Question about the Traditional Project Aggregator

Hi all,

iNaturalist still have 797 projects created by 264 project admins that are still using the old Traditional Project "Aggregator". We removed the ability for new Traditional Projects to Aggregate when we launched Collection Projects in 3 years ago and had hoped the legacy projects in that were already using the Aggregator would slowly convert over to Collection Projects. This post is to check in with those still using the Aggregator to try to learn more about why you haven't converted over to a Collection Project as we consider the future of this feature. It being the Northern Hemisphere Spring, we're looking for ways to make iNaturalist more efficient and this clunky Aggregator process which runs hourly on these ~800 projects is something we'd love to phase out.

Some background, Traditional Projects (ignoring the aggregator for the moment) require people to manually add suitable observations to the project. Collection Projects use "Observation Requirement" filters to find suitable observations and automatically display these observations in a project. The aggregator was built before we built Collection Projects to make it so that observations could be automatically added to a project. While Traditional Projects support some features that Collection Projects don't (e.g. requiring observation fields, slightly different details regarding sharing restricted location data, the ability to subset observations that can't be automatically filtered such as "Observation of the Day"), none of these features work well in a Traditional Project with the Aggregator turned on. So we're currently unaware of any reason why a project admin would prefer to stick with a Traditional Project with the Aggregator turned on instead of migrating to a Collection Project.

I've mentioned all 264 project admins along sides their Aggregating Traditional Projects. If you likewise aren't sure why you haven't converted over to a Collection Project we encourage you to do so! Click 'edit' on your project and if you're project can be automatically converted you'll see a banner that looks like this:

If you don't see this banner, it is because there's not a 1-to-1 correspondence between the "Observation Rules" used by your Traditional Project and the "Observation Requirement" used by Collection Projects. For example, Traditional Projects support a "must be on list" rule which would have to be replaced by a series of more than one "Include Taxa" Observation Requirements in a Collection Project. You can try removing the problematic rule, converting the project, and then adding any necessary requirements to the Collection Project. Or if you have specific questions, please add a comment here with links and details and I'll take a look.

Alternatively, if there's a reason why you can't accomplish the goals you're accomplishing with your Aggregating Traditional Project with a Collection Project please let us know here as we'd love to understand these uses cases better.

Lastly, if you are not actively benefitting from the Aggregator being turned on for your project and aren't motivated to convert your project to a Collection Project, please the Aggregator off by editing your project and unchecking "Automatically add observations to this project", many thanks!

Thanks in advance for seeing and responding to this mention!

Scott

Project Admins and Aggregating Traditional Projects:

