[HN Gopher] Why I left iNaturalist
___________________________________________________________________
Why I left iNaturalist
Author : erutuon
Score : 259 points
Date : 2026-01-09 01:17 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kueda.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (kueda.net)
| gyomu wrote:
| _> They insisted the app needed to be simpler, to cater first to
| incidental users who wanted a quick answer, to be a friction-less
| path to a feeling of contribution. I don't believe that's
| possible while also serving existing users who value (don't
| laugh) the power and nuance of iNat, including, among many other
| things, the way it doesn't give you a quick answer, forcing you
| to consider options when making an identification.
|
| [...]
|
| > iNaturalist the product is fundamentally complicated, and I
| have watched many, many people bounce off that wall of complexity
| over the years, even as I've seen so many people enrich their
| lives after they climb over it._
|
| Oof, as someone working on consumer facing creative software, I
| feel that.
|
| There is some sort of higher calling to making tools that truly
| teach things to people, augments their mental models and
| knowledge of the world, taps into their curiosity and creativity
| - but demands some sort of effort in return.
|
| All those aspirations are kind of "dirty words", as they go
| against the currently accepted playbook of software that's as
| "frictionless" and "intuitive" as possible - the goal being a
| viral product with the potential to gather 10 million users
| overnight, which requires superficial, immediate results, and not
| really asking anything from your users unless it fits in a single
| screen/single tap flow.
|
| Especially relevant in the current context of generative AI,
| where I've heard some argue that actually expecting people to
| build skill or knowledge is akin to discrimination, and anyone
| should be able to generate a novel without knowing how to write,
| a song without knowing how to compose, a painting without knowing
| how to draw.
| japhyr wrote:
| Like so many others, I've gotten into birding in the last few
| years. I've known so many people who choose eBird over
| iNaturalist because it's "easier to use". But that's exactly
| why I don't really enjoy eBird. So many people are just running
| Merlin, and dumping whatever it picks up to eBird.
|
| There are way fewer observations on iNaturalist, but I know how
| much to trust every one of them.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I have a hand in some complex e-commerce flows and it's really
| difficult. Similar to selecting a cell phone plan, a cable
| package, or a car trim level with options, but in a different
| space.
|
| We have all sorts of information that consumers could use to
| understand what combination of products will give them only the
| features they want and maximize the discounts. The complexity
| comes mostly from third-party terms.
|
| But putting even 20% of that information in one screen is just
| a horrible UX. And guiding them creates rigid journeys that
| they can't break out from. This, despite some great UX design
| talent. It's just a really hard problem.
|
| Nobody wants users to have to learn all this crap, but
| protecting them from it means the optimal thing happens only if
| people choose exactly the right path.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| iNaturalist ranks right up there with Wikipedia in importance.
|
| It is more than one organisation, but rather a central org + a
| network of regional organisations. The regional organisation
| provides a lot of biological technical expertise. Citizen
| scientists alone would not be able to correctly handle the
| complex taxonomic issues you have in biology... or even basic
| identification in many cases.
|
| Where the organisation(s) sometimes go awry, in my personal
| opinion, is forgetting they are the custodian of citizen science
| data, not the source of it.
| tptacek wrote:
| Having never used iNaturalist, but as someone who believes that
| Wikipedia might be one of the most important knowledge
| resources created in the last 100 years, I'd love to hear more
| about why you think this.
| turtle_ wrote:
| It's a living biodiversity record. That kind of data has had
| an impact on things like: understanding human impact on the
| macro environment, ID new species, provide scientists with
| more accurate population distributions etc. Perhaps
| controversial, but the data has also been critical to
| computer science, specifically computer vision and AI
| algorithms. eg what's the bird in this picture?
| chneu wrote:
| I use it a lot. My ex is a biologist and they use it a ton.
|
| It's a massive dataset. There's nothing quite like it. The
| way people collaborate and verify information on iNat is
| invaluable.
|
| The best thing about iNat is the passionate people on there.
| If you don't know an ID, just post it and within a day
| someone will correct it. It's crazy.
|
| Download Seek and go try it out. Make sure to sign up for
| iNat and connect your seek to iNat so you can contribute.
| kulahan wrote:
| Why do you recommend Seek? I've been using the iNat app
| (though since it was released, they've been asking me to
| upgrade to the newer app) and it seems fine. Take a picture
| or upload an existing one, get recommendations for ID, then
| upload to the community for further consensus!
| Tomte wrote:
| Seek is annoying, because it throws up some kind of
| ,,please don't disturb nature" dialog box every time you
| start it to take a photo. I hve seen that warning
| hundreds of times, why can't i disable it after a few
| confirmations?
|
| I've moved to the main iNaturalist app, and it does
| everything Seek does, but better and it's generally also
| faster.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I use it to ID cool insects I come across, I get responses
| within few minutes to hours.
| nemo wrote:
| Between iNaturalist and Wikipedia, for me iNaturalist is the
| more significant of the two. I use iNat every day, have many
| tens of thousands of observations, and using it I've learned
| to identify thousands of birds, plants, bugs, fungi, and
| other things out there. Now I can name trees, plants, birds,
| et al, but more than that I understand better how they fit
| together into ecosystems. Also I've learned a lot of taxonomy
| which actually helps inform my view of the world a lot. In
| the process I've connected a lot more to nature, and thanks
| to iNat (and eBird) I now spent a lot more time doing
| meaningful things exploring wild spaces and spend less time
| scrolling on web pages. Wikipedia's invaluable as well, and
| completely indispensable, but between the two it's been less
| significant for me actually directly learning about the
| natural world I live in.
| geokon wrote:
| It's interesting to contrast with Wikipedia. I'm not deeply
| involved with either, so I'm talking out of my ass and would be
| curious to hear other people's thoughts here. But Wikipedia has
| gone to great lengths to make the data side, Wikidata, and the
| app/website, decoupled. I'm guessing iNaturalist hasn't?
|
| The OpenStreetMaps model is also interesting. Where they
| basically only provide the data and expect others to make
| Apps/Websites
|
| That said, it's also interesting that there hasn't been any big
| hit with people building new apps on top of Wikidata (I guess
| the website and Android app are technically different views on
| the same thing)
| gbear605 wrote:
| I'm not convinced that that's an accurate view of Wikidata.
| Wikidata is a basically disconnected project. There is some
| connection, but it's really very minimal and only for a small
| subset of Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is 99% just text
| articles, not data combined together.
|
| Frankly, I think the reason people haven't built apps on top
| of Wikidata is that the data there isn't very useful.
|
| I say this not to diss Wikimedia, as the Wikipedia project
| itself is great and an amazing tool and resource. But
| Wikidata is simply not there.
| mapmeld wrote:
| I am also frustrated with Wikidata. The one practical use
| I've seen is a lot of OpenStreetMap places' multilingual
| names are locked to Wikidata, which makes it harder for a
| troll to drop in and rename something, and may encourage
| maintaining and reusing the data.
|
| But I tried to do some Wikidata queries for stuff like:
| what are all the neighborhoods and districts of Hong Kong,
| all the counties in Taiwan, and it's piecemeal coverage,
| tags different from one entity to another, not everything
| in a group is linked to OSM. It's not a lot of improvement
| over Wikipedia's Category pages.
| kyle-rb wrote:
| Wikidata is a separate project, specifically for structured
| data in the form of semantic triples [0]. It's essentially
| the open-source version of Google's KnowledgeGraph; both
| sourced a lot of their initial data from Metaweb's Freebase
| [1], which Google acquired in 2010.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_triple
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebase_(database)
| rafram wrote:
| Many Wikipedia articles have infobox fields that pull their
| values from Wikidata (and are only editable through
| Wikidata).
| bawolff wrote:
| > But Wikipedia has gone to great lengths to make the data
| side, Wikidata, and the app/website, decoupled.
|
| A big part of that is that different language editions of
| wikipedia are very decoupled. One of the goals of wikidata
| was to share data between different language wikipedias. It
| needed to be decoupled so it was equal to all the different
| languages.
| mapmeld wrote:
| I had this same mindset, and when I travel to somewhere less-
| traveled, I always like to post photos on iNaturalist and map
| parks and trails on OpenStreetMap to contribute to the open
| tech ecosystem.
|
| A year or so ago someone asked Reddit for examples of how
| iNaturalist is used by scientists. I go on Google Scholar and
| it's papers about crowdsourcing, community, classrooms. I
| didn't see papers where the data was part of researching the
| plants and animals (knowing where to study, unexpected
| sightings, changes over time) like Budburst. Maybe biologists
| are doing that off the record and I'm 100% wrong, but it shook
| my perception that these are observations and I should upload
| yet another desert gecko sighting.
| jg0r3 wrote:
| I work in a large conservation organization focused on rare
| plant conservation.
|
| iNaturalist is sometimes used by our ecologists/biologists as
| a starting point for collating occurrence data.
|
| The iNaturalist data itself is likely specifically being
| pulled from gbif. Then they go private/specialty databases
| that have more spatially and taxonomically accurate records.
|
| But iNaturalist data is often not considered high quality
| enough to be publishable by itself (wide brush statement) in
| my field of plant conservation.
|
| We've tried to have some conversations with iNaturalist and
| they weren't really interest in talking, gave me pause on
| what their motives as an organization are.
|
| But conservation tools are few and far between, and
| iNaturalist is a really powerful tool for initial data
| exploration.
| MattBlissett wrote:
| GBIF track the use of data we provide to scientists, where
| they later publish papers citing that data [1]. For
| iNaturalist, the list of known citations is at [2]. In most
| cases a download of data from GBIF will include data from
| more than one dataset (iNaturalist is one of over 110,000).
| To find how particular records in a download were used --
| or even if they were discarded -- requires reading the
| paper.
|
| As an example from the list, "Aedes albopictus Is Rapidly
| Invading Its Climatic Niche in France: Wider Implications
| for Biting Nuisance and Arbovirus Control in Western
| Europe" [3] cites 5348 iNaturalist records.
|
| [1] https://www.gbif.org/literature-tracking
|
| [2] https://www.gbif.org/resource/search?contentType=litera
| ture&...
