Welcome to the iSpot Forum. iSpotnature.org (iSpot) is a place to record and share your nature observations, get help identifying while learning about what you have seen. iSpot hosts a global online community of citizen scientists, students, wildlife enthusiasts, experts and biological recorders.
The iSpot Forum is the online community space to meet and chat with other users on a range of topics. See the post below to find out more about:
• Who is it for?
• What can you find here?
• Why should you come here?
• Where can you read more
• Who is it for? This forum is for iSpot users
• What can you find here? It is for general discussion of wildlife issues and topics of relevance to the iSpot community.
• Why should you come here? Identification of observations and discussion around those identifications is carried out on the main observation pages e.g. by clicking on the add observation button or making comments on existing observations. The forums are for more general discussions such as how to pronounce scientific names, problems with the website, and a whole variety of other topics that do not relate to specific observations.
• Where can they read more (links, resources, etc)? More information about the iSpot Forum can be found at the links below: FAQ - iSpot Forum Terms of Service - iSpot Forum Privacy - iSpot Forum
'Scuse me M, I don’t understand.
but if you get this you have subscribed to receive Mails, so why not have that system in the main site - as a temp fix?
D
ISpot is supported by the Open University, which suggests it has an educational vision.
Since I joined several years ago I have concentrated on adding comments to Observations in my main area of expertise, Marine & Coastal habitats. My comments generally offer directions for a successful id, sometimes including a reference to journal publications, all of which I hope help the poster to improve their skills. The process of helping others usually improves my own understanding too, so a win/win situation.
The CHANGES feature allowed me to see if my comments had been followed up with a successful id by the poster, and importantly, if s/he, or anyone else, had further questions. This is standard educational practice; without the CHANGES option iSpot is severely devalued as a learning resource.
Without CHANGES and TRACK iSpot is USELESS!!!
Say I posted an observation in march 2012 and today an expert comes along and identifies it for me. How on earth would I know??? What on earth is the point of iSPot without these feaures?
I especially used favourites to keep track of interesting observations and see what changes (comments or IDs and agreeements) - and now I cannot even know if my own observations of last week have been given IDs!
This has changed iSpot from an interactive site to a mere useless depository!