@marie => Newton South High School
@kpmcfarland => Vermont Atlas of Life
@mhedin => Mygalomorph Spiders of the California Floristic Province
@johnnybirder => Biota of the Guinean Forests of West Africa
@rebeccafay => Duxbury Reef Intertidal Biodiversity Project; Tracking Starfish Wasting and Recovery; On the Lobster Trail; Turtles of Mountain Lake; Tracking Red-Eared Sliders; Mount Tamalpais Biodiversity
@stevenkew => Champignons et Lichens de Madagascar
@francoandreone => HerpetoGasy BioBlitz
@toby => Texas A&M Soltis Center Herpetofauna
@charlie => Montpelier Capital City Biodiversity Survey
@ctracey => Nine Mile Run Watershed
@kestrel => Biodiversity Survey on the Mt. Tamalpais Watershed
@sea-kangaroo => Santa Clara County Bio-Blitz
@duarte => Berlengas
@mdwarriner => Terrestrial Mollusks of Texas; Bees and Wasps of Texas
@ericsimons => Leopard Shark and Bat Ray Die-Off
@dhobern => Plume Moths
@rcurtis => Ohio Invasive Plants
@mperdicas => Lower Lake Erie Region CSI; SMP Snake Survey
@faerthen => "Sagehen: A Proving Ground"
@leptonia => Flora of Swantonia
@juancruzado => Mamíferos de México
@mikeburrell => Moths of the Kingston study area
@mickley => Flora of Eagle Camp
@silversea_starsong => Wildlife of the Santa Monica Mountains; Wildlife of the New Forest
@sagamoreoh => Calderon Property
@annemirdl => Flora von Deutschland
@aubreymoore => Vespa tropica on Guam; Biodiversity of Negros Island, Philippines; Survey for Doleschallia tongana on Guam
@blogie => Davao Gulf Marine Biodiversity
@vijaybarve => Nashik; WaspIndia
@carlos2 => Árboles de la Ciudad de México; Mariposas de la Ciudad de México; Aves de la Ciudad de México; Ciudad Universitaria, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Bosque de Chapultepec, Ciudad de México; Árboles de la Ciudad de Monterrey, Nuevo León; ZCE Centro de Educación Ambiental Ecoguardas, CDMX; Bosque de San Juan de Aragón, CDMX; Zona arqueológica Chichén Itzá, Yucatán; Zona Arqueológica Teotihuacán, Estado de México; RB Montes Azules, Chiapas; RB Calakmul, Campeche; PN Lagunas de Zempoala, Morelos; Viveros de Coyoacán, Cuidad de México; Biblioteca Vasconcelos, Ciudad de México; Sitio arqueológico Cuicuilco, Distrito Federal; RB Sian Ka´an, Quintana Roo; Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana - Atzcapotzalco; RB Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz; RB Mariposa Monarca, Michoacán y Estado de México; PN Barranca de Cupatitzio, Michoacán; RB El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar, Sonora; PN Iztaccihuatl - Popocatepetl, Estado de México y Puebla; RB Tehuacán - Cuicatlán, Puebla - Oaxaca; RB Pantanos de Centla, Tabasco; PN Huatulco, Oaxaca; PN Bahía de Loreto, Baja California Sur; RB Janos, Chihuahua; PN Cascada de Bassaseachic, Chihuahua; PN Cumbres de Monterrey, Nuevo Léon; RB Archipiélago Revillagigedo; APFF Chichinautzin, Morelos; PN El Tepozteco, Morelos; PN Desierto de los Leones, CDMX; APFF Laguna Madre y Delta del Río Bravo, Tamaulipas; PN Cumbres del Ajusco, CDMX; PN y zona arqueológica Palenque, Chiapas; Zona arqueológica Monte Albán, Oaxaca; APFF Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila; PN Lagunas de Montebello, Chiapas; PN Grutas de Cacahuamilpa, Guerrero; APFF Meseta de Cacaxtla, Sinaloa; APFF Balandra, Baja California Sur; APFF Cascada de Agua Azul, Chiapas; RB El Vizcaíno, Baja California Sur; RB Alto Golfo y Delta del Colorado; APFF Islas del Golfo de California, Sinaloa; RB Isla San Pedro Mártir, Sonora; APFF Sierra de Álamos y Río Cuchujaqui, Sonora; Complejo Corredor Biológico Chichinautzin, Morelos; Santuario Playa Ceuta y zonas adyacentes, Sinaloa; Campamento Tortuguero El Verde, Sinaloa; RB La Michilía, Durango; RB Sierra Gorda de Querétaro; RFN y RFS Ajos Bavispe, Sonora; RB Volcán Tacaná, Chiapas; RB La Encrucijada, Chiapas; Los Chimalapas, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Chiapas; RB Islas Marías, Nayarit; Parque Estatal El Limón, Guerrero; Tapijulapa, Tabasco; Boca de Chajul, Chiapas; Amatitlán, Chiapas; Nueva Flor, Chiapas; Taniperla, Chiapas; San Miguel del Puerto, Oaxaca; Santa Catarina Xanaguía, Oaxaca; Ejido San José Cerro Blanco 5ta Sección, Tabasco; San Juan Ozolotepec, Oaxaca; San Mateo Yetla, Oaxaca; San Pedro Tlatepusco, Oaxaca; San Antonio del Barrio, Oaxaca; Santa Cruz Tepetotutla, Oaxaca; Noh-Bec, Quintana Roo; Chacchoben, Quintana Roo; Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo; Álvaro Obregón (Zoh-Laguna), Campeche; Valentín Gomez Farías, Campeche; RB Sierra del Abra Tanchipa, San Luis Potosí; Sierra de San Francisco, Baja California Sur; Sitio arqueológico Uxmal, Yucatán; Ley de Fomento Agropecuario, Campeche; APPF Nevado de Toluca, Estado de México; P.N. Tulum, Quintana Roo; PN Cabo Pulmo, Baja California Sur; PN El Chico, Hidalgo; RB Sierra la Laguna, Baja California Sur; APFF Laguna de Términos, Campeche; RB Marismas Nacionales, Nayarit; APFF Yum Balam, Quintana Roo; San Francisco Ozolotepec, Oaxaca; Sitio arqueológico Xochicalco, Morelos; Sitio arqueológico Mitla; Monumento natural Yagul, Oaxaca; Ecoparque Los Aluxes, Palenque, Chiapas; RB El Triunfo, Chiapas; Sierra Huérfana, Sonora; Parque Nacional Arrecifes de Cozumel; APFF Isla de Cozumel, Quintana Roo; Reserva Ecológica Santa Gertrudis, Veracruz; Parque Estatal, Sierra de Morelos, Estado de México; Valle de Toluca, Estado de México; El Calvario y zonas aledañas, Estado de México; Ixtapan de la Sal y zonas aledañas, Estado de México; Divisadero, Estado de México; El Salitre, Estado de México; Ixtapan de la Sal Centro, Estado de México; PN Arrecife Alacranes, Yucatán; Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca; Campamento Lago y Tierra, Valle de Bravo, Estado de México; Comité de Recursos Naturales de la Chinantla (CORENCHI), Oaxaca; Comunidad La Concordia, Chiapas; Universidad Intercontinental, Ciudad de México; Bioparque San Antonio, Ciudad de México; Cayo Arcas, Campeche; Cayo Arenas, Campeche; Sitio arqueológico Tajín, Veracruz; Reserva Ecológica del Pedregal de San Ángel; Pedregal de San Ángel, Ciudad de México; Parque Bicentenario, Ciudad de México; Azotea verde de CONABIO; Parque Tepozán, Tlalpan, Ciudad de México; Reserva Ecológica El Edén, Quintana Roo; Arrecifes coralinos del mar Caribe; RB Sierra Gorda de Guanajuato, Guanajuato; Municipio de Muzquiz, Coahuila; Papalote Museo del Niño; Moon Palace Resorts, Quintana Roo; Yu-Balcah, Tabasco; Parque Nacional Los Mármoles, Hidalgo; Laguna de Alchichica, Puebla; Isla Ixtapa, Guerrero; Cerro del Padre y Parque la Encantada, Zacatecas; Ecoparque Centenario "Toma de Zacatecas", Zacatecas; Municipio de Monte Escobedo, Zacatecas; Parque Ecológico Zacango, Estado de México; Parque Fundidora, Nuevo León; PE Centro Ceremonial Mazahua, Estado de México; PEERT Hermenegildo Galeana, Estado de México; PEERT Otomí - Mexica, Estado de México; PNRP El Ocotal, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Monte Alto; PN Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. La Marquesa, Estado de México; PM El Salto de Chihuahua, Estado de México; Jardín Botánico Universitario, BUAP, Puebla; Parque Nacional El Potosí, San Luis Potosí; ZSCE Bosques de las Lomas, CDMX; ZSCE Sierra de Guadalupe, CDMX; ZCE La Loma, CDMX; ZPHE Los Encinos, CDMX; ZCE La Armella, CDMX; APFF Metzabok, Chiapas; Zona Ecológica y Cultural Cerro de la Estrella; Lago de Texcoco, Estado de México; Parque Naucalli, Estado de México; Parque Benito Juárez, San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato; San José Miahuatlán, Puebla; Barranca Tarango, CdMx; P.N. Islas Marietas, Nayarit; Bosque Cuauhtémoc, Morelia, Michoacán; Reserva Natural Estatal Cerro Topo Chico, Nuevo León; Especies en riesgo en la CDMX; Zoológico de Chapultepec Alfonso L. Herrera, CDMX; Jardín Botánico del Bosque de Chapultepec, CdMx; Parque Ecológico Laguna de San Baltazar, Puebla
@brewbooks => Kukutali Naturalists
@smpbiologist-rcurtis => SMP Plant Pests
@msicilia => Área Natural Protegida Bosque de Tlalpan, Cd. de México; Aves rapaces diurnas de México; ZSCE Ejidos de Xochimilco y San Gregorio Atlapulco, CDMX; P.N. Zona Marina del Archipiélago de Espíritu Santo; Anfibios del Pedregal
@roberto_arreola => Parque Nacional Isla Contoy, Quintana Roo; Reserva de la Biosfera Selva El Ocote; Parque Estatal el Refugio, Tamaulipas
@leftcoastnaturalist => Fungi of the California Floristic Province
@greglasley => 222 Peabody Place
@rheilbrun => DFW Carnivores
@lobodelasnieves => Especies Reserva Mano de Oso
@mcpd_biologist => Bear Swamp Preserve
@finatic => San Diego County, California Biodiversity; Robber Flies of the United States; US / Mexico Border Naturalists; Audio Observations from Around the World; San Diego Gastropods
@marshamay => Freshwater Mussels of Texas
@jcabbott => Moundville Archaeological Park Biodiversity Survey
@marcopperman => Plants of Texas
@andrew_hankey => Ledebouria of the world
@negronahual => Aves de Veracruz; Parque Santa María la Ribera; Parque Alameda Central; Biodiversidad de Jonacatepec, Morelos; Biodiversidad de la región de Kohunlich, Quintana Roo.
@drells => Ohio Bee Atlas
@isabel_glez => Distribución de cerdos ferales en México; Distribución de Pez león en México; Distribución de perico argentino en México; Distribución de tortugas en México; Distribución de palomas exóticas en México
@elizatorres => Parque Estatal Cerro del Fortín, Oaxaca; Plantas del Valle de México; Centro de Educación Ambiental Yautlica, Iztapalapa; Reserva Estatal Sierra Monte Negro, Morelos; Polinizadores en la Preparatoria 204, Jilotzingo, Edo. Mex.; Polinizadores en la Secundaria 67 "Francisco Díaz de León"; Polinizadores en el Colegio Hebrero Sefaradi, Lomas de Chamizal, CDMX; Polinizadores en la escuela. John F. Kennedy Querétaro; Polinizadores en el Instituto Asunción de México, Las Águilas, CDMX; Polinizadores en la Secundaria 120, Tlalpan, CDMX; Polinizadores en la Secundaria 95, Tláhuac, CDMX; Polinizadores en la Secundaria 79, Xochimilco, CDMX.; Polinizadores en la Secundaria 104, Gustavo A. Madero, CDMX.; Colegio Madrid A.C. CDMX; Biodiversidad de la Cuenca de México
@bhollingsworth => Herpetofauna de Baja California
@tadamcochran => Flora and Fauna of Mountain View College
@claritaalicia => Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca
@microm => Crestridge Ecological Reserve
@liti => East Brunswick Nature (New Jersey, USA)
@ewrubel => Marin County Early Detection
@mariocastanedasanchez => Centro Comunitario Ahuayoto - Ajusco - DF
@alexiz => Convolvulaceae de México
@kireybarragan => AMPH Bosque los Colomos, Jalisco; Laguna de Chapala, Jalisco
@mikepatterson => Swalalahos Peaks; Wild Astoria; Gull Watchers; Oregon State Parks - Clatsop County
@dealfarms => Garner State Park; Palmetto State Park, Texas Parks and Wildlife
@yosoypin => Parque Ecológico Jaguaroundi, Veracruz
@dallasbiologist => DPRD--William Blair Jr. Park (Dallas Park); Harry S. Moss Park (Dallas Park); Hines Park (Dallas Park); DPRD--WR Unit #6 (Bath House); DPRD--WR Unit #7 (Bath House-South); DPRD--Crawford Memorial Park; DPRD--Moore Park BioBlitz---Dallas PKR/TWM; DPRD--Bert Fields; DPRD--Emerald Lake Park; DPRD--Kiest Park; DPRD--WR CreekWatershed; DPRD--City of Dallas; DPRD--Kiest Conservation Area
@andresrios => Aves de México
@adrianaalvarez => FAUNA DE VALLE DE LAS PALMAS, B.C.
@nathanvelasco => Biodiversidad de la Península de California / FotoNatura México
@benedictgagliardi => Biota of the East Bay Bike Path, Providence, RI
@leopatas => Orquídeas de Oaxaca
@danielafyf => Biodiversidad de Taxco, Guerrero Pueblo Mágico
@aztekium_tutor => Papalote Museo del Niño Monterrey; ANP-NL: Cerro El Potosí