|
| [3] Paper https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70414 citing GBIF
| data download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.gzdq3f
|
| PS we are recruiting an engineer, but the deadline for this
| position is today: https://gbif.link/senior-data-engineer
| contingencies wrote:
| _If you don't like the way your data is used to train AI models,
| you can't currently move your data to a non-AI service while
| still contributing to and using iNat data, even if such a service
| existed. But you should be able to do that._
|
| 100x yes! I was disgusted to learn that while the very non-profit
| status iNaturalist enjoys demands that they share their output,
| the organization thinks keeping its models secret is legitimate.
| https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI No, it isn't. I am a
| big contributor to iNaturalist and will be sharing my concerns at
| the next local meeting. I tried to raise the question through the
| forums and was censored.
|
| Frankly, it seems to me that iNaturalist is to open science as
| Android is to open source. That is to say in name only, not in
| spirit, because "legalese" and "market position" and "lack of
| enforcement". Not surprised to learn Google's money is assisting
| with corrupting them.
|
| If you contribute to iNaturalist, COMPLAIN. If you want to start
| a class action, count me in.
| turtle_ wrote:
| Do you have a copy of what you posted that was censored? I
| assume you mean censored on the iNat forum.
| contingencies wrote:
| Yes, I do. ~Sept 2025.
|
| _Subject: iNaturalist must commit to being open
|
| Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other: All
|
| URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant:
| https://github.com/inaturalist/inatVisionAPI
|
| Description of need:
|
| iNaturalist makes a subset of its machine learning models
| publicly available while keeping full species classification
| models private due to "intellectual property considerations
| and organizational policy".
|
| The community contribute far too much time, data, expertise
| and money to tolerate this, which opens questions about
| fundamental compatibility with science.
|
| Feature request details:
|
| iNaturalist should:
|
| Remove non-open data; and Commit to fully open
| output...within a fixed period of time, in order to maintain
| community support._
|
| Response was _" Hi, this seems to be a general appeal to
| iNaturalist staff rather than a specific feature on the
| website or app that would be developed, so I've copied the
| text of your request here, where they can see it."_
|
| No response was received, so I responded to the thread as
| follows.
|
| _Disappointed to be effectively censored and then receive
| literally zero response to this after three calendar weeks.
|
| With regards to the US status of iNaturalist:
|
| Scientific 501(c)(3) Nonprofits are organized primarily to
| conduct scientific research in the public interest. Their
| research must benefit the general public, not specific
| individuals or commercial enterprises.
|
| IMHO it's very hard to argue that something is in the public
| interest if the public can't see it, hold it, analyze it,
| criticize it, and replicate it: particularly in the field of
| science where we have a replication crisis.
|
| If it's a black-box service, it's not science.
|
| If it's replicable and open, thus provable, it's science.
|
| iNaturalist should commit to fully open output...within a
| fixed period of time, in order to maintain community support.
| Otherwise, it risks community pushback on its consume-but-
| dont-give model, which is being sheltered under a false
| heading of "science"._
|
| No response was received. Then sent a final follow-up.
|
| _Please be advised due to the lack of response I will be
| forced to publish my concerns in conventional botanical
| media._
|
| To date, no response has been received. I am looking at that
| option for this year.
| turtle_ wrote:
| Can you explain what you mean by censored? For example if
| this was on the forum was the post deleted? If this was a
| bug filed, was the bug closed or deleted?
| contingencies wrote:
| The original post was "not approved", although I have
| >10,000 observations and am a long term community member
| and this is a legit thing to complain about. The alleged
| opportunity for interaction occurred in some kind of
| private forum-hosted message thread, though no
| participation eventuated.
| anotherpaul wrote:
| 100% agree, I am still shocked that the models are not open
| sourced. It's the data from the community and I feel it goes
| very much against the spirit of the community to keep the
| machine learning part, which is very central to the app, so
| secret.
| tensor wrote:
| Asking for their models to be open and banning AI are two
| different things. AI is used throughout the scientific world
| and banning it would be immensely damaging. Putting aside
| consumer use cases, being able to do large scale analysis or
| search via machine learning is incredibly important to various
| fields of science.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| Is this why Seek has been broken for the past 8 months
| chneu wrote:
| It works fine for me on my pixel 10.
|
| It worked like garbage on my Samsung Galaxy devices.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| Works fine on my iPhone...
| culi wrote:
| > Toward the end of our time at CAS we experimented with
| sociocracy as a way to organize without hierarchy and coercion,
| but despite my enthusiasm for the form, we didn't start with
| universal buy-in or understanding from the whole team, we didn't
| fully adopt its structures, and, like many democracies before us,
| we ultimately voted to abolish our own democracy when we formed
| the "leadership circle" and created a hierarchy.
|
| I'm convinced that "what works" when it comes to self-
| organization is almost always a function of how involved/educated
| the participants are about the principles. Every time someone on
| HN complains about agile the typical response is that "they
| weren't doing agile correctly". And honestly I believe it. I just
| extend this to _most_ forms of self-organization.
|
| To be clear, I definitely do believe that certain structures are
| more effective than others for a given goal but I also believe
| that often the biggest factor in success is the buy-in and
| investment the members have. I even extend this (admittedly,
| somewhat reductive) analysis to debates between OOP vs functional
| codebase structures. If everyone is well versed in "proper" OOP
| or "proper" functional software design both strategies can be
| effective. If everyone is sociocracy fanatic then that can
| certainly work effectively. Because it's not as much about the
| superstructure as it is about proficiency.
| consp wrote:
| > Every time someone on HN complains about agile the typical
| response is that "they weren't doing agile correctly".
|
| No true Scotsman would ever ...
| bonesss wrote:
| The agile methodologies are built around adaptive and
| corrective iterations of work. If an org is not adapting
| process, if they are not correcting process issues, they are
| by definition ' _not doing it right_ ' because they are
| fundamentally doing something _else_.
|
| Agile can/should/must (d)evolve into waterfall in all but
| name if that's the local optimum. The agile methodologies
| response to problems is to solve those issues through
| frequent iterative localized change. Failing to apply a
| methodology isn't a methodological failure, per se.
|
| Business process mislabelling and misdirected frustration
| about lacking management are not examples of the No True
| Scotsman fallacy.
|
| Frenchmen are not Scotsmen. Not False Scotsmen nor True
| Scotsmen. They have a different name for a reason. No matter
| how many tourists confuse the flags or culture, by definition
| they are separate and distinct. France and Scotland are
| literally on different pages in the books.
|
| It is no coincidence there is a 'typical response' around
| this that has not changed for decades. Typical responses are
| the MBA version of RTFM.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I always thought the relgious Agile was kind of kooky when it
| met the real world, but I really think kanban / theory of
| constraints is very good and real for the business world.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| as long as managers don't start slapping KPIs on it
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Which is why agile falls apart... ToC/KanBan is
|
| - prioritize - work on top item - goto 1
| nevdka wrote:
| People will often write about something that worked for them,
| and from that pull out abstractions they believe are
| generalised and universal. They rarely are.
|
| Organisational patterns that work for startups rapidly
| iterating to find product market fit won't work well for a
| consultancy building a better defined product for a single
| client, or a corpo IT department trying to shoehorn a new
| distribution channel through a 30 year old logistics system.
|
| A team of experienced engineers who know the problem domain and
| have worked together for years needs different organisational
| structures than a team of new hires and grads. A team of
| introverted hermits and a team of extroverts will function
| differently regardless of organisational structure.
|
| You need to have some idea of where ideas work and don't work
| before you can design the ones needed for your specific
| situation.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| agile has become "no true scotsman", it's impossible to
| criticize because someone always will get out of woodwork and
| start yelling you're doing it wrong.
|
| I begin to think the "successful" dev teams using agile don't
| need agile principles in the first place and would work just
| fine under any other system, up and including "just a shared
| text file with all the current ideas and system issues", purely
| because they are competent at their job.
| palata wrote:
| > Every time someone on HN complains about agile the typical
| response is that "they weren't doing agile correctly".
|
| The problem is that "agile" is not really a thing. Originally
| it is just a few sentences saying "have common sense". And it
| became a big bullshit business with certifications and coaches.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| Business books sometimes get a bad rap on here, but I never read
| an essay where I more thought "wow this guy really needs to read
| some basic business books." Even though it was a non-profit,
| there is so much wisdom in them about management and leadership
| that was clearly lacking throughout his experience. It's too late
| now. But maybe if he understood some of the reasons back when
| they were starting the app why organizations are structured the
| way they typically are, he wouldn't have experimented with so
| many poor (and ultimately failed) governance structures.
|
| It seems like he was looking at his organization through a social
| lens (democracy, everyone should have a say) from a governance
| perspective but having it focused through a product lens (the
| app). That just doesn't mesh well. Social organizations typically
| have social missions, not products. When the two mix it doesn't
| always go well (see Mozilla).
|
| He also explicitly gave up his leadership position and then later
| wanted a say in management's direction. Ultimately, he sounds
| like a caring, nice guy, who was more interested in "having
| everyone heard" than learning some management skills. What
| happened later after he dropped out of the leadership circle is
| just a product of that and I imagine significant bad blood
| between him and those who remained.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| Could you recommend any book in particular?
| WoodenChair wrote:
| One that would've helped is "Founders at Work: Stories of
| Startups' Early Days" which is a collection of interviews
| with startup founders by Jessica Livingston. Even though this
| was a non-profit it effectively sounds like it was a tech
| startup (he was building an app that was based on, at the
| time (late 2000s), cutting edge machine learning technology).
| I think by hearing other founders' stories building other
| tech products, he would've learned about how they structured
| their organizations and led their teams. I liked the book
| personally, but the interviews will be hit or miss depending
| on the participant.
|
| Here's the book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3N47TG3
|
| Here's a podcast summary of it: https://businessbooksandco.co
| m/episode/1127af729a0d4aec/foun...
|
| But frankly even just a basic textbook or video course on
| leadership/management would've helped or something like High
| Output Management by Andy Grove (Amazon
| https://amzn.to/3NCAZME, podcast summary https://businessbook
| sandco.com/episode/095f226633d34496/high...).
|
| In terms of dealing with all of the personal conflict between
| team members, Radical Candor may have helped (Amazon
| https://amzn.to/4qNa7bf, podcast summary
| https://businessbooksandco.com/episode/938d044a/radical-
| cand...).
