I thought I would start this as a separate thread from the one for logging 500 errors and other problems. I’m starting to get seriously worried about iSpot’s survival. I absolutely love iSpot and think it offers something that no other platform does. But the constant difficulties of access are making it almost unusable. There’s a small core group of long term users (fewer than 100, maybe?) who are prepared to persevere through the problems, but I can’t see most new users doing the same. It’s just too frustrating. Chris Brooks said on another thread recently ‘We must be very careful that iSpot does not become a clique’ and I totally agree, but that’s hard to avoid if most new users are being put off very early on. And to be honest, even I am using iSpot less these days, because it often won’t cooperate when I have the time and opportunity to log on. I know some of us switch devices or browsers to try and get around the error messages, but for people who only use a phone it’s even more frustrating. I’m not sure what the solution is. I’m sure the OU has very little resource to invest in it. What do we do? It makes me sad…
One thing I would take issue with is the above as the OU has invested hundreds of thousands of pounds if not more in the system i.e. beyond any external grants. The issue is always that there is a gap between external pots of money and how to bridge these gaps especially when major work is needed.
I, too, would be devastated if iSpot finishes. We only know each other through the site and I’m sure a few of us would like to keep in contact with a few others if only not to lose access to all the valuable expertise on here. It’s a brillliant community. Not really something I want to think about and I will persevere for as long as the site is available.
Well it’s good to know that the OU has significantly invested in it in the past. But it’s not really usable at the moment. I can’t see schools or OU students persevering with it, and really that’s one of its major functions, isn’t it?
honestly. I think we are very lucky. We can make the site work with a dose of patience. I am VERY grateful for the opportunity to express my interest in Nature and Photography and to engage with like-minded courteous and knowledgeable people.
I gain a LOT here, it is not disappointing
I am a fierce critic, ask Mike. I make demands of him, other admins and the site itself,
I will not stop trying to post nor encouraging others to do so, nor will I stop requesting improvements or corrections.
I have just had an EPIC, It took me 15 mins to lay out a post (the iDandelion colour one) to find the site had (apparently) shut down. I was allowed to build the Observation, stage by stage but NOT publish it. I cleared my browser (I use a PC), opened a new log in and went back to the Observation, which had completely stalled. I tried submitting again - and ended up with TWO identical Obs. - better’n none!.
A challenge but not a disaster - iSpot does not do disasters (it tried hard in 2017), not like a Bank might do.
I love it and I like the challenge. I am REALLY glad I do not use a Mobile phone to engage with iSpot
Now GO here
and make iSpot work for you - please
DON’T get me wrong. I returned to the site immediately after writing that. It was apparently BROKE, I could not log in or out.
I had some lunch, sat in the sunshine, took a glass of beer (I am LONG retired).
What IS the worry Mike is that we are not retaining newbies or Experts
Take Ambroise https://www.ispotnature.org/view/user/84201/activity-tracker
and Favourites 2025 - #15 by dejayM
Full of promise and enthusiasm, came for a few days only. Drop him an email Mike and perhaps also some selected NewBies - THEY are our life-blood
I totally agree about new people. It must be very off-putting to have the site crash so very often. We’ve all lost observations when it’s shut down unexpectedly - how much worse is that for someone posting their first or second or third observation? I suspect they will just defect to Facebook, which does an ok job in places, but has nothing like the level of engaged interest that iSpot does. And what about people like Steve Smailes for whom a phone is the only option? He quite regularly mentions that he’s only been able to access the site for 20 minutes a day - the rest of the time he’s locked out. He’s extremely patient, but there are limits for everyone. If we lose experts like that, it’s a real issue.
Slightly off topic but I have had a couple of apparently AI generated posts on the forum flagged recently (the forum software itself stopped them). So be slightly careful with any new users that they are real. If there is one tiny advantage in being small and under the radar it is that we have not been blighted by these things but they could start.
I have been looking at ispot on (android) phone again and was surprised that I managed an observation within moments and I was already logged in which was odd since I had not used the site for many weeks on phone so it must have remembered my login details which is something I try to avoid with all sites incase the phone is lost.
So I then manually deleted all the history, which on phone seems to be different to asking it to automatically do this when you logout or switch phone off, then logged in again manually and this time got the problems with spinning disk and not letting me do anything. Tried closing down browser which should have deleted cookies etc and again got spinning disk when I logged in again and not letting me progress. Then did the more severe manual delete of cookies etc then logged back in and it was fine.
Basically my suspicion is that the site is worse on the phone, not just that it is more awkward to navigate but it is also doing something different with cookies etc that makes it more awkward to simply reset things by logging out (with cookies automatically set to delete) and logging back in again i.e. the method that seems to work for me on desktop does not seem to work properly on phone and I don’t know why. Suspect this just confirms what others have found.
I have the impression that Ambroise came here specifically to look at the Mentha observations, so he may well have dropped out regardless of the state of the site.
Thanks for starting this thread Sarah - I couldn’t agree more, it is very worrying and I too love iSpot and would be so upset if it closed. There are clearly some workarounds for those who are able and/or willing to use them, but I guess the point for me is, should we have to be using workarounds. I’m interested to know if there is a plan in place to try and resolve the issues or if there simply isn’t the time/resources to do anything about it - at least at the moment? If that is the case, is there anything we as a community can do? If not, then I guess people will just make their own minds up about if and how they continue to engage with the site. It would be such a shame if it were lost - and as @northernteacher commented, I would definitely like a way of keeping in touch with users. It’s weird because, in addition to all the amazing wildlife knowledge on here, to me anyway, it does also almost feel like we are “friends”. I’ve even thought from time to time it might be nice to physically or virtually meet up, but obviously I’m digressing there and that isn’t what the site, or this thread, is about. In summary, I think it is testament to the inherent strengths and qualities of iSpot that there is an enormous amount of loyalty to it from regular users. This will hopefully mean it will continue, but as it stands currently i’m personally finding it very difficult to stay motivated.
Well-made points, with which I agree wholeheartedly (I did add a less well-constructed rant to that topic myself).
What we need, I suspect, is a celebrity to champion iSpot: but that’s not something that’s likely to happen. Crowdfunding might be an option, but what could we highlight that makes iSpot any more worthy than the many other wildlife-oriented sites?
Moreover, the “post-truth” ethos is already evolving into a “narcissistic nutcase” one. Wildlife - and indeed anything but the pursuit of personal gain - is very much out there in the darkness. I’m with you on the “struggling to stay motivated” thing - it would be easier if the rest of the world had not suddenly regressed into a second, spoilt-brat, childhood!
Feedback from this mornings meeting with programmers. They are continuing to maintain the site, specifically over the past couple of weeks they have got the two separate stages before the live site working again as these servers had become out of synch which was preventing proper updates. This is allowing them to update various bits of software that are used in the backend of the website and to a limited extent the front end. These are mainly security/bug fixes and similar and will need to be tested before going live in a couple of weeks. They have also been working on some of the admin scripts that help me to administer the site and looking at some other bug fixes.
Basically they are working on the site still and will continue to do so. There is a chance that some of these updates and bug fixes may improve the site but to sort it out properly needs a large input of funding to rewrite one particular large chunk of code that can’t be done in little bits. This will take a programmer several months full time so until we get this funding via a grant or other source we can’t do this rewrite.
Will copy this message into the other similar forum thread to keep any others updated if they don’t see it here.
It’s enormously helpful to know that, Mike. Thanks very much for the update.
.
And thank you to everyone else who’s contributed to this thread. I was feeling fairly despairing when I started it, but solidarity helps a lot! I think we just need to hang on in there if we can. I find iSpot a bit of a refuge from a bonkers world, to be honest. It may only be a tiny outpost of sanity, but that’s got to be better than nothing. We are at least contributing to something positive and supportive.
There are lots of sites which are arguably better than iSpot for specific orders - hoverflies, ladybirds, birds, Hymenoptera, Bugs etc. But I enjoy the community ‘feel’ of iSpot which, even though there are not many regulars, still tries to be outward-looking and supportive of newcomers. When I was working I would never have had the time to participate but now I’m more-or-less retired, I find it a nice distraction when I’ve had my fill of the newspapers or other ‘heavy’ things. It’s not exactly escapism, more something that gives my life a bit of balance. Perhaps it’s a bit childish but I do quite enjoy posting photos I’ve taken, even if some of them look as if a pane of polycarbonate got in the way.
I don’t know about a reunion. It might work - but it might not. (I joined a facebook group with people who went to my secondary school and it isn’t proving to be particularly gripping. Mind you, I think my class mates were not the ‘joining’ kind. I expect quite a few of them are either dead or even less compus mentis than me!)
So glad I found this and enjoyed reading all the thoughts expressed - you- collectively said it all for me. I’ve not been posting images recently, wondering if there was any point.
I have masses of observations from the Cape - with some only seen the season after a fire or declining slowly post fire.
I’m trying to add links to make it easier for anyone to check my ID’s - sometimes one observation is not enough to spot all the criteria for a firm ID, but sometimes it’s possible when more observations are combined.
For those who just want to see what a day in the fynbos is like I have date-tagged most.
Thanks to Mike, DJ and others who have encouraged me when I thought I was the only one on a sinking ship in the Cape of Storms - so hope this storm can be ridden out, or if not, that iSpot can be archived - including the comments.
Please take a look - and enjoy especially the Red-listed species that occur so frequently.
thanks Mike for taking the time here
The problem is not with how much the OU has invested in the past, but how much it is willing to invest in the future. I does sadden me to see how flakey the system has become recently, and I have become very quick at deleting the site data and logging in again. In the past I would have scripted the whole thing, but these days you expect a platform to be reliable or you move on to one that is.
I have used other platforms to record observations, especially if I want to get one onto gbif. However, iSpot does have the unique value of being entertaining and fun. As yet I have not seen a comment or observation on another platform that makes me laugh. In fact it is rare to see a comment at all, and as for going off piste that would probably be beyond the pail
That does not mean that the observations are any less serious, and in fact I have seen many more on iSpot than elsewhere which are frankly amazing. Many have inspired me to find the same to see for myself.
It does seem a pity that many of these don’t seem to going onto the NBN etc. It feels like an underused resource, and it would be a great pity if they were ultimately lost. That would feel like a waste of a lot of human resource which would come expensive if you had to pay someone to do it.
Well started @sarahloving
Thanks so much Roger - that expresses a lot of what I feel too. As Ken points out, other platforms can be better for specific things (I always use the Facebook hoverflies group to check hoverfly observations, for example) but there is nothing else that has iSpot’s supportive community. The level of engaged discussion is amazing - I have learnt more than I would have thought possible. And the jokes and conversations that go off at a tangent are a much valued bonus. The key problem, as you say, is that ‘you expect a platform to be reliable or you move on to one that is’ - and I do fear that’s what all but the most committed iSpot users will do if it doesn’t become more stable.
Cloud-cuckoo-land thinking:
If there is ever any money to work on iSpot, please could someone separate “AI offerings” from “comments” in the List View?
I have traditionally stopped off at most observations, and always if there is a comment added. But now, I find myself frustrated, because “Plant” observations quickly attract Pl@ntNet suggestions, and I have no interest in them: however, they are counted as comments.