@cathybell => Joshua Tree National Park Wildflower Watch
@hugoalvarezg => Sierra Mazateca Oaxaca.; PN Sierra de Organos, Zacatecas
@adriananelly => Río La Silla
@mustardlypig => Tandy Hills Natural Area & Stratford Park
@martorell => Plantas del pastizal de Concepción Buenavista, Oaxaca, México
@bgomez => Biodiversidad de ECOSUR (El Colegio de la Frontera Sur), Unidad San Cristóbal; Insectos de Chiapas; Mariposas (Lepidoptera) de Chiapas; Biodiversidad de San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas; Biodiversidad de la Reserva de la Biosfera Volcán Tacaná
@treichard => Maryland Moths and Butterflies; Howard County Parks Moth Inventory; Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary Moth Monitoring; Patuxent Research Refuge Arthropods
@martinsv => Mariposa Monarca en México; Oso Negro en México; BISONTE; Águila Real; Lobo mexicano; Berrendo; Mariposa malaquita; PN Fuentes Brotantes, CDMX; Arañas violinistas - Loxosceles
@choess => State Line Serpentine Barrens
@abyur => Monitoreo de corales en los Mares Mexicanos: blanqueamiento y enfermedades
@forester93 => NRSS BioBlitz 2013; Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park
@cydno => Mosquitoes in Hawai'i; Mosquitoes in California; Mosquito Vectors
@danielatha => New York City EcoFlora
@danielgeorge => San Benito County Explorers
@clubdepatos => Canal Nacional
@biodiverso => APFF Bosque la Primavera, Jalisco; A.E.P.H. Sierra del Águila, Jalisco; AMPH Barranca del Río Santiago, Jalisco
@zooga1961 => Biodiversity of the Cedar Ridge Preserve - Dallas, Texas
@sambiology => Cedar Hill State Park, Texas Parks and Wildlife; Acton Nature Center; Pat Mayse Lake and Surrounding Areas
@coatzin_tutor => Centro de Investigación para la Conservación de Especies Amenazadas, Tabasco; EL Bosque de la Sabinera de Tonalá, Oaxaca
@jhvaldez_tutor => Fauna de la Sierra San Pedro Mártir, Baja California
@bob777 => Palo Pinto Mountains State Park
@jaico => Arácnidos de México
@aliciamstt => Paseo del Río, Puebla, Puebla
@charro => Reptiles de Michoacán; Anfibios de Michoacán; Mamíferos terrestres de Michoacán; Aves de Morelia, Michoacán, MX.
@chelegans => Miami Nature Map
@brentano => Southwest Nature Preserve
@juancarloslopezdominguez => Aves del Estado de Tlaxcala; Malezas en México
@d_b => Biodiversidad de Santa Cruz Papalutla; .Paco´s Reserva de Flora y Fauna.; Reserva Natural Xocotitla, Veracruz; Área de Conservación del Río Atliyac, Paso de Ovejas; Registro de la diversidad de flora y fauna de Tlatempa, Estado de México
@anudibranchmom => Urban Brazzaville, Republic of Congo
@dannywolf => APRN Distrito de Riego 004 Don Martín, Coahuila; Parque Estatal Bosque Urbano Ejército Mexicano, Coahuila (I)
@gcwarbler => Salton Drive Biodiversity; Travis Audubon Blair Woods Nature Preserve
@jaykeller => Elephant Beetles (Dynastinae) of the New World; Algodones Dunes; Scorpions of California; Scorpions of the World; Florida Keys Biodiversity; Florida Birds; Paraguay Biodiversity; Rain Beetles (Pleocomidae)
@eugenio_padilla => Biodiversidad de Valles Centrales, Sierra Juárez y Mixteca, Oaxaca
@jackyro => Al rescate del Río Magdalena, Ciudad de México
@axelcastanongheno => Parque Nacional Sistema Arrecifal Veracruzano (PNSAV)
@enriquemontes => Proyecto Mixteca Sustentable
@mattiamenchetti => Biodiversity of the Site of Community Importance "Poggi di Prata"; Checklist del giardino de' "La Specola"; Farfalle d'Italia; Le farfalle della Toscana insulare e costiera; Mammiferi d'Italia; IO database
@andyk => Elmer W Oliver Nature Park
@roberto_sindaco => Western Palearctic Reptiles and Amphibians; Specie Natura 2000 in Piemonte
@opuntia => Parque Nacional El Cimatario, Querétaro
@alep => Parque Cumbres de Majalca, Chihuahua
@benhutchins => Texas Invertebrate Species of Conservation Need
@cosmiccat => Biodiversity of Arkansas
@eugeniamendiola => Reserva de la Biosfera Barranca de Metztitlán, Hidalgo
@rjnjr => Monarch and Milkweed Monitor
@dcoopercem => Los Angeles (city) Biodiversity Initiative
@belenjd_tutor => Diversidad de Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas
@gancw1 => Wildlife @ Wallace Education Center Flowering Trees; Leps @ Dairy Farm Nature Park
@deneb16 => Biodiversidad de Andalucía, España/Biodiversity of Andalusia, Spain
@nachotorres => Crassulaceae de México
@romer => NAP Vohodava Betsimalaho NP 2017 BIOBLITZ
@franck => AmbatofinandrahanaKBA; Itremo_NPA_2017
@robertarcher397 => Crinum of Africa
@jorgetrevino => Rio Sabinas RAMSAR 1769, Coahuila
@lancillotto => Pipistrelli d'Italia
@fundacionlobbyingsocial => Parque Francisco Villa "Los Venados", Cd. de México; Parque Las Américas "Naciones Unidas", Cd. de México; Santiago F. Xicoténcatl "Jardín Álamos", Cd. México; Parque Miguel Alemán "Odesa o Postal", Ciudad de México; Parque José María Olloqui "Acacias", Cd. de México; Parque Luis Pombo, Ciudad de México; Parque Alfonso Esparza Oteo, Ciudad de México; Plaza Lic. Agustín Jáuregui "Campana", Ciudad de México; Parque Pascual Ortiz Rubio, CDMX; Parque Luis G. Urbina "Hundido", Ciudad de México; Parque Las Arboledas "Pilares", Ciudad de México; Parque Del Conde, Ciudad de México; Parque José Clemente Orozco, Cd. de México; Parque Francisco Gabilondo Soler "Cri Cri", Cd. de México; Parque José Mariano Muciño "Iztaccihuatl", CDMX; Parque Manuel Bernal "Tío Polito", Cd. de México; Parque Miraflores, Ciudad de México; Parque Moderna, Ciudad de México; Parque Molinos, Ciudad de México; Parque Rosendo Arnaiz, Ciudad de México; Parque San Lorenzo, Ciudad de México; Parque Tlacoquemécatl, Ciudad de México; Parque María Enriqueta Camarillo "Corpancho", Cd. de México; Parque San Simón, Ciudad de México
@kmarie333 => Fauna of the CAS Landscape
@ggriffiths => New York Wildflower Monitoring Project
@coreyjlange => US Federally Threatened & Endangered Species; California Rare, Threatened, and Endangered Species; Texas Endemic Species; California Endemic Species
@anewman => Greens Bayou Wetlands Mitigation Bank
@murray_dawson => New Zealand Native Orchids; Percy Scenic Reserve; Life in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens; Life in Pukekura Park & Brooklands; Life in the Gisborne Botanical Gardens; Bason Botanic Gardens; Life in Queens Park; Biodiversity at Styx Mill Conservation Reserve; The Dirty Dozen; Auckland Domain plantings
@ecoman => Mahoe Reserve Biodiversity
@laura-nz => Cracroft Reserve
@neil_fitzgerald => Walter Scott Reserve
@leonperrie => Lycopodiella diffusa and Lycopodiella lateralis – are they really different species?
@marcsladenz => Polhill Ferns
@peter_k_russell => Carnival Park, Pahiatua
@rmccool => Te Mata Primary School Mini Bioblitz 2017
@shane_orchard => Kea Monitoring; Pīwauwau NZ Rock Wren monitoring; Kārearea NZ Falcon monitoring; Little Blue Penguin Monitoring; CoastBlitz New Plymouth; Mahinga Kai Exemplar Birds; Whio Forever; Orca Monitoring; Reef Heron Monitoring; NZ Fur Seal Monitoring; Hectors Dolphin national count; Mahinga Kai Exemplar Plants; CoastBlitz Tapuae; CoastBlitz Patea - Benthic Survey; Whitebait Watch; Fiordland Crested Penguin monitoring; SeagrassWatch; Bioblitz Mahinga Kai Exemplar; Seagrass Spotter; Dotterel Defenders; Spartina invasions
@jrebman => San Diego County Plant Atlas; Flora de Baja California
@jjdc1043 => Parque Nacional Lagunas de Chacahua
@okaloosascience => Okaloosa SCIENCE Community Project
@juancarlosgarciamorales1 => AVES del Estado de México; AVES del Estado de Michoacán
@natalie_wilkinson => Whau River
@danieleseglie => Italian Herps; ALCOTRA - Salamandra di Lanza
@butterflies4fun => Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary
@parks_canada_cbcfu => Fort Rodd Hill
@srsn => BioLazio - Flora e Fauna del Lazio
@rositadinorah => Red de Ecoturismo de la Sierra Juárez de Oaxaca
@naura => Biodiversidad UZACHI, Oaxaca
@carleylovorn => MGA BioBlitz 2016
@joelle => Joelle Test Converter
@thefruithunter => Marine Ecology of Fort Ross; Viola adunca on the North Coast
@biohexx1 => Imperial County Wildlife; California birds; California beetles; Border Field State Park; Otay River Watershed (San Diego County); Cleveland National Forest; Moths of California
@craighensley => All Texas Nature
@naturalista_cecilia => Biodiversidad en la Península de Yucatán; Biodiversidad del Área de Protección de Flora y Fauna Manglares de Nichupté, Quintana Roo.; Biodiversidad en Tekax, Yucatàn.; Flora y Fauna del Instituto Tecnológico de Chetumal; Flora y Fauna de la Universidad Tecnológica Regional del Sur; Flora y Fauna de la Universidad Politécnica de Quintana Roo; Biodiversidad de la Universidad del Caribe
@marcoschmidtffm => Fungi of Tropical Africa; Biota of the WAP complex; Flora of Africa
@ksandsman => Limestone Park
@nicolascatassi => Parco del Po vercellese - alessandrino
@raulalvarez => PN Cofre de Perote, Veracruz
@jpage_cwf => Help The Turtles/Aidons les tortues
@rebecca_nh => Lake Mineral Wells State Park & Trailway; Cleburne State Park
@shawnjames => Portland-Vancouver Regional Eco-Blitz
@amarzee => Birds of Rason
@alorenz => Villanova University Biodiversity; Roots and Wings Academy Schoolyard
@paulcools => Butterflies of Europe
@jtuttle => Upper Neuse - Haw Subbasins, North Carolina
@sedema-veracruz => ANP "El Tejar-Garnica", Veracruz; ANP "Predio Barragán", Veracruz; ANP "Cerro de la Galaxia", Veracruz; ANP "Río Filobobos y su entorno", Veracruz; ANP "Arroyo Moreno", Veracruz; ANP "Cerro de las Culebras", Veracruz; ANP "La Martinica", Veracruz; ANP "Río Pancho Poza", Veracruz; ANP "Sierra de Otontepec", Veracruz; ANP "Tembladeras - Laguna Olmeca", Veracruz; ANP " Molino de San Roque", Veracruz; ANP "Santuario del Loro Huasteco", Veracruz; ANP "Ciénaga del Fuerte", Veracruz; ANP "Francisco Xavier Clavijero", Veracruz; ANP "Metlac-Río Blanco", Veracruz; ANP "Cerro del Algodón", Veracruz; ANP "San Juan del Monte", Veracruz; ANP "Archipiélago de bosques y selvas de la región capital del Estado de Veracruz", Veracruz
@nbdragonflyguy => Odonates du NB Odonata; Grasshoppers, Crickets and Katydids of the Canadian Maritimes; Flower Flies (Syrphidae) of the Canadian Maritimes
@cchapman => Sedges of Ontario (Carex spp.); Ontario Willows (Salix spp.); Rushes of Ontario (Juncus spp.)
@dkaposi => Ontario Butterfly Atlas; Moths of Ontario
@arborsphere => Biodiversity of the Thousand Islands
@anthonybrooks => Kingdom Fungi: Maritimes
@brucebennett => Yukon Species of Conservation Concern
@jwalewski => FDLTCC Survey
@leibele => Natura dell'Appennino Piemontese
@markread => The Flora and Fauna of 337 Button Bay Road; Natural History of the Kingston Study Area
@keirmorse => Flora of Anza-Borrego State Park and adjacent desert; Bush Mallows - The Genus Malacothamnus
@fervillasenor => Biodiversidad de la región Tlalpujahua-El Oro, Estado de México
@rangerkate => Eisenhower State Park - Texas Parks & Wildlife
@pfau_tarleton => Bosque River Trail & City Park, Stephenville, TX
@coesbio-mor => Barranca Chalchihuapan, Morelos
@fabiocianferoni => Insetti di Firenze - Insects of Florence
@saguaro => Wildlife of Yuma County
@lilla => Parque Barranca de Chapultepec, Morelos
@tcurtis => Lichens of Ohio; Lichens in West Virginia
@ninamarieb => Trinity River Audubon Center (TRAC)
@lluvia => Reserva Estatal Las Estacas, Morelos
@gcsnelling => Arthropods of the desert Southwest; Mutillids of the world
@jdjohnson => NNHP Track List; NNHP Watch List
@birdfly => Riserva della Biosfera CollinaPo; Pesci del Piemonte
@linaforero => Biocamana
@fabienpiednoir => Nature Paillon; Wild Orchids of Western Palearctic
@boblange => Portage Park District Survey