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| SV tech startups are an incredibly niche form of business,
| nobody should base their thinking on general management
| around them alone. They function within an ecosystem
| designed for them, like plants that only grow in a
| rainforest.
|
| Most management books that most people recommend are not
| based on scientific evidence, studies, academic literature,
| etc. They're mostly memes; relatively recent books written
| by some kind of famous person, benefiting from the
| heuristics that make people favor the famous, successful,
| or high status [regardless of the fact that their lessons
| are usually from one source, type of company, culture,
| etc]. Compare that to practical management books based on
| evidence and studies; they're boring and old, or simply not
| catchy or sexy, so nobody recommends them.
|
| There's also books that some people know about, and have a
| good track record, yet nobody follows. Deming's books
| should be mandatory reading for anyone in management, and
| anyone who cites Toyota as a model should absolutely have
| read them. But good luck finding anyone who actually
| follows the advice (same for Ackoff, Goldratt, Senge,
| Jacques, etc). Likely they are just too complicated and
| most people are not smart enough to manage this way.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Why not a book about making co-operatives work, or managing
| direction in non-hierarchical orgs, management structure in
| public interest companies/charities, or establishing
| scientific organisations?
|
| It sounds like he learnt lessons about the need for
| inclusion of users, need for strong information flow, what
| doesn't work (from his perspective) in hierarchy.
| justincormack wrote:
| I read Maverick by Ricardo Semmler a long time ago and
| loved it about non hierarchy in business. Must re read it
| patcon wrote:
| I agree that I can see plainly that he wasn't interested in
| certain ways of running the organization, but also...
|
| Why do startup people get to talk about their fuckups, and we
| call it wise and honest and we celebrate the failures -- we
| certainly don't condemn the very idea of hierarchy or
| capitalism.
|
| But when someone doing something interesting or non-
| hierarchical talks about their fuckups, we talk about how
| misguided their intentions are? Seems a little ~~off~~ unfair
| to me
| WoodenChair wrote:
| First, I'll just say I think the iNaturalist app is great and
| I've used it before and enjoyed it.
|
| I assume he had good intentions when experimenting with non-
| hierarchical governance, but this wasn't the right
| organization with which to experiment with them. If it was
| feeding the poor, maybe "sociocracy" makes sense. But its
| main goal was to make an app (and although it's a non-profit
| it maintains a proprietary machine learning model mind you,
| this isn't Wikipedia).
|
| And when you make an app you need direction. You can't be
| going in 5 different major directions based on individual
| contributors' whims. And beyond even just the structural
| issues, he also needed basic leadership/management skills to
| direct the product which he didn't provide. "Scott and I were
| titular "co-directors" but we did not provide a lot of
| direction and most of the big moves and features were driven
| largely by individual initiative."
|
| So he was a director who didn't direct. Then later on when he
| chose to step down from being a leader, he decided he wanted
| to direct again. Isn't that ironic?
|
| As far as can we criticize? Of course we can. If someone's
| going to write a public essay calling out other people by
| name and criticizing them we can criticize their essay and
| what they wrote about their experience.
| patcon wrote:
| thanks for reading my message in good faith :)
|
| as someone who co-founded a non-hierarchical community[1]
| (that's still going strong after a decade of weekly
| events), co-founded a worker cooperative[2], and
| experimented with sociocracy (and ALSO fully admit I failed
| out of it for reasons of misalignment!) -- i just think we
| owe it to ourselves to not discount that certain things XY
| can't be built under system Z. There are many ways possible
| where leaders don't always direct, or maybe only direct in
| short spurts. This all-or-nothing, lead-from-the-front,
| only-way-through-is-up perspective of getting things done
| (and working together), it's not the only way possible :)
| (respectfully!)
|
| [1]: https://civictech.ca/
|
| [2]: https://hypha.coop/
| WoodenChair wrote:
| Looks like cool stuff, cheers. Always interesting to
| learn about new ways of organizing. The great thing is if
| the world is free enough we can all experiment with
| different structures if others will agree to experiment
| with us. But these do sound like they fall into the
| social side of the dichotomy of social focused versus
| product focused that I mentioned. The author of the post
| was trying to be in both at the same time which I think
| is hard to do.
| jszymborski wrote:
| (I love Hypha. I'm an early member of CoSocial which you
| folks kindly call home on the fediverse :) )
|
| While I'm open to the idea that "certain things XY can't
| be built under system Z", I think that this feels like
| one of those things that should be no?
|
| My question re: non-profit co-op-ey things is usually
| "can this thing run sustainably by enriching users"
| rather than the usual "can this thing run sustainably by
| enriching shareholders".
|
| A super low-overhead social network for ecology feels
| like it could easily fit that bill. Lots of
| democratically run social networks running today to
| attest to that.
| n8agrin wrote:
| With full respect to your right to criticize, I don't
| understand what differentiates an organization trying to
| build a social networking app around biodiversity data from
| an organization feeding the poor, and those organizations'
| ability to experiment with their governance system. Can you
| expand that thought or is it rhetorical?
| WoodenChair wrote:
| I mean I think there's a pretty stark difference between
| a charity feeding the poor and an app startup (even a
| non-profit one). So stark that it feels almost weird
| writing this comment, but I'll take your question at face
| value. Okay, here's a few:
|
| - Decisions at a charity feeding the poor are likely less
| controversial and binary in nature than decisions for a
| product focused app organization. If people are making a
| lot of decisions bottom-up at the charity, as long as
| more people are getting fed, it's probably fine as long
| as it's not chaos. In a product-focused organization you
| need to make binary decisions: will we use this app icon
| design or that one? Will we have one app for
| professionals and one for laypeople or a unified app?
| Will we use SVM or a neural network? Somebody ultimately
| has to be the decider on these binary decisions. They
| cannot all be bottom-up decisions if you want to have a
| cohesive vision for the product.
|
| - If you're feeding the poor you're probably a charity or
| a government. People who work for a charity or a
| government are more likely to be motivated by the common
| good. So they don't need as much extrinsic motivation
| from leadership. An app startup, even a non-profit one
| (which I guess can be technically a charity), is going to
| have workers who are also motivated by money (yes even if
| it's a non-profit, they have other high paying options),
| technical decisions, and sure the mission too. I have a
| couple friends who have hopped around between non-profit
| software organizations due to these non-mission reasons.
| Corralling those motivations often requires a different
| management mindset than working with people who are just
| happy to be there.
|
| - If you're feeding the poor you're probably a charity or
| a government and you therefore probably need to answer to
| your donors or voters. You need full transparency. This
| was an app startup, albeit a non-profit one. It doesn't
| really answer to anyone except who it gets grants from
| and even then is not fully transparent/open (has a
| proprietary machine learning model).
|
| These are just a few but do you really think any
| governance structure can just be applied to any
| organization? They're not all compatible.
| n8agrin wrote:
| I think an organization's governance structure being
| successful has more to do with how the people in the
| organization want to be governed than whether it's
| building an app or feeding the poor.
| vtbassmatt wrote:
| None of this matches my experience as a board member and
| officer at a nonprofit, nor what I observe with my
| partner who has worked at multiple nonprofits.
|
| I don't understand the distinction you're drawing between
| "charity" and "nonprofit". iNaturalist is a 501c3, so
| it's a charity [1]. One of my partner's previous 501c3
| employers produced an app to aid with their mission.
|
| Let me reframe your first bullet to reflect my lived
| experience (both in the nonprofit world and building
| software at a for-profit):
|
| > Decisions at a charity feeding the poor are high-stakes
| and often controversial compared with decisions for a
| product focused app organization. If people are making a
| lot of decisions bottom-up at the charity, the scarce
| budget won't stretch to cover the needs of the mission.
| In a product-focused organization, decisions are much
| lower stakes. Through the magic of version control, A/B
| testing, and vendor app stores, you rarely need to commit
| deeply to decisions, so the individual developer can make
| the initial call: will we use this app icon design or
| that one? Will we have one app for professionals and one
| for laypeople or a unified app? Will we use SVM or a
| neural network? Ship, learn, iterate.
|
| My for-profit employer explicitly hires for (or at least
| used to) "passion" and intrinsic motivation. And there
| are several corporations I'm not willing to work for
| despite their reputation for high compensation. I think
| it's pretty tenuous to connect org structure with
| motivation so directly and concretely.
|
| The third bullet is uninformed. 501c3s answer to the
| people they derive funding from, their
| customers/clients/served population, their board, and the
| government (tax authority) whether they're putting
| spaghetti on plates or pixels on screens. The IRS has a
| pretty readable intro to the requirements [2].
|
| This kind of first-principles reasoning from vibes about
| what it must be like is seductive but often misleading. I
| encourage everyone I can to serve on a nonprofit board.
| The organizations can usually benefit from the
| perspective and different type of thinking that computer
| people bring, and it'll open your eyes to new
| perspectives about your own work and life!
|
| [1] https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/921296468
|
| [2] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-
| organiz...
| nkmnz wrote:
| One thing that comes to my mind is the question about
| what you actually want to achieve, expressed by what
| outcome you want to measure. In the case of ,,feeding the
| poor", that's relatively easy: people fed, calories
| distributed, maybe also health indicators and
| sociographic factors of the people you reach. For any
| app, that might be much harder: total installations?
| Total usage? New downloads? Additional funding raised?
| Feature X vs. feature Y? You can absolutely bring the
| ,,feeding the poor" to the same level of complexity by
| involving politics and trying to scale to multiple
| locations and cities. So maybe the difference is in
| scale, not in technology vs. non-technology.
| teiferer wrote:
| He is not being criticized for talking about his fuckups but
| for ranting endlessly about how other people were not doing
| what he wanted, putting the blame squarely on them.
| sdwr wrote:
| It's a classic problem when someone reaches the edge of
| their competence, but still cares about success. They don't
| see anything _they_ can do differently, and the focus
| becomes how other people are (apparently) screwing up.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > But when someone doing something interesting or non-
| hierarchical talks about their fuckups, we talk about how
| misguided their intentions are? Seems a little ~~off~~ unfair
| to me
|
| In that might tome of an essay, where did he tal about how
| _he_ fucked up? I read the whole thing and it is clear to me
| that he _doesn 't_ think he fucked up.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| To me, not considering how I contributed to the problem is
| always a place to look for fuck ups.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Why do startup people get to talk about their fuckups, and
| we call it wise and honest and we celebrate the failures
|
| Celebrating failures has become a very confusing concept.
