vs functional codebase structures. If everyone is well versed in "proper" OOP or "proper" functional software design both strategies can be effective. If everyone is sociocracy fanatic then that can certainly work effectively. Because it's not as much about the superstructure as it is about proficiency.

consp 8mo ago
> Every time someone on HN complains about agile the typical response is that "they weren't doing agile correctly". No true Scotsman would ever ...
- bonesss 8mo ago
  The agile methodologies are built around adaptive and corrective iterations of work. If an org is not adapting process, if they are not correcting process issues, they are by definition ‘not doing it right’ because they are fundamentally doing something else. Agile can/should/must (d)evolve into waterfall in all but name if that’s the local optimum. The agile methodologies response to problems is to solve those issues through frequent iterative localized change. Failing to apply a methodology isn’t a methodological failure, per se. Business process mislabelling and misdirected frustration about lacking management are not examples of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Frenchmen are not Scotsmen. Not False Scotsmen nor True Scotsmen. They have a different name for a reason. No matter how many tourists confuse the flags or culture, by definition they are separate and distinct. France and Scotland are literally on different pages in the books. It is no coincidence there is a ‘typical response’ around this that has not changed for decades. Typical responses are the MBA version of RTFM.

WoodenChair 8mo ago

Business books sometimes get a bad rap on here, but I never read an essay where I more thought "wow this guy really needs to read some basic business books." Even though it was a non-profit, there is so much wisdom in them about management and leadership that was clearly lacking throughout his experience. It's too late now. But maybe if he understood some of the reasons back when they were starting the app why organizations are structured the way they typically are, he wouldn't have experimented with so many poor (and ultimately failed) governance structures. It seems like he was looking at his organization through a social lens (democracy, everyone should have a say) from a governance perspective but having it focused through a product lens (the app). That just doesn't mesh well. Social organizations typically have social missions, not products. When the two mix it doesn't always go well (see Mozilla). He also explicitly gave up his leadership position and then later wanted a say in management's direction. Ultimately, he sounds like a caring, nice guy, who was more interested in "having everyone heard" than learning some management skills. What happened later after he dropped out of the leadership circle is just a product of that and I imagine significant bad blood between him and those who remained.

rPlayer6554 8mo ago
Could you recommend any book in particular?
- WoodenChair 8mo ago
  One that would've helped is "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days" which is a collection of interviews with startup founders by Jessica Livingston. Even though this was a non-profit it effectively sounds like it was a tech startup (he was building an app that was based on, at the time (late 2000s), cutting edge machine learning technology). I think by hearing other founders' stories building other tech products, he would've learned about how they structured their organizations and led their teams. I liked the book personally, but the interviews will be hit or miss depending on the participant. Here's the book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3N47TG3 https://amzn.to/3N47TG3 Here's a podcast summary of it: https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/1127af729a0d4aec/founders-at-work https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/1127af729a0d4aec/foun... But frankly even just a basic textbook or video course on leadership/management would've helped or something like High Output Management by Andy Grove (Amazon https://amzn.to/3NCAZME https://amzn.to/3NCAZME, podcast summary https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/095f226633d34496/high-output-management https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/095f226633d34496/high...). In terms of dealing with all of the personal conflict between team members, Radical Candor may have helped (Amazon https://amzn.to/4qNa7bf https://amzn.to/4qNa7bf, podcast summary https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/938d044a/radical-candor https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/938d044a/radical-cand...).

lovich 8mo ago

> Toward the end of our time at CAS we experimented with sociocracy as a way to organize without hierarchy and coercion, but despite my enthusiasm for the form, we didn’t start with universal buy-in or understanding from the whole team, we didn’t fully adopt its structures, and, like many democracies before us, we ultimately voted to abolish our own democracy when we formed the “leadership circle” and created a hierarchy. Is he referencing a bunch of democracies I haven’t heard of or is this the kind of guy whose so far anarchist he thinks that republics and dictatorships are equivalent if not equal? I tried to steel man this and looked up historical records on any democracy voting in a new, non democratic system and the closest I get is(not intending to Godwin’s law this) examples like the Nazi party being voted in and then taking authoritarian control. You could make that argument if you squint your eyes a little or hold a high bar to the electorate, but I feel like I’m missing a reference with the way he said it.