@pioleon => Flora de La Región de Los Cabos, BCS, México; Corredor biológico Elota-Piaxtla (Bosque a salvo); Flora y Fauna Universidad Politécnica del Mar y la Sierra
@sarracenia => Spruill Farm Conservation Project
@thenehan => Lower Rio Grande Valley Wildlife
@sebeckett => Burlington VT Bird Tracking Project
@kaciccone => NCSU Wolfpack Citizen Science Challenge
@fmgee => Beetles of British Columbia
@serpophaga => Birds of Ventura County
@jujurenoult => CEFE's Home List
@ricjo007 => CoastBlitz Komene; CoastBlitz Mangahume; CoastBlitz Kaupokonui; CoastBlitz Ohawe
@wdvanhem => Grasses of Ontario (Poaceae); Thalictrawesome; Flora of Elgin County, Ontario
@e-aus-kanada => Curculionoidea (weevils and bark beetles) of the Canadian Maritimes
@claloe => Biodiversidad Tlalmanalco; Rancho FloryCanto; Escuela Lázaro Cárdenas, Tlalpujahua, Presa Brockmann, MC, MX
@dinobiancolini => Fauna dei Monti Lepini
@paolilli => BIO-EGAP Ticino e Lago Maggiore
@brieg => EcoExpedition 2017
@miversen => Hood Mountain Regional Park Biodiversity Project
@cupnclare => NPS Cumberland Piedmont Network Invasive Species
@naturesociety => NSS ESN-Queenstown Primary School; NSS ESN-Unity Secondary School; NSS ESN-National University of Singapore; NSS ESN-Nanyang Technological University
@nicolegallup => Hillcrest Road Sciutate; Downeast and Acadia
@lchdezs => Arañas de Baja California
@congareebigtrees => Congaree Big Trees
@texasnaturetrackers => Herps of Texas; Mammals of Texas; Texas Whooper Watch; Birds of Texas; Texas Milkweeds and Monarchs
@tarahumarasustentable => Tarahumara Sustentable, Chihuahua, México
@zoefoster => The Great Squirrel Adventure; Dandelion Delights; Spring Marvels; Early Flyers; Invasive Alert; Delectable Oysters
@davidrabehevitra => Zavamaniry Gasy (Plants of Madagascar); Montagne des Francais
@psyllidhipster => California Eucalyptus Monitoring Project
@clebo => Brian Booth State Park BioBlitz; Oregon State Parks Coastal Species Inventory
@solanamartinnah => Aves de Felipe Carrillo Puerto
@maureen-j-jules => Illinois Valley of sw OR and surroundings
@amy142 => Martin Dies, Jr. State Park
@lee_obrien => Bees & Wasps on USFWS-NWRS
@petekleinhenz => Birds of Florida; Diamondback Terrapins of Florida
@yaneliarzate => Aves de la Loma de Santa María y depresiones aledañas, Morelia, Michoacán
@fwc-paso => Florida WMA: Fred C. Babcock / Cecil M. Webb Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Joe Budd Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Chinsegut Wildlife and Environmental Area; Pollinators of Florida; Herps of Florida; Mammals of Florida; Florida WMA: Aucilla Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Florida Keys Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: L. Kirk Edwards Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Lake Wales Ridge Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Watermelon Pond Wildlife and Environmental Area; Carnivorous Plants of Florida; Florida WMA: John C. and Mariana Jones/Hungryland Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Big Bend Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Escribano Point Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Apalachee Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Guana River Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Spirit-of-the-Wild Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Tosohatchee Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Salt Lake Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Split Oak Forest Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Box-R Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Apalachicola River Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Fort White Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Dinner Island Ranch Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Andrews Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Fisheating Creek Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Half Moon Wildlife Management Area; Mollusks of Florida; Florida WMA: Everglades and Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Suwannee Ridge Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Tenoroc Public Use Area; Florida WMA: Caravelle Ranch Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Platt Branch Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Bell Ridge Longleaf Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Hilochee Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Branan Field Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Rotenberger Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Hickey Creek Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Lafayette Forest Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Holey Land Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Little Gator Creek Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Okaloacoochee Slough Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Perry Oldenburg Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Triple N Ranch Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: T.M. Goodwin Waterfowl Management Area; Florida WMA: Crooked Lake Wildlife and Environmental Area; Florida WMA: Herky Huffman/Bull Creek Wildlife Management Area; Florida WMA: Moody Branch Wildlife and Environmental Area
@stiv64 => Flora de la orinoquia Colombiana
@yalcon => DESCUBRIENDO LOS ANIMALES Y PLANTAS DEL COLEGIO EL TRIANGULO
@eduardoholbox => Biodiversidad de Holbox
@osprey_alejandre => Parúlidos (Aves: Parulidae) de México
@marcobonifacino => Farfalle dell'Italia Nord-occidentale (Liguria, Piemonte, Valle d'Aosta)
@steveexplore => Nightshade Biodiversity (Genus Solanum)
@gmoran => Cuyamaca Rancho State Park; Palomar Mountain State Park; Salton Sea State Recreation Area; Picacho State Recreation Area
@ventanawildernessalliance => Northern Santa Lucia Range Inventory
@sbenson => Fog Lichens
@pgreenberg => Reston Biodiversity
@trevorpersons => Maine Amphibian and Reptile Atlas Project (MARAP)
@claudioflamigni => Geometrid Moths of Europe
@ontarionhic => (NHIC) Rare species of Ontario
@natsionanovogranatense => Aves del Municipio de Villavicencio
@fenixgerry => Jardín Botánico Helia Bravo Hollis, Zapotitlán Salinas, PUE, MX; Biodiversidad de San Juan Raya, Puebla, MX; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua Laguna de Zumpango, estado de México; Parque Estatal Sierra de Guadalupe, Estado de México, Mx; Biodiversidad de Santa María Tecomavaca, Oax, Mx; Parque Estatal Sierra de Tepotzotlán, Estado de México; Parque Natural de Recreación Popular Sierra Nanchititla (PNRPSN), Estado de México, MX; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua y Forestal Presa de Guadalupe, MX, MX; Parque Natural el Llano, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua y Forestal Presa Villa Victoria; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua y Forestal Presa Taxhimay; Cuenca Presa del Llano; Parque Natural de Recreación Popular Nahuatlaca-Matlalzinca; Parque Estatal Cerro de Cualtenco; Parque Estatal Cerro el Faro y Cerro de los Monos; Parque Estatal Cerro Pino Grande y Pino Chico; Parque Alameda Poniente San José de la Pila; Parque Estatal Cerro Gordo; Parque Estatal Cerro de la Cruz Tejaltepec, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Grutas Estrella; Parque Estatal La Goleta; Parque Nacional Los Remedios; Parque Estatal Nenetzingo Calderón; Parque Estatal Sierra de Patlachique; Parque Estatal Ecológico, Recreativo y Turístico Sierra Hermosa; Parque Estatal Lic. Isidro Fabela; Parque Estatal Los Tres Reyes; Parque Estatal de Recreación Popular el Ocotal; Parque Natural José María Velasco; Parque Estatal Chapa de Mota; Parque Nacional Desierto del Carmen o Nixcongo; Parque Municipal de Recreación Popular el Calvario; Parque Municipal Tlalnepantla; Parque Ecológico y Recreativo de Tenancingo Malinalco y Zumpahuacán; Parque Estatal Tlatucapa; Parque Urbano Las Sequoias; Parque Urbano Cerro Gordo; Parque Urbano Lomas Verdes; Parque Urbano Matlalzincas; Parque Nacional Molino de Flores Netzahualcoyotl; Á.N.P. Barrancas del Huizachal, del Arroyo Santa Cruz y Arroyo Plan de la Zanja; Reserva Ecológica Cerro Ayaqueme Volcán Huehuel; Reserva Estatal Ahuacatitlán; Zona de Recursos Naturales Rio Grande San Pedro; Zona Sujeta a Conservación Ambiental Barranca México 68; ANP Sujeta a Conservación Ambiental Barranca de los Ríos la Pastora, Loma y San Joaquín; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua Sistema Hidrológico Presa Huapango; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua Manantial Atlautla Ecatzingo; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua Presa Ñado; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua y Forestal Manantial Cascadas Diamantes; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua Lagunas de Xico; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua Manantiales de Tiacaque; Área Natural Protegida denominada Tiacaque; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua Valle de Bravo; Área de Protección de Flora y Fauna Ciénegas del Lerma; Parque Nacional Sacromonte; Parque Nacional Bosencheve; Zona Protec. For. Terr. Cuencas Ríos Valle Bravo, Malacatepec, Tilostoc y Temascaltepec; Zona Sujeta a Conservación Ambiental Malpaís, Santo Tomás de los Platanos; Zona Sujeta a Conservación Ambiental Barranca de Tecamachalco, Estado de México; Parque Estatal El Oso Bueno, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Ecológico, Turístico y Recreativo San José Chalco, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua y Forestal Subcuenca Antonio Alzate, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua Corral de Piedra, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua y Forestal Subcuenca Tributaria Río Mayorazgo, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Santuario del Agua Subcuenca Tributaria Río San Lorenzo, Estado de México; Parque Municipal Tecula, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Atizapan-Valle Escondido, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Picacho de Oro y Plata, Estado de México; Parque Estatal Sant. del Agua y For. Subc. Arroyo Sila, Estado de México; Estación CIVS San Cayetano; Reserva Ecológica denominada Sistema Tetzcotzinco, Estado de México; Reserva Ecológica Estatal La Cañada, Estado de México; Zona Sujeta a Conservación Ambiental Espíritu Santo, Estado de México; Ecoparque Metropolitano Puebla
@mamiferos_marinos => Mamíferos Marinos de Colombia
@cgrosete => Biodiversidad del CCH Vallejo
@jacobwurman => Saratoga Park, Fort Worth, Texas
@camachin555 => Biodiversidad de Acámbaro, Guanajuato y zonas aledañas, Guanajuato
@rada => Ente di Gestione Aree Protette dell'Ossola
@trackjackie69 => Biodiversity of Tuscaloosa County
@lizardsontheloose => OLD PROJECT 2017: Lizards On the Loose - Fairchild Challenge
@casawayuu => Biodiversidad de Quintana Roo
@judygibson => Imperial County Plants
@si_citizenscience => Downeast Phenology Trail
@whalecamp => Whale Camp Grand Manan Observations
@maradnant => Determinación de la flora (árboles y arbustos) del CCH Oriente
@calebcam => AfriHerps
@angie53 => Fauna de la Orinoquía colombiana
@jesse01 => Hongos De La Orinoquia Colombiana
@travmuir => NCC Sea Cider BioBlitz 2018
@sergio1948 => Humedal Tibanica
@yecsikapachon => Biodiversidad de la laguna de Fúquene
@atlanticcanadacdc => Rare Species of Nova Scotia; Rare Species of New Brunswick; Rare Species of Prince Edward Island
@brookschryer => Invasive Species in Ontario
@smera => Herps of Ontario
@presquilepp => Presqu'ile Provincial Park
@eaglemsc => Eagle School Retention Pond Bioblitz