| When someone shares their stories of trying and failing, the
| part we're celebrating is that they tried something. We're
| not celebrating the failure or validating everything they
| did.
|
| The value in sharing failure stories is that others can learn
| from them. The person sharing the failure story also gets
| valid feedback.
|
| If everyone just rolled over and applauded everything that
| led up to the failure, that's not helpful to anyone. It may
| feel good for some, but it's really unhelpful. Evaluating the
| situation and what went wrong is important.
|
| The second aspect is a desire for "blameless" postmortems
| where we all pretend like the human element was not a factor
| to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. However, in cases like
| this, the human factor appears to be at the root of a lot of
| the discord. I don't think it's unfair at all to discuss that
| honestly.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| He has opinions on how the company should be managed, what the
| product should be, and how to interact with the community...
| but he abdicated all the responsibility, didn't provide
| leadership, and is now complaining it didn't turn out how he
| wanted it. This is personality problem and business books won't
| help.
| teiferer wrote:
| And ironically, after going on and on about all the details
| of those failures, he asks the reader for a job. Does he
| really think that this overly long text is a good ad for
| getting people to hire him?
|
| As a potential employer, I already see in front of me the
| public ranting about what is wrong with _my_ organisation if
| (or when) he eventually leaves again. Dodged a bullet right
| there.
| EZ-E wrote:
| This was my thought too. The author seems very passionate,
| but I imagine he could be hard to work with.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > He has opinions on how the company should be managed, what
| the product should be, and how to interact with the
| community... but he abdicated all the responsibility, didn't
| provide leadership, and is now complaining it didn't turn out
| how he wanted it. This is personality problem and business
| books won't help.
|
| This isn't a personality problem; it's far far worse (or
| better, depending on your point of view) than that:
|
| FTFA
|
| > We hired two new staff to work on it, and did our best to
| reconcile what little guidance we got from Leadership with an
| internal process focused on discussion and consent. By late
| 2024, the app wasn't what anyone wanted it to be,
|
| Yup, no surprises there.
|
| > Toward the end of our time at CAS we experimented with
| sociocracy as a way to organize without hierarchy and
| coercion,
|
| > how much to disclose in our negotiations with CAS (IMO
| everything) or whether board members should be required to
| donate money (IMO no, plutocracy is bad at all times and at
| all levels)
|
| > I tried to do what seemed like the only thing I could do in
| a hierarchy
|
| > Accepting a grant without any consultation with staff about
| how its obligations might be met
|
| ...
|
| > Since the exodus, Leadership has improved on some fronts
| [...] They hired three new engineers for the mobile team that
| seem both experienced and enthusiastic.
|
| Well, a large grant will let you do that :-/
|
| It seems to me that the problem was not one of personality,
| but of ideology.
|
| Personality is deeply embedded in humans, ideology is merely
| adopted.
|
| Author's ideology differed from that of leadership. His
| personality is probably irrelevant.
| hobofan wrote:
| > but he abdicated all the responsibility
|
| He abdicated the responsibility as he from the beginning
| didn't have any power (always the single dissenting vote).
| There also isn't much leadership to provide if everyone else
| in the "leadership circle" is on a different frequency, or
| otherwise you are just a rogue actor that will quickly get
| kicked out.
|
| If anything the time for him to leave would have been when he
| stepped down to be an engineer. I don't think there is
| anything wrong with laying your reasons for leaving bare,
| especially when many people will come asking why one of the
| co-founders left.
| ghaff wrote:
| Sometimes it makes sense, if you fundamentally disagree
| with leadership (or peers who outvote you), it makes sense
| to just move on. Otherwise they just annoy you and you
| them. If you've made your case, both parties will be
| happier apart.
|
| I stepped out of a non-profit board for a time because what
| was obvious to me needed to happen wasn't going to--
| although it did over time after my departure and I rejoined
| at some point.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| It bothers me that pragmatism and understanding things like
| business, economics, and the like can often be commingled with
| being greedy or evil.
|
| Yes there are lots of people who use what they learn to justify
| shit positions but personally I started learning all these
| things because in any other endeavor you want to take seriously
| you learn everything you can about it.
|
| The number of people who mean well but then just try to hope
| their way through stuff and relearn the same basic principles
| is sadly much too high.
|
| Hell it doesn't even have to revolve around moral/societal
| principles. The number of games I've seen that could've done
| better if they understood marketing, business, or even basic
| competitive balance better (even if so you can make your party
| game more fun) is huge.
|
| But then again we've got this generation speed running "why
| finance laws and institutions exist" thanks to crypto. I guess
| the silver lining is people do learn a lot more once they've
| had personal experience with it.
| cyberrock wrote:
| I used to roll my eyes at fictional settings like LotR and
| Starcraft (Protoss) that pit orthodox/"white" magic versus
| forbidden/"black" magic, but now I've woken up to see this
| industry split into such a moral schism in multiple ways.
| (Aside, of course, from white/gray/black hat hackers, which
| is more about actions rather than knowledge)
| geocar wrote:
| If you meet someone who understand business, it's going to
| color your opinion of other people who meet who seem to
| understand business, until you either learn business or die.
|
| That's how all prejudices work: We're wired up to be afraid
| and anxious and to share (and communicate) our anxieties to
| our friends and neighbours. We're trying to help.
|
| The thing is, knowledge; business, economics, and so on,
| probably _can_ be used to help people, but in a lot of
| peoples ' recent memories, it's being used to harm.
|
| I lost a lot of my teen friends when I "went corporate", but
| thirty years later I'm reconnecting with some of them,
| because people change, and we can learn to recognise someone
| will participate in capitalism for lots of reasons that are
| not so simple as being "greedy" or "evil".
|
| But to me, I think it is simple: Capitalism is almost
| certainly unavoidable, so the world could be better if more
| kind people participate well in it than don't!
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > When the two mix it doesn't always go well (see Mozilla).
|
| you've written more than 20 paragraphs of comments but I
| stopped here, because if you think this way about Mozilla, a
| very successful company and philanthropy, you probably are not
| making generalizable judgements about others
| WoodenChair wrote:
| > you've written more than 20 paragraphs of comments but I
| stopped here, because if you think this way about Mozilla, a
| very successful company and philanthropy, you probably are
| not making generalizable judgements about others
|
| I mean yeah, if you think Mozilla has been well managed over
| the past two decades, then yeah we're on different planes of
| understanding the world.
|
| - The only product it makes that anyone cares about, Firefox,
| has gone from 30% market share in 2010 to 2% market share in
| 2025.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
|
| - It has put itself in a position where the vast majority of
| its funding comes from its main competitor, Google, who makes
| Chrome. Conflict of interest much? And now Google is being
| sued for that in an antitrust case.
| https://www.pcworld.com/article/2772034/googles-search-
| monop...
|
| - Despite being a non-profit, its CEO was paid $7 million
| during a period of layoffs in 2023 https://www.i-programmer.i
| nfo/news/86-browsers/16844-firefox...
|
| - Mozilla was founded to support the development of an open
| source web browser. That's a critically important mission.
| Yet, it spends most of its money not on the web browser
| (maybe why the web browser is at 2% market share).
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-
| fdn-202...
|
| - It has started many other initiatives with a big splash
| that all fizzled (FirefoxOS, Pocket, etc.)
|
| I don't know, doesn't sound like "a very successful company
| and philanthropy" as you put it. I would call it a *formerly*
| "very successful company and philanthropy."
| auggierose wrote:
| Just out of interest, how much should the guaranteed salary
| of a non-profit CEO maximally be?
| WoodenChair wrote:
| I don't know but $7 million seems high for a non-profit
| that's in the midst of layoffs, dramatically losing
| marketshare, seems to have no direction, and has all of
| the other failures I mentioned above as Mozilla did in
| 2023. But point taken, without looking at a scale of
| other people in similar non-profit positions, it's hard
| to judge. I think the other points are strong though.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| Guaranteed? Enough to cover living costs.
|
| Everything else should be performance bonuses. Of which
| Mozilla CEO would have gotten none, based on their
| failure.
| auggierose wrote:
| How would you measure the performance, given that it is a
| non-profit? Which self-respecting CEO who is actually
| good would go for such a deal? I think it is important to
| understand that the employees of a non-profit are allowed
| to earn a proper salary.
|
| I think $7 million is too much for the CEO of a non-
| profit, but $100K would be too low. You can see that
| there are plenty of CEOs making more than $1 million:
| https://www.charitywatch.org/nonprofit-compensation-
| packages...
| sehansen wrote:
| Organizations in decline often have to pay above market
| rate for executives, so it's hard to say that it's
| definitely too much. Especially when Mozilla spends
| ~$280,000 on software development, i.e. 40 times as much.
| Even paying the CEO $0 wouldn't really move the needle.
|
| But, yeah, Mozilla has been fumbling constantly for the
| past decade, at least.
| glenstein wrote:
| If success was really determined by a pitch perfect
| combination of browser development, catering to users with
| features they most want, being ahead of the curve on mobile
| and devices, and being flexible and creative with
| financing.... then we would all be using Opera.
|
| Back when memory management actually was critical, Opera
| had a light footprint, had a portable executable you could
| stick on a USB stick. They partnered with mobile vendors to
| get on phones _very_ early (ahead of the iPhone!), had
| advanced tabs, an extensions ecosystem, "widgets", Unite
| (the most impressive browser idea ever imo even to this
| day), had clearer ideas of what the start page could be,
| offered to retrieve compressed pages to save data (again
| back when that mattered), built in ad blocking _very_ early
| on, and an extremely customizeable user interface
|
| But even they had to give up on Presto (RIP), sold the
| company to overseas investors, shared user data with ad
| brokers and develop based on Chromium. If doing everything
| right is what works, then what happened to Opera?