n8agrin 8mo ago
Sociocracy is a theory of governance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy
- lovich 8mo ago
  I’m mildly familiar with the idea, but I was referencing this subset of the quoted sentence > … and, like many democracies before us, we ultimately voted to abolish our own democracy … The ellipses are intentional, if the fragments of the sentence before or after change how to interpret this, please let me know
  - mapmeld 8mo ago
    The US example that I would give would be the Articles of Confederation being turned over and replaced with our Constitution. In the article I read this to mean: they designed a power structure thinking it should be fully open and flat, like a company where everyone can do everything on GitHub. But once they had run the project for some time, they acknowledged that the decisions were flowing through the three people.

rurp 8mo ago

This was a disappointing read for several reasons. The product/management/PR issues are very relatable. The community good of a database like iNaturalist is incredibly valuable, both now and for untold uses in the future. I've read interesting research that made use of that data and have personally found the range maps produced by it interesting. As a user I will be very sad if they kill off Seek. I'm somewhere between a casual and a power user. I don't work in a field that would use iNaturalist but am a pretty dedicated amateur when it comes to identifying plants and animal signs, and have a stack of well worn books for such. I tried getting into the iNaturalist app several times and it just never stuck. But a couple years ago I tried Seek and it has been great! It's not perfect, but it works quite well and at a minimum gives you a starting place to confirm or reject an ID.

kulahan 8mo ago

I love iNat, and I think it has a lot of real-world value. Others seem to have a better understanding than me, but from a purely anecdotal perspective, there was a huge prairie dog colony encroaching on housing. For years, nobody did anything about it. I documented it on iNat (for fun), and within a month they were relocated safely. How cool!

thethethethe 8mo ago

> iNat’s current Leadership does not share this belief. To them, Seek is an off-brand liability that they don’t intend to improve. They think iNaturalist the product can serve those Seek users while also serving existing core iNat contributors to the detriment of neither. I am a big iNaturalist user and I think the seek/iNat is confusing and a missed opportunity. Seek feels very much like a feature of iNat that is its own app for some reason. They could just make the seek app the iNat landing page and call it a day. I'm not sure how this makes the iNat app worse than it already is. I already find it a chore to use for making observations and finding out about what's around me. It's too clunky to make observations in the app itself, so I always do it after I am out of the field anyway. Imo they should make mobile app more focused on consuming and visualizing data rather than posting observations. Seek does this for accessing identification data but I think they have a big opportunity to do similar things for seeing whats around you, identifying other's observations, and viewing trends in your own observations. inat also has terrible performance, with slow loading photos and thumbnails. I would probably spend 10x more time on the app and make 50x more indemnifications than I do now if photos loaded faster.

cowsandmilk 8mo ago
You hit the nail on the head. The separate “power user” interface is the web app on a desktop.

emptybits 8mo ago

Enthusiastic Seek-using family here. It works so well for our very simple needs that I admit to never fully looking into iNaturalist's use of data or my ability to export or move my observations elsewhere. I've always fed our observations from Seek into iNaturalist since I though it was the "right" thing to do. Now I'm questioning it. So thank you, Ueda, for sharing this writeup that's clearly from the heart and for continuing to work on things like this: https://github.com/kueda/chuck https://github.com/kueda/chuck