Posted on April 19, 2021 08:50 PM by loarie loarie

Comments

I have never seen an option to convert the projects, so I've always left them as is. The banners do not show, so I assume there's some inconsistency between the former and proposed conversion of the project that's troublesome.

Posted by silversea_starsong almost 3 years ago

This is the first I have heard of the migration and I also haven't seen the banner to push me in that direction. I have no other reason.

Posted by ksandsman almost 3 years ago

@loarie Your link for "slightly different details regarding sharing restricted location data" doesn't work. I think the big thing for me was "Collection projects do not provide access to private and obscured coordinates for project admins". Has that been fixed? Can I do an export of all observations in my project with access to private and obscured coordinates? About half of the taxa in my project have obscured coordinates, so that is a must. Getting permission to get those coordinates was a pain as I had to message each person individually. Improved utility to get permission for obscured coordinates would really be nice too. Maybe that has already happened. I haven't done an export recently but related to that I'm hoping there is a way to get observation fields in the export with hidden coordinates too as I've started using those recently.

Posted by keirmorse almost 3 years ago

@tchester => Flora of Anza-Borrego State Park and adjacent desert
Any thoughts on this? I didn't change the Malacothamnus one because of "Collection projects do not provide access to private and obscured coordinates for project admins". Presumably the same applies to the Anza-Borrego one. I asked about that in another comment, so hopefully we can get clarification. It kind of kills a lot of the utility of iNaturalist for research in California if we can't get easy access to export obscured coordinated we have permission to view. About 1/3 of the taxa in California are obscured.

Posted by keirmorse almost 3 years ago

I hadn't converted simply because the banner offering conversion never showed up when I tried. I just now removed the rules "must be wild" and "must be identified," and then the option appeared.

Posted by sea-kangaroo almost 3 years ago

I haven't changed because in the traditional projects, when you add an observation to a project, the project icon shoes up on the observation. This allows people to see it and add themselves to the project.

Posted by biohexx1 almost 3 years ago

I just converted the Beetles of BC project as I have no reason no to. I have to remove "wild" as inclusion factor for the change option and I am not sure how to add it back. People take photos of insect collections (purchased foreign material) with location in BC. How can I keep these observations out of the project?

Posted by fmgee almost 3 years ago

A combination of various reasons given above. The most serious issue for me is dealing with obscured coordinates. The eastern serpentine barrens lie within relatively small geographic polygons and have lots of taxa listed at state-level (though they may be locally abundant). Auto-obscuring means that it's basically impossible to get them into a collection project. e.g., https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26278342 should be part of https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/cherry-hill-barrens-biodiversity (a Collection Project started by the observer) but that's impossible due to the obscuration.

The social aspect of being able to add people to the project is nice, but not necessarily a deal-killer.

Posted by choess almost 3 years ago

Our two projects collect lists of hundreds of specific rare taxa. Replicating that list by adding each individual taxon to a collector project would take way too long. We can't just use higher taxa because we only want certain rare species. We have other state Natural Heritage Programs who want to set up similar projects but they will have to be non-aggregated traditional projects because no one has time to enter the lists of rare species individually.

Downloading true coordinates of obscured species is extremely important for making the observations useful to us.

Posted by jdjohnson almost 3 years ago

@silversea_starsong, Wildlife of the New Forest should be displaying the conversion banner, but for Wildlife of the Santa Monica Mountains the "wild" and "georeferenced" rules are preventing the conversion banner from displaying. If you removed those rules you could approximate those settings with the "Data Quality" observation requirements (needs_id + research) though you would loose obs with no photos but that are otherwise wild and georeferenced.

@ksandsman, its also the "wild" rule thats preventing the conversion banner from showing up for Limestone Park - see paragraph above

@keirmorse, apologies that link is to non-public thread on the forum, I've removed it. But yes, Collection Projects now allow people to trust the project with access to restricted geographic information - pretty much in the same way as Traditional Projects. So you'd ask people to (a) join your project, (b) ask them to trust the project. Then things will work the same as your traditional project in that you'll receive true coordinates in your exports. It looks like of the 2,139 observers with observations in the Anza-Borrego project only 73 have trusted the project with coordinates that others add. So you're only getting true coordinates from aggregated observations belonging to these 73 people. Unfortunately, you'll loose this 'trust' when you convert your project but it should be relatively easy to get at least 73 people and probably more to re-trust the Collection Project version. I'd recommend a journal post mentioning top contributors like this one. Happy to help you figure out who's trusting your project currently etc via direct messages as these tools aren't super well developed on the site.

@sea-kangaroo great, thanks for looking into them.

@biohexx1 True and fair. With Collection Projects, only when people join the project will their suitable observation display the icons. The idea was to allow people to 'advertise' projects they like/have joined by displaying this icon. But to keep other people from automating getting their project icons on other peoples observations in a way that might be perceived as 'spammy'. For example, if I manually add your observation to my Traditional Project the icon will appear but since it has to be done manually I probably am not going to be able to get my project icon on every North American Bird observation on the site without a lot of work. Don't get me wrong, I understand how by having your project's legacy use of the aggregator that you're benefiting from this automated outreach that you don't want to loose which I completely understand. But that is a use case we're not supporting by design (allowing Collection Projects to automatically put their icon on observations for projects that the observer didn't join) to cut down on activity that has been perceived as 'spammy' in the past.

@fmgee - thank you. To keep those observations out of your project, I'd recommend approximating the rules on the traditional project using Quality Grade=needs_id+research. This will keep out wild=false observations. You will loose observations without photos/dates/locations etc. so this would assume you're not super interested in those other kinds of observations lumped under 'Casual'

@choess, related to my comment re: keirmorse's project above, and apologies that the 'access to restricted geographic information' process is so complicated and confusing on iNaturalist. But I looked at State Line Serpentine Barrens and of the 105 observers with observations aggregated in the project only 4 users have answered "Yes, no matter who adds the observation to the project." to "Do you want to make your private/obscured observation coordinates visible to the project curators?" (ie allowing you to aggregate their observations AND access the true coordinates). All the others have either not joined the project, or answered 'no', while 20 users have answered 'Yes, but only if I add the observation to the project myself' which would not apply to Aggregated observations. I'm curious how feasible you think it would be, were you to convert to a collection project and can enable 'Trust', to reach out to these 20+4 observers and get them to trust the converted project. Alternatively, if you're not interested in converting and 'reestablishing trust', are only interested in observations where you have the hidden coordinates, and the Aggregator only is getting your obscured coordinates for 4 users, I'm wondering if your use case would be served by turning the aggregator off and encouraging people to add their own observations thus sharing coord access?

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

I updated both my projects.

Posted by aztekium almost 3 years ago

@jdjohnson thanks - see my comments re: choess and kerimorse above re options for accessing hidden locations with collection projects. In many ways its better but its different enough that you'd need to get the 28 and 26 people that are trusting your two projects in a way that works with the aggregator ("Yes, no matter who adds the observation to the project.") to retrust the converted project.

The use of the must be on list rule is a fair use case and I agree adding 78 and 148 "Includes Taxa" filters would be a bit of a burden

@aztekium_tutor Thanks!

Also thanks to all the replies so far - I'm compiling notes and will respond with a synthesis once I get most of the responses I'm going to get. Thanks again!

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

@choess I just realized I completely misunderstood your point. you mean that you have to manually add observations to a traditional project rather than use a collection project because they can't be geographically filtered because of the fine boundaries to the place relative to the blurred obscured coordinates. That makes sense to me - except I don't understand how you're able to benefit from the Aggregator then since it (like a collection project) is using the boundaries to automatically fetch observations based on the intersection between these obscured coordinates and the place boundaries. Could you share an example of an observation that was Aggregated properly but you think a Collection Project wouldn't properly fetch?

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

Purely inertia!
That project was made before I really understood much about the best use of such things.
Thanks for the reminder, deleting project now.