| rvba wrote:
| Mozilla the one which:
|
| * lost market share of its product from 30 to 2%
|
| * spends money on fun projects and acqusitions that generate
| no revenue, while taking away what the users wanted (addons,
| extensions, customizing) since supposedly this is hard to do
|
| * spends money on politics instead of core product
|
| And many more
|
| You should read a business book too. Focusing on core product
| (firefox) should be top priority, especially if it is the
| only real product that generates revenue.
|
| Soon music will stop and there will be no money, since it got
| spent on everything else.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem is Mozilla's mission is not to develop a
| browser! They have a browser, and it is what everyone knows
| them for, but their mission is only vaguely related to the
| browser. I don't care much about their mission - there are
| plenty of other charities that have similar missions if I
| did. I care about a great browsers and they are not
| delivering that - which is fine as far as their mission,
| but I'm miffed because I can't get what I want from anyone.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What do business books say you should do when the primary
| way you lose your market is illegal and anti-competitive
| business practices from a megacorp in a political
| environment anathema to punishing anti-competitive business
| practices?
|
| Please tell me how Firefox was supposed to compete with
| Chrome being bundled with nearly any download of any
| software anywhere, and with a one click installer on the
| Google homepage. The value of that advertising alone far
| exceeds what Mozilla could afford.
|
| People who think it's Mozilla's _failure_ to have been
| utterly crushed by illegal business practices are so
| strange to me.
|
| What did you expect to happen? Why do you think we have
| laws against this stuff in the first place? How would you
| have outspent the behemoth on advertising? How would you
| have overcome a competitor being included with nearly
| everything done on a computer?
|
| Google Chrome's abuse of installers was so bad that
| Microsoft had to change how it sets "default browser"
| because Google was setting itself as the default entirely
| without user interaction! Tons of the marketshare that went
| from Firefox to Chrome _did not do so intentionally, did
| not even know, and did not mean to_
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Successful retirement home for failing CxOs maybe but as
| company Mozilla was successful 15 years ago then managed to
| completely squander their market lead while eroding public
| trust in them by various weird partnerships (like _multiple_
| times installing 3rd party addons without consent)
| sehansen wrote:
| I think WoodenChair's claim is that Mozilla has been
| organized as a social organization, which has probably been
| quite good for the philanthropy side. But it doesn't seem to
| have been particularly good for the product side, as seen
| from the decline in market share and perceived quality of
| Firefox. At least perceived quality in the eyes of techies
| here on HN.
| mmooss wrote:
| That's one view of how to structure organizations but hardly
| the only one. Much of SV was built using non-hierarchical
| organizations, often bragging that nobody had a title. The
| greater corporate world embraced flat organizational structures
| for 1-2 decades and did very well. Toyota famously gave
| (gives?) everyone on the assembly line the power to stop
| production, and they were (are?) considered the pinnicle of
| automotive manufacturing.
|
| My impression is that recent embrace of hierarchy and
| authority, and rejection of democracy and equality, are tied to
| a sharp rise in such ideas in politics. It's hard to believe
| it's coincidence.
|
| And, also maybe not coincidentally, it's inherently
| conservative to say, 'this is the way it's always been and must
| be'.
|
| Innovation is a powerful force. The management ideas the parent
| embraces were once innovations, which met the same response the
| parent gives to newer innovators.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Am sure you're already aware, but for others in the thread:
|
| Absence of titles does not mean absence of hierarchy. Absence
| of formal hierarchy doesn't mean absence of social power.
|
| At their best, flat hierarchies do as described.
|
| At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of cults
| together with all the worst aspects of high school. Endless
| manoeuvring for influence, currying favour, autocratic
| fiefdoms emerging without people having the mental framework
| to even identify that they exist.
|
| Humans are complicated, and we do seem to have a certain
| amount of low-level social wiring for hierarchy and pecking
| order, even if it's far from absolute.
|
| I don't know how this applies in the context of Toyota, but
| there are plenty of places where pushing the Stop button -
| while formally permitted - has a social cost such that only a
| certain few are effectively given permission to do so; large
| amounts of energy are expended either attempting to belong to
| that few, or currying favour with them. Power tends to accrue
| to those most inclined to seize it.
|
| Whereas in a more formal org, people with "manager" in their
| title are at least subject to a minimum amount of vetting,
| training and oversight.
|
| TLDR, flat hierarchy can be better than rigid hierarchy, but
| nominally "flat" hierarchy with power-gradient
| characteristics can be the worst of both worlds.
| csours wrote:
| > I don't know how this applies in the context of Toyota,
|
| I've never worked for Toyota, but as far as I can tell they
| take this very seriously. You can look up a history of
| NUMMI for a case study
| cycomanic wrote:
| > Am sure you're already aware, but for others in the
| thread: > > Absence of titles does not mean absence of
| hierarchy. Absence of formal hierarchy doesn't mean absence
| of social power. > > At their best, flat hierarchies do as
| described. > > At their worst, they take on all the worst
| aspects of cults together with all the worst aspects of
| high school. Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying
| favour, autocratic fiefdoms emerging without people having
| the mental framework to even identify that they exist. > >
| Humans are complicated, and we do seem to have a certain
| amount of low-level social wiring for hierarchy and pecking
| order, even if it's far from absolute. > > I don't know how
| this applies in the context of Toyota, but there are plenty
| of places where pushing the Stop button - while formally
| permitted - has a social cost such that only a certain few
| are effectively given permission to do so; large amounts of
| energy are expended either attempting to belong to that
| few, or currying favour with them. Power tends to accrue to
| those most inclined to seize it. > > Whereas in a more
| formal org, people with "manager" in their title are at
| least subject to a minimum amount of vetting, training and
| oversight. > > TLDR, flat hierarchy can be better than
| rigid hierarchy, but nominally "flat" hierarchy with power-
| gradient characteristics can be the worst of both worlds.
|
| > Am sure you're already aware, but for others in the
| thread: > > Absence of titles does not mean absence of
| hierarchy. Absence of formal hierarchy doesn't mean absence
| of social power. > > At their best, flat hierarchies do as
| described. > > At their worst, they take on all the worst
| aspects of cults together with all the worst aspects of
| high school. Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying
| favour, autocratic fiefdoms emerging without people having
| the mental framework to even identify that they exist. >
|
| And that is different from more hierarical organisations
| how? I mean there are plenty of stories about infiting,
| thiefdoms, manuvering... in hierarical organisations as
| well. There's also lots of example we're the disconnect
| between the top and lower tiers of the hierarchy (i.e. the
| essence of the hierarchy itself) let to the downfall of the
| organisation. I also fail to see the connection to the
| article, the organisation did not seem to have failed (in
| the view of the author at least), due to the failed
| "democratic" organisation experiments, but due to the
| leadership in the current hierarical organisation not
| listening to the "lower tiers". So if anything it seems to
| be a problem of the hierarical structure.
|
| > Humans are complicated, and we do seem to have a certain
| amount of low-level social wiring for hierarchy and pecking
| order, even if it's far from absolute. >
|
| I dislike these generalised statements about "human
| nature", there is way too much uncertainty and plenty of
| counter examples.
|
| That said I agree with some of the other points you made,
| the post reads a bit weird considering that the author
| essentially gave up his ability to influence the course of
| the organisation (both by giving up his leadership seat,
| but also before by disenganging from the process), and the
| complains that the organisation did not develop how they
| wanted.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| The difference in a hierarchical org is that the
| structure is laid out on paper for everyone to see. The
| power dynamic is explicit rather than implicit.
|
| (At least, it's supposed to be. You do get weird
| inversions from time to time, when a weak manager is put
| in charge of a domineering empire-builder, but it's rare
| - and even in that case, the rest of the org can see the
| anomaly - as they have a frame of reference to measure it
| against.)
|
| "Humans are complicated" => that is my uncertainty
| caveat. We're not absolute-hierarchical nor absolute-
| flat, in much the same way as we're neither exactly
| chimp-like nor gorilla-like in terms of monogamy. My
| observation though (and hardly an original one) is that
| when we build organisations which try to deny hierarchy,
| it has a habit of sneaking in thru the back door.
| mmooss wrote:
| There are more differences: A formally structured org
| isn't a flat org with titles attached.
|
| > "Humans are complicated" => that is my uncertainty
| caveat. We're not absolute-hierarchical nor absolute-flat
|
| yes
|
| > when we build organisations which try to deny
| hierarchy, it has a habit of sneaking in thru the back
| door.
|
| The same happens when we try to deny freedom. Empowering
| everyone, through freedom and universal equality and
| human rights, is the foundation of the very successful
| modern world.
|
| As I said upthread, I think the focus on hierarchy and
| power is really an outgrowth of current anti-democratic
| politics, even if people don't explicitly think of it
| that way. That doesn't deny all hierarchy or power - it's
| a matter of degree: The history of modern democracy is to
| lean heavily toward individual freedom (for essential
| moral reasons too).
| wisty wrote:
| Toyota has tonnes of heirarchy.
|
| Their "andon" just means that if anyone suspects a fault,
| they raise a red flag (old school andon - a literal flag,
| US companies heard it and made it an app lol) and the line
| goes down until it's fixed.
|
| This isn't anarchy or even democracy. It's totally standard
| for anything safety critical, Toyota just treats a flaw in
| a Corolla engine the same way most people treat airline
| crashes.
|
| A US carrier group has tonnes of heirarchy but if the
| lowest ranked person sees loose spanner on the deck the
| whole thing shuts down instantly.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It is an interesting thing about the best military
| organizations is that they have hierarchy but also push a
| lot of responsibility downward. E.g. we don't see
| anything noble about _The Charge of the Light Brigade_
|
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-
| of-t...
|
| An infantry platoon does have leaders, it does follow
| orders, it is the thin edge of a very long wedge, but it
| has a lived reality of the members improvising under
| pressure.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| > At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of
| cults together with all the worst aspects of high school.
| Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying favour,
| autocratic fiefdoms emerging without people having the
| mental framework to even identify that they exist.
|
| But that's just how it works in typical normal hierarchy.
