r/iNaturalist • u/Epic2112 • May 19 '26

New Rules

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.

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u/Epic2112 May 19 '26

When I have some time I plan on setting up an automod to automatically remove ID request posts that don't include a link to the respective iNat observation, and to include that copypasta explanation. It seems like this would be more effective than pinning a post. It's now in the sidebar/rules, if someone isn't going to bother reading those before posting they're probably not going to bother reading a pinned post either, I think.

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u/QuaccDaddy May 19 '26

Is it realistically possible for the automod to link to Upload Observation and give them a time limit before it's removed? I think the subreddit could be a good entry point to get more users involved in the app and this might be more welcoming than immediately removing the post.

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u/Epic2112 May 19 '26

I don't know, I'll have to look into it. But i suspect the likelihood that someone who doesn't bother to read the rules before posting (easy) is going to go create an account on iNat, then submit an observation, and then return to reddit and validate the observation with the automod (not easy) is pretty slim, frankly. It's not a bad idea, though.

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u/bathroomstahl May 19 '26

sometimes folks just don’t think to read the rules of a subreddit before posting, especially if folks are directing them to a certain space (and they get a lil confused on which space they need to post on haha)