Posted by AaronClausen
As we continue to look for ways to reduce the overall footprint, complexity and ongoing cost to operate the platform, NatureMapr has decomissioned the legacy "regional" structure that many of you will be familiar with and has been around for quite some time.
This means that NatureMapr will move to a simpler and flatter national structure.
We are genuinely positive and excited about this change, it is also vital for the platform's continued operation.
I will also explain the reasoning behind the change and what it means below.
The back story
In 2013, "Canberra Nature Map" kicked off as a regionally focused citizen science website, directly servicing the local Canberran community and providing verified biodiversity records to ACT Government.
It worked well because it was locally focused and not "internationally watered down".
We always prioritised providing a quality local user experience over a rapid and watered down international user experience for growth's sake.
Years later, we made an assumption that perhaps people in other regions might benefit from a similar localised user experience that the community in Canberra had been enjoying for quite some time.
With lots of help from people like Jen Smits and with early support from organisations like Albury Conservation Company and Wingecarribee Shire Council, we established a series of regionally focused "sub sites". E.g. albury-wodonga.naturemapr.org or southern-highlands.naturemapr.org - each with their own fully interactive home pages and complex feature sets.
Our hope was that the local communities in these regions would move in and call them home.
An incorrect assumption
But this was just an assumption - and it turned out to be incorrect.
Not only was our assumption incorrect, but these feature rich pages were also very complex for the system to crunch and they increased our overall platform footprint significantly, and our costs.
Up until recently, if you browsed to many of these regional hubs, many of them showed limited activity.
This is because people congregate around the causes and organisations important to them
.. not around a bunch of ad hoc regional structures that we came up with arbitrarily.
The other big problem with these regional hubs, like 'Southern Highlands Nature Map', is that there is no paying customer or allocated funding to support their operation.
In an era where the costs and the amount of regulation required to operate a business are progressively increasing, we simply can't justify providing this service any more.
What do these changes mean?
In order to reduce the complexity and cost to operate the platform, so that we can keep NatureMapr running:
NatureMapr's collections feature instead provides a flexible structure for people to congregate around the projects, causes (and places) important to them.
Can I still upload sightings across Australia?
Yes, absolutely.
We want people to be able to continue to upload their important records right across Australia (myself included).
It just means that there won't be a dedicated "sub site" for Far North Queensland or the Pilbara any more. But you can still spin up your own collection and amass or organise records from any place you or your local community might be interested in.
What about Canberra Nature Map?
The Canberra Nature Map community can continue to access their own dedicated regional hub directly at: https://canberra.naturemapr.org as this service is funded by ACT Government.
But beyond Canberra, NatureMapr now moves to a simpler, flatter, national structure which is a big win for simplicity and a step in the evolution of NatureMapr's long term sustainability.