Shall we start an INaturalist Project group?

[Martin Bohnet]

INaturalist has become a great tool, and we (or mostly Mary Sue) already added material from there to the wiki. Since they offer project structures, why don't we create one for our members to join, so you can easily see when an observation was made by a PBS affiliate?
As a side effect this would place our logo on observation pages by our project members - sounds like free advertising to me...

[Diane Whitehead]

I am already an iNaturalist member.  Are you suggesting an additional membership?

[Martin Bohnet]

no, I suggest a "project", like this one. People like you and me can join it with their normal INaturalist profile, and then all of their observations will automatically added to the project statistics and will display a PBS-Logo on the observation page, like the linked example will add the "progress flag".  We'd get a summary of INaturalist activities of the people like what they observe and identify, and the means to recognize each other in that system.

The creation of such a project is a matter of a few clicks and a little flavour text we can copy from our many self descriptions, and the technical aspects are all handled automatically, so it won't be another time sink. As there is no local comment function on the project, it won't even require moderation.

The fact that I didn't know you're an INaturalist proves the usefulness of such a project.

[David Pilling]

Good idea - I know nothing of iNaturalist. (I know it exists, but I am not a user and do not know the technical details). Years back we got a PBS wikipedia entry for similar reasons.

[Martin Bohnet]

Now that the forum is live, I followed that plan...

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pacific-bulb-society

I'm really sorry though to greet you directly with a Merodon equestris observation. I wouldn't confess that on the IN-site, but that specimen did only live a few seconds after the Picture

[David Pilling]

Do you have to advertise this group?

[Martin Bohnet]

Do you have to advertise this group?

Do I have to... no. Would it be helpful?  I guess.

[David Pilling]

"Do you have to", if you want anyone to know about it. Maybe I should have said "are you going to". In any case presumably people won't know about this unless you tell them.

I mean maybe not, perhaps we could inject our list of PBS member's email addresses into iNaturalist.

People have affiliate links on Amazon, but it's always difficult to remember.

Could you send people a link, click here to join our group on INaturalist.

[kisaac]

INaturalist has become a great tool....


....Since they offer project structures, why don't we create one for our members to join, so you can easily see when an observation was made by a PBS affiliate?

There is no downside to joining the PBS group if you use iNaturalist already!  The project is now set up (thxs martin)
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pacific-bulb-society

Some screenshots below from the iNaturalist app and web page showing the PBS group.
You do nothing differently in iNaturalist once you have joined, but once you join we can see each others observations in the group in our own individual iNaturalist app or web page.

A screenshot from the groups web page, and then in the iNaturalist app itself (showing we could use a few more group members!)

Do you have to advertise this group?

Apparently, yes!
We have to advertise this!

How?
Perhaps moving this thread to a different forum section where more people would see it, and post to the email list?

To be clear, you join the PBS iNaturalist group in your iNaturalist app or webpage  in iNaturalist- this link should show you, as iNaturalist and PBS have no connection to each other.

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pacific-bulb-society

You also don't need to be a dues-paying member of PBS to join the iNaturalist PBS group- come join it!  And, why not join PBS if you haven't already?

[Martin Bohnet]

Well, at least I've added  I added a link to it in the frontpage menu - and added a link to the youtube channel as I was already in the menu backend.

[David Pilling]

Good work Martin.