gilrain 8mo ago
> I've always fed our observations from Seek into iNaturalist since I though it was the "right" thing to do. Now I'm questioning it. Why? The author explicitly encourages people to keep using and contributing to iNaturalist, both data and donations. What did you read that made you disagree with them?
- emptybits 8mo ago
  Yes, he does. And I will. But he also suggests that users organize and that cessation of data or money or "withdrawing your data would be a reasonable form of protest".
jyoung789 8mo ago
Ultimately, if your interest is in contributing to scientific biodiversity data collections, I really feel inatuslist is the best tool for the average person to do this. Similarly to programs like eBird[0] or bumble bee watch [1] (both of which are taxa specific), inatuslist contributes its data to GBIF[2]. This is a large database including records from all over the world,and is made up of both modern digital observations (like those from inat), historical observations like those kept in herbariums, as well as independently published records from smaller organised research efforts. I work as in academia and do a fair amount of spacial modeling in relation to biodiversity data, and the data from iNaturalist as published in GBIF is essentially the best coverage I can find if we are talking about large geographies. I also do my own field work, tracking specific study sites and iNaturalist is a fantastic tool for generating species lists. Within about an hour, usually while also carrying out some other field task, me and my team of technicians can capture the wide majority of plant species at a given site, all with location data, time stamps, and usually high quality photos that allow me to verify the computer vision IDs. Then back in my office, I can open up iNaturlaist online, and look through all the data, as well as download it in a consistent format. I’ve also worked out methods that allow me to do something similar (albeit more focused) for bees. Seek offers essentially all the same value to researchers while also streamlining the experience for users. You are able to get a quick answer, and I still get the biodiversity data generated by you, without the clunkiness that comes from the inat app(s). Beyond scientific data, as someone who is principally a botanist, I find the accuracy of iNaturalist to be far better than things like pictureThis. So even in these cases, I still think it’s worth while for the casual user to stick with seek if you’re looking to identify mainly stationary life forms or record them for your own use. ___ [0] https://ebird.org/home https://ebird.org/home [1] https://www.bumblebeewatch.org/ https://www.bumblebeewatch.org/ [2] https://www.gbif.org/ https://www.gbif.org/

bawolff 8mo ago

> Toward the end of our time at CAS we experimented with sociocracy as a way to organize without hierarchy and coercion, but despite my enthusiasm for the form, we didn’t start with universal buy-in or understanding from the whole team So they wanted to organize without hierarchy or coercion, but their plan depended on everyone agreeing on everything? It just feels kind of silly. The hard part of organization is that not everyone will agree on everything. Its what you do when that happens that is the question and how you resolve disputes fairly. If your starting point is that there won't be any disputes, then you have already lost. Quite frankly i think the biggest problem is that the author of this piece is frustrated he wasn't able to coerce people to his point of view.

donbreo 8mo ago

Linus tech tips did something smart. He made himself the "Chief vision officer." That way he has complete control over the direction the company is going in without the hassle of CEO duties and he can focus on what matters to make his vision possible. Kudos to that guy for actually hiring his ex-boss as his new CEO :D

alexwrboulter 8mo ago

Seek is great for more casual users, but also having that ML classification option inside iNat is useful for users like myself who fall somewhere in the middle between casual and enthusiast. I actively want to contribute observations but am often doing it while out doing other things and don't always have the time to agonise over the ID, so the ML classification is great for me, plus, because it's so accurate, it avoids that unfortunately common scenario where you upload an observation with an ID you're not entirely confident in, hoping another user will step in and correct it if necessary, but then it never gets that second input and you're left wondering why you bothered.

MORPHOICES 8mo ago

[dead]

crystaln 8mo ago

I am not inclined to read this longwinded post. Anyone who writes a headline like this is not worthy of it's subject, and the popular comments would tend to agree. I'm sure the author is well intentioned and filled with integrity, however trashing a thing you created because you feel dejected is inherently self-interested and unworthy of attention.

gilrain 8mo ago
[flagged]
bmackenty 8mo ago
how would you know the author trashed something if you didn't read the article? Maybe if we made a tik-tok for you, it would be easier to understand?