Posted by leptonia almost 3 years ago

@loarie "adding 78 and 148 "Includes Taxa" filters would be a bit of a burden" You had me scared that something had gone horribly wrong with our projects. Those are just the taxa that haven't been observed yet (I think, it's not really clear.) The projects actually have 230 and 540 taxa.

Posted by jdjohnson almost 3 years ago

@tchester See loarie's comments above. Maybe I can use the Anza-Borrego project as a test before I do the Malacothamnus one. Perhaps do a download of what is there now if you want it before I try. I think doing a post like this where lots of people are tagged may be a great way to get more people to share coordinates in the converted version.

Posted by keirmorse almost 3 years ago

@jdjohnson - correct https://www.inaturalist.org/lists/560101 has 587 taxa on it and https://www.inaturalist.org/lists/564815 has 196 - thanks for catching that bug thats displaying 219 and 95

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

hi scott,

happy to convert, but I don't see the banner, and it's unclear why? (some rules, but no list...)

thanks,

@mhedin

Posted by mhedin almost 3 years ago

Hi Scott - I wasn't aware until now that there was a way for collection projects to access obscured/private coordinates - that was a significant roadblock. Nonetheless, there are now close to 600 people in each project and, to be frank, I have no interest in recontacting people to get them to 'trust' me again. I put a lot of time into building those relationships and keeping those projects active, and I really don't want to go back to square one. Why can't the existing permissions be ported to the new project?

I share Biohexx1's concern re the communication benefit of the project icon. I believe that it has led the majority of users to the project page where many elect to join. An interesting evolution is that both projects were started to support that atlas project of the Toronto Entomologists' Association (TEA), and the TEA has less than 200 members but there are close to three times that many in each of the iNat moth and butterfly projects (with significant overlap). So iNat, and the traditional aggregator system, have been hugely beneficial for outreach and connection. I see that attribute falling away based on your comments.

Can you add recommended 'project' fields to collections projects?

Posted by dkaposi almost 3 years ago

@loarie I have a few projects with lists as well. Is this something you may be able to address soon?

Posted by rcurtis almost 3 years ago

I am a little concerned too about the project icons disappearing from observations. I want to see those icons on my observations so I know what projects those observation may be helping. This has led me to find many cool projects that I never would have found otherwise. Without it, I feel like most projects are invisible unless you do heavy promotion outside of iNat or maybe in the iNat forum too. This has been a major disappointment with the newer types of projects as I feel like I'm missing out on a lot. Seeing how one observation can be important to many projects and that you really are contributing to something bigger is one of the coolest things about iNat. Losing the project icons on observations means you lose a huge amount of the connection to the iNat community. Maybe it would be spammy if all projects were shown on a observation though. If so, seems like that should be revisited with a goal of keeping that community connection by displaying what projects observations are helping but reducing icons of more spammy projects.

Posted by keirmorse almost 3 years ago

I echo Keir's comments. This would be a giant step backward to lose access to obscured coordinates, and a giant pain in the ass to write 73 people to get their permission to access their coordinates all over again. And what if some of those 73 people are no longer active?

Btw, those 73 people are the ones who have contributed the vast majority of the observations, especially of rare species with obscured coordinates! So they are not "only" 73 people; they are the "key" 73 people.

How about:

only running the Aggregator once per day. I don't see any need to run it hourly.

consider transferring the permissions already given to the project, to the Collection Project, if one decides to do that.

Posted by tchester almost 3 years ago

Both of the projects listed for me have only one rule and that is a place requirement, "must be observed in ... " I'm sorry to be a little dense here. Is there a "conversion" button somewhere that staff has set up? What @sambiology once explained to me is that I have to create a new Collection Project with an appropriate location boundary and then the previous observations will automatically populate it. Then I can delete the old project when I'm confident that the new Collection version is working properly. Is that the "conversion" you're talking about?

Posted by gcwarbler almost 3 years ago

@mhedin if you remove the "must be wild" rule, save and then reload the edit project page you'll see the convert banner. You can roughly replicate the wild rule in the converted collection project by adding quality grade filters (needs_id + casual)

@dkaposi the 'trust' isn't transferable because it works differently in traditional vs collection projects. In traditional projects you can trust a project with hidden coordinates for just the obs you add or for obs anyone adds, but trust can also be granted/revoked for individual obs in the project. For collection projects you're granting trust for any observation matching the project filters (and receive a notification if those filters change). So I guess the "Yes, no matter who adds the observation to the project." traditional project trust more or less corresponds to the collection project trust but we didn't set up a way for that to be migrated. Your projects have 258 and 192 people with that trust setting respectively. re: the project icons, correct in traditional projects it shows on every observation in the project, in collection project it shows on observations in the project provided the observer has joined the project. re: observation fields, they can't be associated with collection projects.

@rcurtis, Ohio Invasive Plants uses a list with 52 taxa. It would be a pain but not impossible to add 52 taxon filters to the collection project. I could help you do that if thats whats holding you back. We haven't discussed adding a 'must be on list' equivalent to collection projects.

@keirmorse re: the project icons, in traditional projects it shows on every observation in the project, in collection project it shows on observations in the project provided the observer has joined the project. So the onus is on the collection project admins to get a lot of people with relevant observations to join their project and then there will be a lot of their icons on those relevant observations. What we wanted to avoid was someone joining iNat on day 1, creating a 'birds of the world' collection project and then getting their project icon on 9 million bird observations. The way its set up now, traditional project admins have to "earn" these icons on observations by manually adding observations to their project (the aggregator is a bit of a loophole), and collection project admins have to earn them by getting people to join their project. Remember the aggregator no longer exists as a feature its just still legacy-ed in for the projects mentioned here.

@tchester reducing the frequency that the aggregator runs is on the table. We just wanted to first understand why people are still using it (and thanks to all the commenters, they are helping to that end)

@gcwarbler if you click 'edit' on each of those projects you should see the 'conversion banner' at the top (see screenshot above). You don't have to create a new project, the conversion will just change your traditional project into a collection project and its reversible if you regret the conversion. There's also a button to 'preview' in the banner before you actually convert it.

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

I've deleted them , when I changed my projects to " Collection " the info was wrong and they are not longer useful .

Posted by juancarlosgarciam... almost 3 years ago

Converted 'Berlengas' to a Collection project now. The banner had never appeared before, only did so when I removed 'must include media'

Posted by duarte almost 3 years ago

Done.

Posted by annemirdl almost 3 years ago

@loarie I just converted Salton Drive Biodiversity to a Collection Project and the stats seem to suggest that I lost half of the species (723 vs. 1487 previously) and 83% of the observations (only 1332 vs. 7819 previously). Why? If there is an explanation for this discrepancy in the long conversation thread above, I can't find it.

Posted by gcwarbler almost 3 years ago

I see the option to view as a Collection project, but not how to actually convert. I guess I need more guidance...

Posted by drells almost 3 years ago

Hi @loarie - thanks for the heads up, I converted the one I was admin for.

For (NHIC) Rare species of Ontario, (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/nhic-rare-species-of-ontario) we rely on having the project data fields pop up when people are inputting records (especially on mobile) and many of the curator tools, especially the ability to filter by "pcid=true/false" - are those features available if converted to collection project?

I see the way to access the equivalent of "export with hidden coordinates" - so that's good to see.

Final question - are there plans to add a bulk add species list for collector projects? That's another barrier for a project like this where we might want to make bulk additions to the species included as manually adding dozens or even hundreds of taxa is time prohibitive.

Posted by mikeburrell almost 3 years ago

Hl @loarie, thanks for checking on this! My project is of a rather small geographic area, and includes a bunch of obscured observations (mostly mine) . The aggregator allows these to be added to the project, but a collection project would not. Even if everyone agreed to allow me to see their obscured coordinates (which most have through the Vermont Atlas of Life project), the observations wouldn't be added to a collection project in the first place because the place is too small. So yeah. This is the species list the Montpelier Conservation Commission uses, and it would be a loss to have a bunch of species removed from oru species list. I understand that it may not be possible for iNat to continue to support this feature because of bandwidth type issues, and no, it isn't the end of the world, but would be a bummer. If you do decide to do this please do at least let me know so that I can download the species list before a bunch of the species get removed.

(apologies if this issue was covered above but at glance i didn't see it)

Posted by charlie almost 3 years ago

Moundville Archaeological Park Biodiversity Survey has now been converted.
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/moundville-archaeological-park-biodiversity-survey

Posted by friel almost 3 years ago

@loarie Maybe I'm doing it wrong but my project (Los Angeles city biodiversity) has always been using aggregator. Just re-checked and it said:
Last Aggregated At
Time when the aggregator last finished adding observations to this project
2021-04-20T07:33:00-07:00

I don't think I've ever had it set otherwise and have never clicked-in an observation. Again, maybe I'm not understanding what you're asking of us so pls let me know if I'm looking in the wrong field or something.

Thanks!
Dan

Posted by dcoopercem almost 3 years ago

I have converted most of my projects except 2

a project for observations from my garden. The area is too small to define a boundary.
a project which I add ‘uncommon’ weeds, wild shrubs and plants for quick reference.

Posted by gancw1 almost 3 years ago

Regarding the comments of @tchester I definitely agree the aggregator doesn't need to be run hourly. Once a day is plenty. Once a week would be fine by me.

While we might be able to get a lot more obscured coordinate permissions with a mass tagging of people in a post like this, Tom has a legitimate concern about loss of important permissions from people that are no longer active on iNat or just difficult to get them to do something. When a new curator is added to a project, a notification is sent out letting people who have given permission know so they can choose to revoke that permission. Can this be done for a project type change? Seems like all permissions should be transferred by default and, if it is a nonequivalent permission, the permission grantee should be notified that they can revoke that permission if they don't want to give permission for all observations. Is there a way to find out how many people haven't given permission for all observations and who they are? If you can transfer permissions for all others and there is only one or two people that have given limited permission, it may be fine to lose those coordinates or have to put extra effort in just those people to try to get full permission. I suspect most people have already given full permission.