| The normal hierarchy just makes it easier to "pick a
| target" you need to please
|
| The falling of any, whether formal or flat, is incentive
| misalignment, if a given structure makes it so screwing
| other people over so you look better is profitable, it will
| inevitably happen. And it's really hard to align incentives
| that way, like how even in "flat" companies often working
| on new shiny profitable brings more capital (whether social
| or actual) than maintaining long-term project
|
| > I don't know how this applies in the context of Toyota,
| but there are plenty of places where pushing the Stop
| button - while formally permitted - has a social cost such
| that only a certain few are effectively given permission to
| do so; large amounts of energy are expended either
| attempting to belong to that few, or currying favour with
| them. Power tends to accrue to those most inclined to seize
| it.
|
| The idea that gets lost in the translation is empowering
| people to put stop to things that can in long term be net
| loss to company and trusting worker with knowing enough
| about their job that the power won't be used willy-nilly.
|
| For the idea to work you not only need culture where that
| won't be shunned by some manager coz it made him miss their
| KPIs, but also having each worker be competent enough to
| know where to use the power
| Earw0rm wrote:
| > But that's just how it works in typical normal
| hierarchy. The normal hierarchy just makes it easier to
| "pick a target" you need to please
|
| It means that the org has been intentionally designed
| with that in mind, so those running it will be aware that
| this is an operational factor.
|
| > For the idea to work you not only need culture where
| that won't be shunned by some manager coz it made him
| miss their KPIs, but also having each worker be competent
| enough to know where to use the power
|
| And a culture which allows the worker to possess whatever
| information and context they need in order to exercise
| that competence effectively. Hiring and training is part
| of it, sufficiently open information-flow is the other
| key.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You specifically need a culture that considers "Unskilled
| labor" to be an oxymoron. Where a literal assembly line
| worker feels like they have enough expertise to say "No,
| this is a problem worth stopping production over".
|
| American car companies for example have always preferred
| to just keep the line moving and have a later QA step fix
| up the problem, or literally push the problem onto the
| dealer.
|
| You need to treat even your low employees as not
| replaceable cogs in a machine.
|
| This is the opposite of what American business school
| culture has taught for decades, which is why Toyota was
| unable to teach GM how to do what they were doing.
|
| Not only did GM managers not do a good job of respecting
| their employees, but decades of that lack of respect
| meant that the employees didn't trust management enough
| to play along with the system in good faith. Everyone was
| "Defecting" and it makes everyone worse off.
|
| Yet Japan DOES have a strictly hierarchical work culture,
| where openly countering something your boss says isn't
| exactly welcome. So I wonder how this sort of "Trust your
| employees to have good ideas" thing came about.
| tristor wrote:
| > Yet Japan DOES have a strictly hierarchical work
| culture, where openly countering something your boss says
| isn't exactly welcome. So I wonder how this sort of
| "Trust your employees to have good ideas" thing came
| about.
|
| What happened is that they bought into the Edward Deming
| viewpoint of Total Quality Control (TQC), and instituted
| this throughout their business in a way which melded
| correctly with their culture, ultimately resulting in
| Kaizen and The Toyota Way. It didn't happen overnight, it
| happened over a period of about 20-30 years, so that now
| we think of it as something inherent to Toyota that is
| not possible to replicate. Because of Toyota's strict
| commitment at the upper levels and the strict hierarchy
| of Japanese work culture, once they had committed they
| expended every necessary effort until the thing was done,
| which differs from American companies where it's often
| hard to get folks to even try anything new in the way
| they approach their work.
| tensegrist wrote:
| > nominally "flat" hierarchy with power-gradient
| characteristics can be the worst of both worlds
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessn
| e...
| jorvi wrote:
| > At their worst, they take on all the worst aspects of
| cults together with all the worst aspects of high school.
| Endless manoeuvring for influence, currying favour,
| autocratic fiefdoms emerging without people having the
| mental framework to even identify that they exist.
|
| Interestingly enough, this is _exactly_ how ex-Valve
| employees describe their workplace.
| Centigonal wrote:
| I've heard this about both Valve and Palantir, but they
| also seem like extremely successful organizations. That's
| something I really want to understand, because my guess
| would have been that all the politicking would destroy
| productivity and hamper decisionmaking.
| bluGill wrote:
| > I don't know how this applies in the context of Toyota,
| but there are plenty of places where pushing the Stop
| button - while formally permitted - has a social cost such
| that only a certain few are effectively given permission to
| do so;
|
| It works at Toyota because the stop button is something you
| push for specific weird things. You don't push the stop
| button because you think the Camry should have been
| designed to fit a big V8.
|
| You push the stop button because you noticed something
| looks weird that might affect quality. See some rust on a
| part that normally doesn't have rust - push stop: better to
| pay the entire factory to stand around doing nothing for
| two hours while engineers decide that is harmless surface
| rust than the ship a product that is defective to
| customers. (this is a real situation - the engineer who
| decided to use those parts also monitored warranty/repair
| on those machines for the next few years, in case he was
| wrong he would have done a recall at first sign of trouble,
| but those machines didn't have problems any more than
| others so his decision was verified. I won't name the
| company)
|
| I would guess the majority of times people hit stop they
| are eventually told "not a problem but you were right to
| stop just in case so thank you". There are a few times
| where hitting stop prevents shipping something that would
| fail horribly and often the part that would fail isn't
| visible to inspectors unless they are at the exact spot on
| the line someone saw it and hit stop.
| mmooss wrote:
| Agreed. As another example, many managers say their 'door
| is open', they welcome negative feedback, etc. Only a few
| are serious enough about it to understand how to do that
| (including managing their own emotional response).
|
| > in a more formal org, people with "manager" in their
| title are at least subject to a minimum amount of vetting,
| training and oversight.
|
| Often they are people with connections or money, or high
| technical skill and complete incompetence as a manager.
| That's one reason people go to flatter structures - the
| workers do better on their own.
|
| Organizing people toward long-term goals is a challenge.
| There is no way to make bad performance, incompetent or
| malicious, into good outcomes; no organizational design
| will save you.
| hluska wrote:
| Perhaps, but the writer removed themselves from leadership.
| They can have a whole lot of novel or even good ideas but if
| they're not in a place to implement them they're not going to
| succeed. Leaving leadership was a terrible decision that any
| business text would have advised against. You can't beat a
| hierarchy unless you're part of it.
| mmooss wrote:
| An organization has serious problems, and incompetent
| leaders, if only leaders' ideas are implemented. (That
| doesn't necessarily disagree with what you said.)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is the famous _Tyranny of Structureless_ essay
|
| https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
|
| which describes issues that people struggle with to this day.
| When it comes to activism I think the most effective
| organizations I've been in have been "structureless" like
| that with a few people who lead because they are dedicated
| and have time and energy.
|
| Personally when it comes to structure and the issues Jo talks
| about the cure (structure) is worse than the disease and once
| we start talking about _Robert 's Rules_ and bylaws and
| fundraising you are already losing people and going off
| mission. All the discussions about the perception (and
| somewhat reality) of "Class X of people is not being
| represented here" tend to turn into knock-down drag out
| fights, "Class X" never stepping up, and the ultimate reality
| of nobody being represented except for _Robert_ and bylaws
| and fundraising.
|
| It's not to say structureful organizations aren't useful but
| I would say organizations are basically right-wing in that
| they embody social hierarchy and if you feel your
| structureless organization is fun and exciting and making
| some difference in your bit of the world the way to save it
| when structure encroaches is to tear it down and start
| another one.
|
| "Sustainable" groups tend to become what they oppose,
| structureless groups can seem to come out of nowhere, strike
| a decisive blow, then melt into the crowd.
| specialist wrote:
| The purpose of RRO assumes majoritarianism while ensuring
| the minority is heard.
|
| As you know, there are light weight versions, for boards
| and committees. But nothing I'd advocate for product
| development.
|
| > _the most effective organizations_
|
| As a fellow recovering activist, you might be interested in
| Vincent Bevins' If We Burn.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_We_Burn Connected some
| dots for me. Things I experienced but wasn't smart enough
| to sus and articulate.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I agree there is more than one way to look at it. There
| are good points to RRO but I think the legalism drives
| away a "silent majority" [1] of people who out of their
| background or temperament are particularly repelled by
| it.
|
| Over the long term I've seen the governance of
| organizations like my food co-op be quite complex and not
| what I thought when things were going on. For instance we
| had a conflict that boiled for years which looked like a
| conflict over the vision of the organization but in
| retrospect it really was the bad personality of the
| manager because that manager left and went to run Borders
| [2] and had the same problems over there whereas the
| conflicting camps reconciled pretty quickly when that
| manager was out.
|
| But there really are tensions over professionalism,
| vanguardism, and such that we'll be arguing about for a
| really long time. The asymmetry between the left and
| right wings is also interesting -- I think left wing
| organizations have an unhealthy tendency towards
| centralization because fundraising is more difficult and
| you get the "membership organization" model that
| inevitably fails because of the issues pointed out in [3]
| [4] vs many right wing millionaires that fund parallel
| right wing causes that compete in a healthy way and
| always stay on mission because they can be defunded when
| they go off mission.
|
| In 2026 I have a new commitment to activism but _Jacobin_
| magazine would rip into my approach as being radically
| apolitical but I think that is what is needed in 2026.
|
| [1] 20 years ago I didn't think I'd be talking like
| Nixon...
|
| [2] Personally I am not inclined to blame individuals,
| plus that manager had allies, which is why it took me so
| long to see it
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective
| _Action
|
| [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Much of SV was built using non-hierarchical organizations,
| often bragging that nobody had a title. The greater corporate
| world embraced flat organizational structures for 1-2 decades
| and did very well.
|
| I've worked in several "flat" startups and one big company.
|
| None of them were actually flat. There's always a hierarchy.
| There's always an understand chain of command.
|
| > Toyota famously gave (gives?) everyone on the assembly line
| the power to stop production, and they were (are?) considered
| the pinnicle of automotive manufacturing.
|
| This is a good example of how "flat" companies aren't really
| flat. Assembly line workers can stop production because the
| assembly line is part of their job. They can't fire anyone or
| give their peers raises, though. If you ask anyone in the
| comapny, they can point to the person who can fire them and
| can give them raises. That's the hierarchy. It always exists.
| mmooss wrote:
| All that says is there is nothing absolute in any way.
| There are no absolute hierarchies; all have a degree of
| flatness, of people lower on the hierarchy with more
| influence than people above them, etc.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| Yes, there are degrees of everything. There is cool,
| kinda cold, cold, very cold. I'm not exactly sure your
| point? Seems like you are arguing with a straw man. Who
| said there are not different degrees of flatness or
| degrees of hierarchy? The previous poster was just saying
| that there's always _some_ hierarchy, even if it 's
| unwritten, which aligns with "degrees of flatness."
| specialist wrote:
| I've used the _group coordination technology_ of democracy in
| the workplace. It was both awesome and burdensome.
|
| Awesome, because social cognition and personal empowerment
| are force multipliers.
|
| Burdensome, because change is hard, empowerment means
| accountability, some people would rather complain than
| contribute.
|
| I'd never advocate leaderless, flatness, whatever pseudo
| anarchist mumbo-jumbo. Doesn't work. Tyranny of
| Structurelessness, If We Burn, and all that.
|
| I threaded the needle by creating an org chart comprised of
| well defined roles. And (most) every team member served in
| (most) every role, over time. So the person serving in the
| QA/Test role dutifully executed the QA/Test playbook. And
| next release they might represent the Engr, TechSupp, etc
| role.
|
| Otherwise known as cross training, but with better support
| and culture.
|
| YMMV, obv. Different efforts require different structures.
| There's a cornucopia of group decision making tools, skills,
| techs. Use what works best for the task and context at hand.
|
| --
|
| I'm very intrigued by how Oxide Computers is running things.
| Just from their podcasts, radically open seems like it's
| working for them.
| GrowingSideways wrote:
| > Business books sometimes get a bad rap on here,
|
| If they had something to contribute they would have figured a
| label to slap on
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Do share book recommendations, please.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| See the sibling comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46550083
| hibikir wrote:
| IMO, the difficulty with your typical business book is
| practical application: I've spent way too much time over my
| career trying to explain to leadership at different levels how
| they were acting in ways opposite to the very books they had on
| their desks. In one very high profile case, even the book they
| wrote!
|
| Leadership comes down to Feynman's first principle: You must
| not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
| isaacfrond wrote:
| What's your recommendation for 'some basic business books'?
| Sharlin wrote:
| The iNaturalist _app_ is incidental, merely a means to an end -
| an end that 's fundamentally social in nature. Like Wikipedia.
| The software merely enables the mission. This is his (very
| valid) viewpoint, I believe.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Even though it was a non-profit, there is so much wisdom in
| them about management and leadership that was clearly lacking
| throughout his experience.
|
| Do you have any recommendations for business books about
| effective management / leadership?
| jrjeksjd8d wrote:
| > He also explicitly gave up his leadership position and then
| later wanted a say in management's direction. Ultimately, he
| sounds like a caring, nice guy, who was more interested in
| "having everyone heard" than learning some management skills.
| What happened later after he dropped out of the leadership
| circle is just a product of that and I imagine significant bad
| blood between him and those who remained.
|
| This stuck out to me too. There's nothing more frustrating for
| the actual leadership than someone with soft power who says
| they don't want to lead trying to come in and obstruct every
| decision.
|
| As an armchair quarterback I feel like if he had kept his
| tinder dry he probably could have gotten some of what he
| wanted? He could have advocated to head up the casual spin-off
| app as a small team. Giving a founder who wants to step out of
| leadership a pet project is a very common way to handle this
| situation.
|
| Instead it sounds like he got caught up picking fights on every
| decision and wasted his credibility. Talking to leadership is a
| skill and part of that skill is packaging things concisely and
| effectively. Even if the leadership used to be your
| confounders.
| duxup wrote:
| My anecdotal experience with folks who gravitate towards ideas
| about unstructured organizations (of any kind) ... also very
| much expect the output of that organization will just naturally
| be what they want.
|
| I sometimes wonder how their personal mental human simulator
| works in those cases as to me it is obvious that such an org
| will (among a lot of other things) not necessarily output what
| I want or even be predictable.
|
| That's not a knock on the author, I appreciate the article.
| miningape wrote:
| > My anecdotal experience with folks who gravitate towards
| ideas about unstructured organizations (of any kind) ... also
| very much expect the output of that organization will just
| naturally be what they want
|
| Got that exact impression from this article. No doubt the
| leadership has issues, but I also get the feeling he wouldn't
| have been happy with this direction even if a group elected
| it - although, to his credit, it sounds like he probably
| would've stuck with it longer.
|
| Also not knocking the author, I hope he finds something more
| fulfilling to work on - and he's probably awesome to work
| with.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > He also explicitly gave up his leadership position and then
| later wanted a say in management's direction.
|
| I've gone back and forth between IC and management. Giving up
| the influence of being in management can be hard. If you don't
| agree with management's direction, it's even harder.
|
| Hiring former managers into IC positions can be risky for this
| reason. A lot of former managers who switch to IC roles are
| amazing because they understand the management perspective and
| they're happy to be able to do their job without the
| responsibility and accountability (and meetings!) of a
| management role.
|
| The risk is that you get someone who desires all of the control
| of being in management without the responsibility and
| accountability. When someone gives up management
| responsibilities and obligations but still wants to drive the
| organization, like the vibes I'm getting from this post, it's
| not going to end well.
| lovich wrote:
| > Toward the end of our time at CAS we experimented with
| sociocracy as a way to organize without hierarchy and coercion,
| but despite my enthusiasm for the form, we didn't start with
| universal buy-in or understanding from the whole team, we didn't
| fully adopt its structures, and, like many democracies before us,
| we ultimately voted to abolish our own democracy when we formed
| the "leadership circle" and created a hierarchy.
|
| Is he referencing a bunch of democracies I haven't heard of or is
| this the kind of guy whose so far anarchist he thinks that
| republics and dictatorships are equivalent if not equal?
|
| I tried to steel man this and looked up historical records on any
| democracy voting in a new, non democratic system and the closest
| I get is(not intending to Godwin's law this) examples like the
| Nazi party being voted in and then taking authoritarian control.
|
| You could make that argument if you squint your eyes a little or
| hold a high bar to the electorate, but I feel like I'm missing a
| reference with the way he said it.
| n8agrin wrote:
| Sociocracy is a theory of governance:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy
| lovich wrote:
| I'm mildly familiar with the idea, but I was referencing this
| subset of the quoted sentence
|
| > ... and, like many democracies before us, we ultimately
| voted to abolish our own democracy ...
|
| The ellipses are intentional, if the fragments of the
| sentence before or after change how to interpret this, please
| let me know
| mapmeld wrote:
| The US example that I would give would be the Articles of
| Confederation being turned over and replaced with our
| Constitution.
|
| In the article I read this to mean: they designed a power
| structure thinking it should be fully open and flat, like a
| company where everyone can do everything on GitHub. But
| once they had run the project for some time, they
| acknowledged that the decisions were flowing through the
| three people.
| lovich wrote:
| > The US example that I would give would be the Articles
| of Confederation being turned over and replaced with our
| Constitution.
|
| That's a legit example I knew of, but didn't come to mind
| when thinking through this. Thank you
|
| Edit: legit from the view that the "democracy" was
| between states and they voted to give up some of their
| sovereignty to a federal government, not that The People
| voted for removing democracy
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Is he referencing a bunch of democracies I haven't heard of
| [..]
|
| Historically: Weimar Republic, Czechoslovakia in 1948, Italy
| starting 1922, Austria starting 1933.
|
| More recently: Venezuela starting 1999
|
| Halfway there: Turkey starting 2017, Hungary starting 2010
|
| If you broaden past just nations to include various
| organizations that used to be democractically organized at one
| point, you could make a much longer list...
| tensor wrote:
| Also halfway there: US starting 2024/25
| rurp wrote:
| This was a disappointing read for several reasons. The
| product/management/PR issues are very relatable.
|
| The community good of a database like iNaturalist is incredibly
| valuable, both now and for untold uses in the future. I've read
| interesting research that made use of that data and have
| personally found the range maps produced by it interesting.
|
| As a user I will be very sad if they kill off Seek. I'm somewhere
| between a casual and a power user. I don't work in a field that
| would use iNaturalist but am a pretty dedicated amateur when it
| comes to identifying plants and animal signs, and have a stack of
| well worn books for such. I tried getting into the iNaturalist
| app several times and it just never stuck. But a couple years ago
| I tried Seek and it has been great! It's not perfect, but it
| works quite well and at a minimum gives you a starting place to
| confirm or reject an ID.
| kulahan wrote:
| I love iNat, and I think it has a lot of real-world value. Others
| seem to have a better understanding than me, but from a purely
| anecdotal perspective, there was a huge prairie dog colony
| encroaching on housing. For years, nobody did anything about it.
| I documented it on iNat (for fun), and within a month they were
| relocated safely. How cool!
| thethethethe wrote:
| > iNat's current Leadership does not share this belief. To them,
| Seek is an off-brand liability that they don't intend to improve.
| They think iNaturalist the product can serve those Seek users
| while also serving existing core iNat contributors to the
| detriment of neither.
|
| I am a big iNaturalist user and I think the seek/iNat is
| confusing and a missed opportunity. Seek feels very much like a
| feature of iNat that is its own app for some reason. They could
| just make the seek app the iNat landing page and call it a day.
| I'm not sure how this makes the iNat app worse than it already
| is. I already find it a chore to use for making observations and
| finding out about what's around me. It's too clunky to make
| observations in the app itself, so I always do it after I am out
| of the field anyway.
|
| Imo they should make mobile app more focused on consuming and
| visualizing data rather than posting observations. Seek does this
| for accessing identification data but I think they have a big
| opportunity to do similar things for seeing whats around you,
| identifying other's observations, and viewing trends in your own
| observations.
|
| inat also has terrible performance, with slow loading photos and
| thumbnails. I would probably spend 10x more time on the app and
| make 50x more indemnifications than I do now if photos loaded
| faster.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head. The separate "power user"
| interface is the web app on a desktop.
| emptybits wrote:
| Enthusiastic Seek-using family here. It works so well for our
| very simple needs that I admit to never fully looking into
| iNaturalist's use of data or my ability to export or move my
| observations elsewhere. I've always fed our observations from
| Seek into iNaturalist since I though it was the "right" thing to
| do. Now I'm questioning it.
|
| So thank you, Ueda, for sharing this writeup that's clearly from
| the heart and for continuing to work on things like this:
| https://github.com/kueda/chuck
| gilrain wrote:
| > I've always fed our observations from Seek into iNaturalist
| since I though it was the "right" thing to do. Now I'm
| questioning it.
|
| Why? The author explicitly encourages people to keep using and
| contributing to iNaturalist, both data and donations. What did
| you read that made you disagree with them?
| emptybits wrote:
| Yes, he does. And I will. But he also suggests that users
| organize and that cessation of data or money or "withdrawing
| your data would be a reasonable form of protest".
| jyoung789 wrote:
| Ultimately, if your interest is in contributing to scientific
| biodiversity data collections, I really feel inatuslist is the
| best tool for the average person to do this.
|
| Similarly to programs like eBird[0] or bumble bee watch [1]
| (both of which are taxa specific), inatuslist contributes its
| data to GBIF[2]. This is a large database including records
| from all over the world,and is made up of both modern digital
| observations (like those from inat), historical observations
| like those kept in herbariums, as well as independently
| published records from smaller organised research efforts.
|
| I work as in academia and do a fair amount of spacial modeling
| in relation to biodiversity data, and the data from iNaturalist
| as published in GBIF is essentially the best coverage I can
| find if we are talking about large geographies. I also do my
| own field work, tracking specific study sites and iNaturalist
| is a fantastic tool for generating species lists. Within about
| an hour, usually while also carrying out some other field task,
| me and my team of technicians can capture the wide majority of
| plant species at a given site, all with location data, time
| stamps, and usually high quality photos that allow me to verify
| the computer vision IDs. Then back in my office, I can open up
| iNaturlaist online, and look through all the data, as well as
| download it in a consistent format. I've also worked out
| methods that allow me to do something similar (albeit more
| focused) for bees.
|
| Seek offers essentially all the same value to researchers while
| also streamlining the experience for users. You are able to get
| a quick answer, and I still get the biodiversity data generated
| by you, without the clunkiness that comes from the inat app(s).
|
| Beyond scientific data, as someone who is principally a
| botanist, I find the accuracy of iNaturalist to be far better
| than things like pictureThis. So even in these cases, I still
| think it's worth while for the casual user to stick with seek
| if you're looking to identify mainly stationary life forms or
| record them for your own use.
|
| ___
|
| [0] https://ebird.org/home
|
| [1] https://www.bumblebeewatch.org/
|
| [2] https://www.gbif.org/
| emptybits wrote:
| Thank you for this really thoughtful answer. I'm going to
| keep using Seek because, as you say, it's streamlined for
| those of us who want to help researchers with data but also
| just want a simple answer. I have PictureThis also, but it
| rarely gets use.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Toward the end of our time at CAS we experimented with
| sociocracy as a way to organize without hierarchy and coercion,
| but despite my enthusiasm for the form, we didn't start with
| universal buy-in or understanding from the whole team
|
| So they wanted to organize without hierarchy or coercion, but
| their plan depended on everyone agreeing on everything?
|
| It just feels kind of silly. The hard part of organization is
| that not everyone will agree on everything. Its what you do when
| that happens that is the question and how you resolve disputes
| fairly. If your starting point is that there won't be any
| disputes, then you have already lost.
|
| Quite frankly i think the biggest problem is that the author of
| this piece is frustrated he wasn't able to coerce people to his
| point of view.
| alexwrboulter wrote:
| Seek is great for more casual users, but also having that ML
| classification option inside iNat is useful for users like myself
| who fall somewhere in the middle between casual and enthusiast. I
| actively want to contribute observations but am often doing it
| while out doing other things and don't always have the time to
| agonise over the ID, so the ML classification is great for me,
| plus, because it's so accurate, it avoids that unfortunately
| common scenario where you upload an observation with an ID you're
| not entirely confident in, hoping another user will step in and
| correct it if necessary, but then it never gets that second input
| and you're left wondering why you bothered.
| donbreo wrote:
| Linus tech tips did something smart. He made himself the "Chief
| vision officer." That way he has complete control over the
| direction the company is going in without the hassle of CEO
| duties and he can focus on what matters to make his vision
| possible. Kudos to that guy for actually hiring his ex-boss as
| his new CEO :D
| MORPHOICES wrote:
| I remember reading a pattern that describes the loss of
| contributors by platforms. Early users play a crucial role in
| establishing the primary level of quality and norms. ~
|
| Once a platform scales, new levels of moderation, metrics, and
| various types of abstractions are added. Thereafter, the platform
| prioritizes safety and growth at the cost of craft.
|
| One simple framework I use is the separation of: Value creation:
| the signal producer Value protection: the one who manages the
| risk and optics Value capture: the one whose interests the
| decisions serve These three domains represent the asymmetry that
| occurs in aol the platform contributors. The complex part of the
| problem is that from the outside, the platforms seems successful,
| and is growing.
|
| Therefore the complaints that are almost always prevalent are
| considered "edge cases." Unfortunately, those who were part of
| the ecosystem, and were most passionate contributors are the ones
| that are leaving.
|
| Final thought for the builders of any community: pay attention to
| those who are not posting, instead of the new users who are
| signing up. In your experience, are there examples of the
| phenomenon described above? Can the platforms be salvaged after
| the loss of trust? What are the dead ends that are a given in
| these situations?
| crystaln wrote:
| I am not inclined to read this longwinded post. Anyone who writes
| a headline like this is not worthy of it's subject, and the
| popular comments would tend to agree.
|
| I'm sure the author is well intentioned and filled with
| integrity, however trashing a thing you created because you feel
| dejected is inherently self-interested and unworthy of attention.
| bmackenty wrote:
| how would you know the author trashed something if you didn't
| read the article? Maybe if we made a tik-tok for you, it would
| be easier to understand?
| gilrain wrote:
| The author encourages people to contribute data and even donate
| to iNaturalist.
|
| Your wrong assumption has made you look like a reactionary ass.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > Up to this point, iNat functioned as an unstructured anarchy.
| Scott and I were titular "co-directors" but we did not provide a
| lot of direction and most of the big moves and features were
| driven largely by individual initiative.
|
| While I love that anarchists and sociocrats exist, I would say
| from personal experience (admittedly, over 30 years ago when I
| was a student) that every single "anarchist collective shared
| living space" will get to a point where someone (even me, even if
| I'm attempting to be chill about everything) will grab someone by
| the shirt front, haul them to their feet, and threaten to knock
| seven shades of shit out of them if they don't take their turn of
| washing the dishes.
|
| Any successful business has a lot of dishes to wash.
| tkuhn wrote:
| > Those of us who benefit from tools like iNat should be looking
| seriously to the decentralized models being developed by the
| likes of Bluesky and Mastodon, because we can't rely on any
| single organization to provide that benefit forever.
|
| Makes perfect sense to me, and I would like to point you to the
| technology and ecosystem of "nanopublications":
| https://nanopub.net/
|
| In a nutshell, nanopublications provide a decentralized
| infrastructure like Mastodon, but with focus on redundantly
| storing open data rather than on user ownership of personal data.
| Moreover nanopublications are basically snippets of knowledge
| graphs, so they resemble database entries and can be queried as
| such.
|
| Happy to elaborate if this is of interest.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| I check the apps and feels very old
| khernandezrt wrote:
| The ongoing push by app developers to "simplify" everything is
| frustrating because it often makes tasks more cumbersome for
| experienced inclined users who want finer control or more
| advanced options. I specifically had this frustration when
| migrating from the original iNaturalist app to the new one. I
| actually use it less now because of how annoying and "simple" it
| is.
| neon_me wrote:
| I empathize deeply as I was a few times in a similarly
| complicated situation. I know, posts like this arent about
| seeking "feedback" but simply releasing pressure, and thats 100%
| valid.
|
| That said, one thing I learned from my own experience was to stop
| pointing fingers (build up badblood and seeking conflicts) and
| instead focus on the hard lessons about my own
| mistakes(learning!). I wish you the best in your next chapter.
| The path to becoming a good manager/colleague is never ending and
| demanding and its evident you want to be one ... Goodluck!
| wt__ wrote:
| Although I don't use iNaturalist that often (because I don't want
| the hassle of photographing the species I definitely know) I'm
| always conscious of the fact it has a relatively modern stack
| (Rails and PostgresSQL) whereas iRecord is still limping along on
| Drupal (very sub-optimal DB schema and quite a few front-end
| annoyances due to module limitations).
| philipallstar wrote:
| > Up to this point, iNat functioned as an unstructured anarchy.
| Scott and I were titular "co-directors" but we did not provide a
| lot of direction and most of the big moves and features were
| driven largely by individual initiative. We never found a great
| way to collaborate.
|
| This is extremely unlikely to work. We have structures and
| hierarchies for a reason. They aren't perfect, but they aren't
| pointless. It feels like when CHAZ/CHOP appeared and there were
| multiple child killings, but because it was based on (purported)
| far left principles it was sort of...fine? At least in the media.
| rjdj377dhabsn wrote:
| I just tried their Seek app with some pictures of tree leaves
| nearby and it failed to identify all of them. Some pictures even
| caused it to crash.
|
| Google Lens correctly identifies 1/3 of them and PictureThis 2/3.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| I read the piece. Who exactly, or what, is "Leadership" in this
| piece? (Always capitalized). A board? Upper-management? Other
| management? It's hard to understand it in full when "Leadership"
| seems to be reduced to an unnamed player - an anonymous villain.
| mistersquid wrote:
| From Ken-ichi Ueda's remarks in the OP, after graduating from
| Berkeley he moved into a role that resembled the loosely-
| structured organizational patterns of an undergraduate team
| collaborating on a term project. Of course, such a gloss
| oversimplifies the complexities of the relationships and outcomes
| of people working together in what would become a non-profit, but
| even tone of the OP seems characteristic of someone still in the
| mindset of high-achieving baccalaureate: laissez-faire
| governance, aversion to hierarchy, prioritization of intellectual
| freedom, etc, none of which are bad or good in and of themselves.
|
| Anyhow, Ueda's 2024 commencement address (especially the opening)
| bears markers of just such a mindset. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AECD7qfFAV0
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