Crowdsourcing (Volunteer Instructions)

This page provides basic instructions that you can give to your crowdsourcers to get them started in the crowdsourcing module. Note that you will want to add specific transcription instructions for your collection.

Creating an Account

First, you’ll need to create an account in the portal for which you will be crowdsourcing.

  1. Navigate to the portal in which you will be georeferencing.
  2. On the right side of the grey menu, click New Account.
  3. Enter the requested information, check the I’m not a robot box, and click Create Login.

After you’ve created an account once, you will use this login information for all future sessions. Just click Login and enter your username and password.

  1. Once you are logged in, click the Crowdsourcing tab from the main menu.
  2. Your stats will be shown in the top right side of the page under Your User Status. Here you can see how many specimens you have transcribed, as well as how many points are awaiting approval and how many have been approved.
    • Pending points are those that have not yet been reviewed by a curator
      • Curators are very busy, please be patient if your pending points don’t turn into approved points very quickly!
    • Approved points are those that have been reviewed and approved by a curator
  3. In the bottom table that reads Your Stats by Collections, decide which herbarium you would like to work on (or select the herbarium instructed by your event leader). Click the number in the Open Records column that belongs to that collection’s row.
  4. On the resulting page, you’ll see a table of specimen records that require transcription. Randomly select one of the specimens by clicking on its Symbiota ID number (leftmost column).
    • If you see a message that says Record Locked!, go to the next specimen by clicking the double arrows at the top of the form, just under the magnifying glass
  5. Transcribe the record as instructed.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers 2001500, 2001509, 2001394, 2001422, 2001427, 2001431, 2001299, 2001354, 2001288, and 2001345. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Additional resources about crowdsourcing in a Symbiota portal can be found below:

Cite this page:

Katie Pearson, ed: Lindsay Walker. