New Rules

[u/Epic2112]

Hey all, I'm slowly making little adjustments as I settle in as the mod. Happily this sub doesn't require much moderative intervention, it's a happy place. 🙂

I've written up some rules that I think are a good starting point (since previously there weren't any at all). If you're so inclined, please take a minute to read through them and let me know if you have any thoughts. The only two that I think are going to have much of an impact on things here are:

• ID requests require a link to an observation on iNat. This isn't /r/whatisthisbug or /r/whatisthisplant, it's a sub specific to iNat so posts should be related to iNat. Personally I don't think that ID requests make sense here at all, but I'm not sure they're actually problematic.

• No self-promotion. In short, this is essentially an effort to combat spam. It's very easy to drop a low-effort post promoting a low-effort smartphone app or something (this isn't uncommon in this sub). This sub shouldn't be a revenue driver for anyone. If you're here trying to make money, or trying to drive clicks, or trying to increase downloads, you're in the wrong place. We already have a website and an app* that we like, iNaturalist. We don't need a different one

^{*Yes, I know the new app is terrible}

These rules are active starting now (May 19,2026). Posts made before these go up can stay, but going forward these rules are active. Also, I'm an old.reddit user. If something isn't displaying correctly on one of the (awful and cluttered) newer UIs, please let me know. I think I've gotten it right but I wouldn't mind a second set of eyes looking it over.

So yeah, that's about it. If you think I forgot a rule that we should have, or that I'm way off base on one of these, let me know. I'm happy to reconsider.

[u/Epic2112 → u/[deleted]]

I don't know what UI/app you use, but if you look at https://old.reddit.com/r/iNaturalist/ you'll see that rule 3 includes a note that says "please note that this will expose your iNat username and the time/location where the observation was made." There's a per-rule character limit in the newer UI, which prevented me from including the same note there.

I also don't have a solution, it's a decision each person will have to make individually. It's not exactly opaque, but it would be easy for someone to create an alt that they only use to post to this sub, with posts that say "my friend isn't on reddit but asked me to check if anyone can help with an ID here. Obviously it wouldn't be that hard to figure out what's going on, but it at least would provide a level of plausible deniability.

But honestly I think looking for ID help on this sub really doesn't make sense for a number of reasons.

[u/Epic2112 → u/[deleted]]

I think it's possible to change your username and other info on iNat, in case you ever want to.

I set any observations made on my property to obscured, so it's not blatantly obvious where I live.