Photos of threatened species from iNaturalist

Gallery

Photos of threatened species from iNaturalist

There are around 8.7 million living species.^[1] Scientists estimate that at least 150–200 of these go extinct every day.^[2] With the help of the IUCN Red List we can estimate which species are in the risk zone of soon going extinct. Wikipedia has many articles on these species, but few of them have images or illustrations because of the low population of these species.

Critically endangered species

iNaturalist is, according to Wikipedia, "a citizen science project and online social network of naturalists". Their contributors try to photograph these species and confirm their identities. By June 2020, over 41,800,000 observations on the platform had been made. In some cases an upload to iNaturalist is the first known photograph of a species.^[3]

Endangered species

The users of the website can, just like on Flickr, release their images under a Creative Commons license. Many take advantage of this and release their images, but in most cases under a "non-commercial" or "non-derivative" license, which is incompatible with Wikimedia Commons since they only accept images which can be freely shared and remixed even in commercial products, and thereby incompatible with Wikipedia as well.

Vulnerable species

I've spent the past week doing outreach and messaging users on iNaturalist. I've located observations with identifications marked as research-grade (meaning that at least two thirds of all users agree on a species, with a minimum of two users) where no image existed on Wikimedia Commons or Wikipedia, and asked them to consider re-licensing their image in order to be able to host it here. So far, I've convinced 40 users to relicense 43 images where we have had articles on a species but no free image. Many of these are marked as endangered or critically endangered on the IUCN Red List.

Near threatened

All I need to do is work 10 times as fast – or get help from 10 other users – and I might be able to illustrate more articles on species than go extinct each day. At least I can help out and get photos of species before it is all too late.

Least concern

References

^ Black, Richard (2011-08-23). "Species count put at 8.7 million". BBC News. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
^ Vidal, John (2010-08-17). "Scientist: Mass Extinction Happening Unlike Anything The World Has Seen Since Dinosaurs Disappeared". HuffPost. Retrieved 2020-07-27.
^ "First Known Photographs of Living Specimens". iNaturalist. Retrieved 30 July 2020.

← Previous "Gallery"

Next "Gallery" →

In this issue

2 August 2020 (all comments)

Discuss this story

These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache.

Thanks, @Josve05a:. I really enjoyed this. And it shows one of the best things about Wikipedia - that one person working alone can accomplish so much. Another thing that can be very good about Wikipedia is that 1 person's good work can attract other editors to do more good work, which attracts more editors, and so on. Folks should leave Jonatan a message here or on his talk page, if they want to help. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:44, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks indeed, @Josve05a:. Very useful work, and well communicated. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 01:08, 3 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
iNaturalist is indeed quite excellent and so there are several good lessons to be learnt from it:

Their app for making observations and uploading them is quite reliable and easy to use. Wikipedia's apps, on the other hand, seem to be more chaotic and confusing and I'm not aware of a good one for taking and uploading pictures which works on iOS. I use the official Wikipedia app in a small way for browsing but its focus seems to be on reading Wikipedia and not helping to update it.
iNaturalist has a process of verifying observations to ensure that the pictures are what they say they are. This starts with an excellent AI which usually makes a good guess at the species. This is then supplemented by human verification and this tends to be done by people who specialise in particular types of species. Having your observations classed as research grade is then useful to researchers and good, positive feedback. How unlike Wikipedia where the main feedback given to contributors is some form of scolding. And our pictures don't seem to get any kind of verification – just unpleasant nagging about copyright which is often followed by peremptory deletion.
iNaturalist is relaxed about the use of CC-NC. And I suppose that the academic researchers are fine with it too. So, why is Wikipedia so insistent that people have to be able to make money from our work? This is done to the point that CC-NC images will be deleted rather than used, regardless of quality and lack of good substitutes. This makes no sense when we are willing to use copyright images as fair use. Rather than trying to persuade iNaturalist's users to change their sensible policy, we should be amending our own intolerant ways per WP:IAR.

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:13, 4 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Some thought I have regarding your comment:

Wikipedia (and Wikimedia Commons) has a mission to provide free knowledge Free in this context was not limited to free as in ’’gratis’’ but also as in ’’libre’’. Wikimedia DE (Germany) sold offline-Wikipedia on D-ROM a few years back (for the cost of production without profit). That is still seen as commercial, and therefore would not be allowed if Wikipedia was licensed under a -NC license. We want others to be able to reuse as much of the information as possible we host, but you are free to upload -NC images locally to Wikipedia, as long as it has a fair use rationale (just as with fully copyrighted images), but I would not want us to start hosting -NC images on Wikimedia Commons. iNaturalist's goal is not to provide freely licensed images of species, but to track and identify observation of specimens. That’s why they also allow fully copyrighted images to be hosted.

The ’”’nagging’’” you mentioned is crucial, if we want to be what we claim to be. Wikimedia Commons wants to host free images which re-users are able to actually use. It is not copyright paranoia to want to ensure that Reuters can trust us that a work is free to be used (we still reserve against mistakes in the disclaimer). Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 18:01, 5 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, the nagging is not at all necessary because, as you say, the disclaimers provide general protection. Just about every other major site takes down images as and when somene complains. The only reason we have lots of nagging is presumably because that's what the naggers like to do. It's just like Wikipedia where we have lots of nags who constantly go around tagging issues rather than fixing them and trying to delete content rather than creating it. See jobsworth for more details. iNaturalist is refreshingly free from this and that reminds me -- I saw an amazing insect this morning and so have a picture to upload. I'll be doing this on iNaturalist which will tell me what it is... Andrew🐉(talk) 18:24, 5 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

iNaturalist did a great job of identifying my insect. It told me its name in English because I have common name as the default setting there. The English language Wikipedia only has its name in Latin -- a dead and different language. Another win for iNaturalist. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:50, 5 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It would be awesome if within the iNaaturalist app, there was a "I am ok if this is added to a new or existing wikipedia page" function. Even if this was just a checkbox when a person uploads. This would really help all the wikipedians to help create better articles for everyone. Ben (talk) 13:18, 4 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's so refreshing to read about your efforts at the intersection of Wikipedia and iNaturalist, @Josve05a:, thank you! I'm a frequent user of iNat and can see how improvements on Wikipedia would also support iNaturalist. I'm very new to Wikipedia editing, but I'd be thrilled to contribute to these efforts too. Please feel free to reach out to me, if you'd like to share more about your method, vision, and experiences. Cheers! Rosiolus the Spider (talk) 21:33, 12 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost needs your help putting together the next issue.

Home

About