Fungi on the internet: Facebook vs. everything else
For me, the three best things about the internet for Fungi are Mycoquebec, MO and iNat. Facebook is as harmful as it is helpful, in my opinion. You feel me? Otherwise, why would we need SO Many mushroom pages?
iNat gets made fun of a lot in certain circles. The one I'm familiar with would say something like this: "iNat, you say? Really? Every time I go on there it's a shit show of bad ID's and top down pics?!? No provisonal names, slow taxonomic curation. Hahaha, this guy! Am I right?! Hi-five! Damn, it's not even close to MO, he's way off his rocker."
To those people I would say, I'm not going to say it's not these things. In some ways it is. For example, what if I told you that there are almost as many observations in the last three months as there are on all of MO? That surely would explain the quality issues.
"But there are no good people on there!" What if I tell you that 6 out of the top ten mushrooom ID'ers who I know are my better have identified more mushrooms than are on all of MO?
"But MO?!!" Yeah, I hear you, it needs help, as much or more than we've been giving it. I'm not here to tell you to pick sides. I want MO to keep going and growing as much as anyone. I would switch back if it were easier, or upload my iNat stuff there if it were possible.
Facebook was cool, at one time, I am told, and they're still are pockets of good. I am hopeful still, but it is a microcosm of the world we live in.
So my point is this: take some of the time you would spend on there, and put it into MO or iNat. iNat needs the ID help, and MO is probably good with ID help but, $ or programmers, I don't know, I'm neither of those things right now.