Regarding the project icons, seems like that ship has sailed. I just wish there was a way to replace and maybe improve upon that functionality to find out what projects my observations were in that I haven't joined. I want project discovery through my observations. How do I know what projects to join if there is no easy way to see what projects my observations are included in? It's getting totally off topic here but seems like a project summary/statistics page that shows me what projects my observations are in could fill this void.

Posted by keirmorse almost 3 years ago

I am just getting to this and have read through all the comments...wow. That was a lot, and extremely helpful to understand things better. I too had no idea this was an issue until I saw this. I am really taking this slowly as I have 9 years of work into this project, which represents a lot of communications, outreach, networking, etc etc. Mostly, I have same concerns that have been echoed above. I think two of those have been addressed: 1. obscured data. 2. Wild only rule (not perfect but it sounds like it will work). For obscured data, this is extremely important for our conservation work and we have spent a LOT of time explaining to users how geoprivacy works and how to give us permission if they want. To go back and do that all over again would possibly be horrible and a failure with an uncertain number of users. I actually don't know how many have given us permission vs have not.

The item I have not seen mentioned above is layout. Currently, I have a sidebar on the right where I am mostly free to make html additions. This allows me to show logos and links for all the organizations that are cooperators (n=17) and links to things we think our users will want to use (resources). The resource links could go away I guess, but the cooperator logos...that is kind of important and we spent(d) a lot of time building community like that. So, if I can figure out how to deal with some of these issues, I'd switch over for sure as I get how this is a strain on inat servers. Or, I am also fine about running it once a day too, perhaps at a time when servers have less traffic or something. Inat is amazing and let me know how I can perhaps address some of this and move forward. I didn't know until this morning reading this that it was an issue. Sorry about that!

Posted by kpmcfarland almost 3 years ago

I did convert my project, Crabs of the World, from aggregator to collection a couple of years ago, but members complained that it no longer felt like a shared project. They felt their contributions weren't valued as much. So I switched back to the original aggregator. However, I've helped our local Land Trust create a few collection projects.

Posted by wendy5 almost 3 years ago

It is also for me the first time and I hear about the possibility of migrating to a collection project, it seems good to me that we migrate, greetings!

Posted by eugenio_padilla almost 3 years ago

This was the first I heard of the upgrade. I just upgraded NCSU Wolfpack Citizen Science Challenge. Thanks!

Posted by kaciccone almost 3 years ago

Converted my two projects. Thanks, Scott.

Posted by forester93 almost 3 years ago

Awesome, I hadn't touched these projects from bioblitzes in a long time... updated!

Posted by alorenz almost 3 years ago

@loarie

Hi, at the moment for me the main issue to switch from the Traditional project to Collection project is the lack of the fields "curator_ident_taxon_id" "curator_ident_taxon_name" "curator_ident_user_id" "curator_ident_user_login" in the .csv exports of the collection project (or I missed something?).
These fields is a further validation that allows you to use only the data "validated" by the curators of the project...
It also allows curators to standardize in some cases the naming of the species in the field "curator_ident_taxon_id"...
Best,
D.

Posted by danieleseglie almost 3 years ago

@danieleseglie makes a good point. I assumed the exports between project types were the same. I have no idea what the collection project fields in the export file would be but all those curator fields are important. If not included, curator_coordinate_access is also crucial so I know which data to throw out when mapping.

Posted by keirmorse almost 3 years ago

@gcwarbler the Traditional version of Salton Drive Biodiversity had 6,487 'unsuitable observations' which are observations in the project but not matching the rules that the aggregator was using. Here's an example https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/67403190 - this can happen if a Traditional project's rules change - they don't 'kick out' observations that are no longer suitable. In contrast Collection projects always display the subset of observations matching the Observation Requirements

@drells go to https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/ohio-bee-atlas/edit and in the yellow banner at the top shown in the screenshot above click the blue link where it says "clicking here." - thanks!

@mikeburrell - Collection projects don't have associated observation fields or the 'must be on list' equivalent, so those might be good reasons to stick with a Traditional Project. But the aggregator (by not letting people add their own obs to the project) isn't giving people the opportunity to fill out the suggested obs fields and limits the amount of hidden coordinates you have access to, so an option to consider might be turning off the aggregator and encouraging people to manually add their observations to your project.

@charlie - this is really helpful. Interesting to know that curators are are using traditional projects as a loophole to get round iNat's attempts to not publicly show obscured observations within small places. @choess I now better understand your comment above related to this.

@dcoopercem, correct, everyone I mentioned here is the admin of a Traditional Project that was legacy-ed in to have continued use of the Aggregator which we removed 3 years ago. This post is to encourage you to convert your Traditional Project to a Collection project unless, or turn of the aggregator, unless theres a reason you need to continue using the Aggregator in a Traditional project (which we'd like to better understand). In your case, I recommend you convert to a Collection project. I can help you do this, or the steps are to:
edit your project and remove these rules one at a time and saving
"must be georeferenced" (redundant with verifiable rule)
"must have a photo" (redundant with verifiable rule)
"must be wild" (redundant with verifiable rule)
"must be identified" (assuming you're ok including obs with no IDs in your project)
then go back to your edit project screen and click on the yellow banner that should appear at the top to convert

@gancw1 to make sure I understand, both https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wildlife-wallace-education-center-flowering-trees and https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/leps-dairy-farm-nature-park have places associated with them (the Aggregator requires a place to work) so I'm not understanding why you one of the projects has no place associated with it and thus isn't suitable for a Collection project? Also, if a project has a subset of observations that can't be automatically filtered (e.g. the 'Observation of the Day' project) this is a great use case for a Traditional Project. But in those cases (such as what you describe where you manually add uncommon shrubs) I'd like to understand why having the Aggregator turned on is helping for that project and why it couldn't be turned off?

@keirmorse and @kpmcfarland with Traditional Projects users can share coordinates for (a) only observations they add to the project and (b) observations anyone adds to the project. With Collection Projects there's no way to replicate (a) since these projects don't know individually which observations are in a project beyond a set of filters BUT also keep in mind that the Aggregator isn't giving you access to hidden coordinates for users with settings set to (a) since they are not adding the observations to a project. I could help you offline transfer trust of type (b) over to the Collection project, but there's no way to preserve the concept of type (a) trust in a Collection Project. Yes custom HTML sidebar and a different way for how the display of project icons is just another difference between Traditional and Collection projects.

@wendy5 I'd be curious to hear specifically what difference between Collection projects and Traditional projects made people no longer feel like a shared project.

@danieleseglie - good point Collection Projects don't have the 'curator ID' functionality. Thats a good example of functionality we could have/can still maybe build into Collection Projects but we weren't aware anyone is/was using it. @keirmorse, CSV exports contain fields re: to geoprivacy

Thanks everyone - useful to hear how people are using these projects!

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

I will convert all of the FWC projects today. I hadn't seen the banner before.

Posted by petekleinhenz almost 3 years ago

@loarie I understand your explanation about "unsuitable observations" but something is not functioning properly. There is only one rule for the Salton Drive project (occurring in the Salton Drive & Vicinity place) and ALL of my observations in the Traditional project fit that rule. Geographically, they are necessarily in that place; they were all made at precisely the same location in the very center of the place. There seems to be a bug here somewhere (no pun intended). The only explanation I can imagine is that most of the observations at my house (in the center of this place) are uploaded with a 100-m-radius circle of uncertainty, a small fraction of which may lie outside the polygon for Salton Drive & Vicinity, but the center point is inside. Could that be an issue?

Posted by gcwarbler almost 3 years ago

@gcwarbler - looks like thats it. If an obs' uncertaintly circle doesn't fall within a community curated place bounding box its not returned by a search on that place. That might be a good reason to stick with a Traditional Project (being able to manually control whats in and out of the project - let me know if you need help reverting the project). But in that case the Aggregator isn't really helping since it also doesn't recognize these observations as being in the place so its probably safe to turn off.

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

To solve this Place vs. circle of uncertainty issue, it looks like I have three options: (1) Revert to a Traditional Project (and turn off Aggregator), (2) go back and revise all the observations with the 100-m-radius of uncertain to a smaller circle which will be recognized as being within the Place, or (3) modify the boundary of the Place by uploading a new kml which will encompass those 100-m-radius observations. My inclination is to do #3, but I see the warnings on the edit page regarding such changes. I'll cogitate on these options further but won't do anything until after CNC 2021, for sure.

Posted by gcwarbler almost 3 years ago

Ok, I have new projects of collections, and I will actuallicy the olders,

Posted by fenixgerry almost 3 years ago

Hi @loarie, you asked about the Crabs of the World project. Sorry I don't recall exactly what people wrote to me. But I remembered that Tony helped me switch it to a collection in January 2019. When I asked him to switch it back, I wrote this to him: "The new format definitely has advantages, mostly that I don't need to look for observations to add to it. However, some members don't like it as a 'collection' because they can no longer add their own observations to a project, so they don't feel that they belong to a real project anymore. And that was what was rather fun about it. So... I would like to convert back to the project."

Posted by wendy5 almost 3 years ago

Crabs of the World in its traditional project form doesn't use the auto-aggregator, so we're good there!

Posted by sea-kangaroo almost 3 years ago

@loarie done. Thanks for the instructions! Kinda counter-intuitive but now I get it. I think? Reduced my # of species by c. 15% which is what I wanted anyway because of our very high crap:good stuff ratio.

