Expert drain from iSpot

21

Progress is an app. It is what the user wants.

The user does not want to know that the site is on their web browser on the phone. They wants to use an app: everyone uses and app. They are simple to use!!!

Dont most of the Androids support higher languages? How come thousands of companies manage to have apps? Surely they dont all have the money to keep dozens of versions working? And yet there are apps galore!!

22

There may be bindings of the Android APIs to other languages, but the Android Development Kit is built over Java.

23

How can we get them back? Fire the IT staff. Bring back simplicity --> why does everything have to have just that one extra click, notification, function etc. (not to mention track changes). The site used to bring a lot of joy, now I think it has been the first time in weeks that I made effort to log in. Most probably crash and burn
but I don’t think all hope is lost, I think the site can be great again (“Make iSpot great again!”, lol kinda sounds familiar right
). Problem is just: I’ve lost faith in the site --> trust is difficult to get back once it has been dumped in the drain
especially seeing as how many hours we have given up of our own time to help with identifications.

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24

These are lovely ideals: but how are we going to achieve this?
These are empty rhetoric. We need stuff that we can do other than get morebird and write slogons and beet our chests.

25

Empty for you yes. Sure, may be some ranting, but hey, no one listens anyways :wink:

Okay, stuff that can be done? Exactly that, at least get the people in charge to listen to and take the community members’ issues seriously. That would be a nice start. How do we that? No idea, I am all ears.

26

I was astounded to find that there are no Ispot images on Google. Thus if an expert is searching for his/her favorite Taxa on the nett, they will not even know that we (Ispot) have data on that Taxa. Have we not inadvertently shut out the Experts???

27

Now why were you astounded?

The OU asserts that iSpot is being indexed, but I see no evidence whatsoever of this. Certainly I have yet to see a single southern African observation on iSpot (although there are still oodles of the old site URLs still on iSpot, and these do link to the new site, but their number dwindles daily).
Apparently all sorts of things have been tried to fix this, but nothing is happening. And they are trying something else again early next week.

It is easy to see when the site is being indexed. The number of Googlebots will increase the guest numbers in the “Whose online” into the hundreds. So long as it is only one or two dozen guests, the site is not being indexed by Google.

28

Well lets hope that their new fix works

29

I have not used ispot much since the system changed as it seemed a retrograde step. The process of posting and then getting back confirmation or identification is now so long winded its not worth the effort.

30

It has got a lot easier with the new changes tracker, particularly if you use the filters, It’s still harder work than it used to be.

I hope people will come back - I use Facebook groups too, but posts there tend to get lost after a few days. It’s better for discussion, but more ephemeral,

I think it’s important to support the people who still post on iSpot. Hopefully more improvements will restore some lost functions and make it easier to use.

31

I think the writing is on the wall. iSpot is haemorrhaging users.

I played with iNaturalist today and a surprising amount of our old faithfuls are now there. It is almost as if it is not when we will go there, but when the last few will be going 


Utterly dismal. Reprehensible. Unbelievable.
We chose iSpot becuase we believed that the Open University would not let this happen. What a mistake!

or perhaps we will just create our own southern African site 


32

iNaturalist is where I’m hiding. :slight_smile: I come and visit here and even post every now and then, but I feel like no one cares about any observations any more.

33

We do care, but no one listens!
We do respond, but there is no decent way of you knowing 


34

I have opened an ‘account’ in


It is not quite so easy to use as iSpot WAS and it’s slow to upload but a remarkable thing happened today. I loaded in a picture of an obscure seaweed, the image was good enough to be recognised by the system and its correct name was offered (it was not in the EXiF). Not only that, I have received agreements and had dialogue with another user. It bodes well.
I am no expert, so slowly ‘draining away’ will mean nothing to anyone here,
35

You would be missed even so. Try to hang on and not be pulled down the plughole just yet.

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36

So long and thanks for all the fish!

But there is no contest: www.inaturalist.org it is

37

sad but true, it has its design faults but IT WORKS and works well