ErroneousBosh 8mo ago

> Up to this point, iNat functioned as an unstructured anarchy. Scott and I were titular “co-directors” but we did not provide a lot of direction and most of the big moves and features were driven largely by individual initiative. While I love that anarchists and sociocrats exist, I would say from personal experience (admittedly, over 30 years ago when I was a student) that every single "anarchist collective shared living space" will get to a point where someone (even me, even if I'm attempting to be chill about everything) will grab someone by the shirt front, haul them to their feet, and threaten to knock seven shades of shit out of them if they don't take their turn of washing the dishes. Any successful business has a lot of dishes to wash.

tkuhn 8mo ago

> Those of us who benefit from tools like iNat should be looking seriously to the decentralized models being developed by the likes of Bluesky and Mastodon, because we can’t rely on any single organization to provide that benefit forever. Makes perfect sense to me, and I would like to point you to the technology and ecosystem of "nanopublications": https://nanopub.net/ https://nanopub.net/ In a nutshell, nanopublications provide a decentralized infrastructure like Mastodon, but with focus on redundantly storing open data rather than on user ownership of personal data. Moreover nanopublications are basically snippets of knowledge graphs, so they resemble database entries and can be queried as such. Happy to elaborate if this is of interest.

tonyhart7 8mo ago

I check the apps and feels very old

khernandezrt 8mo ago

The ongoing push by app developers to "simplify" everything is frustrating because it often makes tasks more cumbersome for experienced inclined users who want finer control or more advanced options. I specifically had this frustration when migrating from the original iNaturalist app to the new one. I actually use it less now because of how annoying and "simple" it is.

neon_me 8mo ago

I empathize deeply as I was a few times in a similarly complicated situation. I know, posts like this arent about seeking "feedback" but simply releasing pressure, and thats 100% valid. That said, one thing I learned from my own experience was to stop pointing fingers (build up badblood and seeking conflicts) and instead focus on the hard lessons about my own mistakes(learning!). I wish you the best in your next chapter. The path to becoming a good manager/colleague is never ending and demanding and its evident you want to be one ... Goodluck!

wt__ 8mo ago

Although I don't use iNaturalist that often (because I don't want the hassle of photographing the species I definitely know) I'm always conscious of the fact it has a relatively modern stack (Rails and PostgresSQL) whereas iRecord is still limping along on Drupal (very sub-optimal DB schema and quite a few front-end annoyances due to module limitations).

philipallstar 8mo ago

> Up to this point, iNat functioned as an unstructured anarchy. Scott and I were titular “co-directors” but we did not provide a lot of direction and most of the big moves and features were driven largely by individual initiative. We never found a great way to collaborate. This is extremely unlikely to work. We have structures and hierarchies for a reason. They aren't perfect, but they aren't pointless. It feels like when CHAZ/CHOP appeared and there were multiple child killings, but because it was based on (purported) far left principles it was sort of...fine? At least in the media.

rjdj377dhabsn 8mo ago

I just tried their Seek app with some pictures of tree leaves nearby and it failed to identify all of them. Some pictures even caused it to crash. Google Lens correctly identifies 1/3 of them and PictureThis 2/3.

kayo_20211030 8mo ago

I read the piece. Who exactly, or what, is "Leadership" in this piece? (Always capitalized). A board? Upper-management? Other management? It's hard to understand it in full when "Leadership" seems to be reduced to an unnamed player - an anonymous villain.

culi 8mo ago
Probably done to minimize the amount of bridges burned by avoiding names. I think leadership generally refers to the Executive Director and Heads of Product, Engagement, Development

mistersquid 8mo ago

From Ken-ichi Ueda's remarks in the OP, after graduating from Berkeley he moved into a role that resembled the loosely-structured organizational patterns of an undergraduate team collaborating on a term project. Of course, such a gloss oversimplifies the complexities of the relationships and outcomes of people working together in what would become a non-profit, but even tone of the OP seems characteristic of someone still in the mindset of high-achieving baccalaureate: laissez-faire governance, aversion to hierarchy, prioritization of intellectual freedom, etc, none of which are bad or good in and of themselves. Anyhow, Ueda's 2024 commencement address (especially the opening) bears markers of just such a mindset. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AECD7qfFAV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AECD7qfFAV0