Posted by dcoopercem almost 3 years ago

Hi @loarie,
We looked at the Texas Nature Trackers projects (this includes the following from the above list):
@texasnaturetrackers => Herps of Texas; Mammals of Texas; Texas Whooper Watch; Birds of Texas; Texas Milkweeds and Monarchs
@marshamay => Freshwater Mussels of Texas
@mdwarriner => Terrestrial Mollusks of Texas; Bees and Wasps of Texas
@craighensley => All Texas Nature

We have some pretty specific and critical needs that are keeping these as traditional projects - custom fields, the ability to track curation/curator IDs, and large numbers of users who have already given us permission to view true coordinates that we'd lose if we converted to collection. However, we really don't have any need to keep the aggregator on for any of these, so we've turned off the "Automatically add observations to this project" setting on all of these projects.
Thanks,
@taniahomayoun & @craighensley (on behalf of @texasnaturetrackers)

Posted by texasnaturetrackers almost 3 years ago

@loarie,
The one on flowering tree is too small an area for the aggregator to work.. It is not apparent that picking a place will turn on the aggregator and have negative impact on iNaturalist. In fact the text seems to suggest that one should select a place.

"Not finding the place you want?
Try looking through our existing places and make sure you're getting the name of the place correct. If you really can't find the place you want, consider creating a new place, but please make sure you're not just duplicating an existing place."

Posted by gancw1 almost 3 years ago

Thanks for responding @gancw1, I'm still not understanding why if the aggregator isn't helping your traditional projects you aren't willing to turn it off. But if its too difficult to back and forth in this thread, maybe we can discuss somewhere/sometime else

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

regarding to Nature Paillon and Wild Orchids of Western Palaearctic : Mainly, I don't like the new interface, that I found more difficult to deal with. Informations are not accessible the same way, though I can't find any one lacking, they're just... placed differently, and I fell uncomfortable with. Most probably I could deal with this, but still... Not my cup of tea. I mean,I've been using Collection Projects for a while (for as many long as I have but not choice, actually), and I think I could handle with them, but still, I don't like it.
The possibility to switch from a display to another could greatly help me jump the stemp. For example, I totally dislike the idea of having "latest seen" atop, and need to scroll down to eventually find the map, which I find totally inappropriate for the use I make.

The must be wild condition is absolutely necessary for both those two projects, as the first one focuses on the spontaneus organisms in wild parts of a city - and we're certainly not interested in numerous pictures of cats, dogs, and goldfish..., and the second one focuses on a group largely cultivated - Orchids, namely. Even with it, you have no idea of the time I spend removing countless entire pages and pages of Phalaenopsis-in-pot obs. that have nothing to deal with the project.

By the way, just an idea, in order not to forget this : this should probably be a good point to see what we can work on in order to incitate users - especially app users, I think - to use the "captivity" button when needed : place it higher, maybe if AI recognise a taxon not native, or commonly known as cultivated - such as Phalaenopsis - , could display a warning message such as 'this is a frequently cultivated taxon: are you sure this one is spontaneous ?', that sort of things. End of digression.

But, you're right, I didn't check for the "verifiable" rule. I should try it, and see what it gives. First project, Nature Paillon, should tolerate this.

On the other hand, the access to obscured coordinates is another problem, especially for the second project, Wild Orchids of the Western Palearctic, which I started, but of which I am almost a mere administrator and curious : the project is now used by many peoples, and I receive demands from user on the way they would like to see the project evolving. Here, we have a problem as some taxons are especially vulnerable (some known by a single station), and we encourage users to hide some location when they're publicly shared. This is permitted by the fact that administrators could ave access to hidden location, and would be a problem if no longer. Whatever, given the number, not of mere participants, but of true users of this second project, I don't feel I should change it without at least notify them, or some of them, and possibly asking their opinion.

I understand the limitation the agregate system impose to the website, and I would happily do anything needed to improve this, and keep using inat on a good way. But, with old, historic projects of importance, this is still a big step. I will do if I need to. Maybe some possibilies could be discussed in the future on the way to improve Collection Projects in order to make them more attractive - for example, an interface allowing the administrators to reorganize the different elements of the project page, or to chose between different displays, would be, to me, much appreciated.

Posted by fabienpiednoir almost 3 years ago

@loarie : As I feared, I just badly injured my historical project, Nature Paillon:
as you recommended, I provisionnaly removed the " must be wild " rule, and provisionnaly switched of the aggregator, to see what the simulator would display. Or so did I think.
As I feared, the new display totally doesn't fit me. Among other, the journal frame only displays the title of the article, with no aperçu of the content, which is almost useless for a use with pupils.
I tried then to revert to the old version, to see what it could give, and found, of course, that I couldn't switch 'on' back the agregator. Of course. Now my working tool is broken, and I don't know how to fix it. I feel I'm now condemned to use the new version, or see the aggregation system lost for ever. Year of works lost if I have to remake all of my classworks, and fix all of the broken links. I'll try to keep it manually for a while, but I don't think I'll have the motivation to go on for a long time. I feel trapped...

Posted by fabienpiednoir almost 3 years ago

@fabienpiednoir I turned the aggregator back on for https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/nature-paillon which you reverted back to a traditional project. I'm hearing that your use-cases are well suited to a collection project but you prefer the layout of the old traditional projects.

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

thanks to everyone who responded. It definitely helped us understand these use cases. For now we've scaled back the aggregator to run once a day rather than once an hour and will leave it here for now and perhaps revisit a bit later.

The use cases we're hearing, roughly in order of frequency are:
1) didn't realize they could convert a project from traditional to collection project
2) hassles re: access to hidden coordinates. Namely if the traditional project has a mix of people trusting with observations the observer adds AND observations anyone adds not wanting to loose the subset the observer adds (even though the aggregator prevents gathering new data with this type of trust)
3) traditional project "must be on list" rule can't be easily replicated with lots of collection project taxon observation requirements
4) like being able to manually control whats in a project in addition to whats aggregated, sometimes as a way to get around iNat choosing not showing obscured observations in small places for species sensitivity reasons.
5) like being able to automate putting their traditional project icon on a lots observations of people who haven't joined
6) like being able to have observation fields associated with the project (even though the aggregator prevents opportunities for observers to fill these out)
7) like other traditional project features such as curator_identification, but also like the 'aggregating' features of collection projects
8) like other traditional project design such as the older layout, but also like the 'aggregating' features of collection projects

Thanks all!

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

Many thanks !

And thanks too for your summary: looks like I missed things in my previous reading. Didn't mention it, but I add a "+1" to points 4) & 6) in your list.

Posted by fabienpiednoir almost 3 years ago

I want to go back to the way of uploading information as I was before, that collection project does not allow direct shipments and I use direct shipping a lot, how do I return? @loarie

Posted by eugenio_padilla almost 3 years ago

Hi @eugenio_padilla what do you mean by direct shipments?

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

When I take a picture with my mobile, I get an announcement that it is not the collection projects do not allow direct shipments and I cannot upload the image

Posted by eugenio_padilla almost 3 years ago

en español aparece "los proyectos de colección no permiten envíos directos"

Posted by eugenio_padilla almost 3 years ago

@eugenio_padilla - correct in collection projects suitable observations automatically appear in the project so you don't have to add them. Thats also what the traditional project aggregator does. The aggregator automatically adds observations to the project so people don't have to add them manually. If you'd like me to revert a project from a collection project to a traditional project thats fine. Tell me which project. But if you want people to manually add observations to your project instead of automatically may we turn the aggregator off?

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

ok if I already saw the observation appeared, very good, let me try it more to understand it better, thanks and greetings!

Posted by eugenio_padilla almost 3 years ago

Done! Thanks for the ping @loarie

Posted by johnnybirder almost 3 years ago

Our Wildflowers of Florida project got majorly messed up when making the change. I no longer manage the project, though, so I'm not sure what changes were made.

Posted by petekleinhenz almost 3 years ago

@petekleinhenz , this project? https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wildflowers-of-florida can you elaborate? FWIW I don't think this one was ever in the traditional-project-with-aggregator-turned-on state as its not in my list above

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

@loarie

Yeah, FWC Paso manages it so I'm not sure what happened. Maybe they changed it to a collection project for some reason?

I logged in and it looked like it was still only accepting flowering plants but several people messaged me and said that is was accepting various species that were not flowering plants. I didn't have time to look into it, but people seemed upset about it.

Posted by petekleinhenz almost 3 years ago

@petekleinhenz It looks like it has a Flowering Plants (Subphylum Angiospermae) requirement so its only showing flowering plants (the Class Magnoliopsida and Class Liliopsida requirements are redundant and could be removed). But happy to help troubleshoot with @fwc-paso if there's problem. Please tell him to mention me if there's an issue.

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

@loarie Thanks!

Posted by petekleinhenz almost 3 years ago

@loarie,
I have converted 1 project to collection project and turn off aggregator for another one. Let me know if there is any other project using aggregator.

Posted by gancw1 almost 3 years ago

@loarie Thanks, I made the switch and it is fine for my project. Sorry for the time lag; I had it on my to-do list but I got a bit swamped by some other projects.

Posted by brewbooks almost 3 years ago

@loarie
What a headache for you to manage all this. Thanks for your effort.
We are willing to make this change to https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/spruill-farm-conservation-project which is a survey of all biota within our geographical boundaries, and which we presume to be a representative slice of the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula.

It looks like we stand to lose several hundred observations and a hundred species. I believe the reason we lose the bulk of these is because they are a "casual" grade observation, though the circle of uncertainty may be an issue with some.
If, say, our skilled birders have entered their lists but not made photos, these observations are useful to us even though they are not verifiable research-grade observations. How can I preserve them?

Posted by sarracenia almost 3 years ago

@sarracenia your current project has 962 observations in it
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&project_id=5988&verifiable=any
it looks like if you convert it to a collection project that includes all quality grades (research, needs_id, casual) it will have 811
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=94609&verifiable=any
whereas if you convert it to a collection project that excludes casual observations it will have 567
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=94609&verifiable=true

The difference between the 811 and the 962 are probably mostly due to the uncertainty circle you mention and iNaturalist's efforts to keep observations of sensitive species displaying in association with very small places since this could allow the public to pinpoint their location

Posted by loarie almost 3 years ago

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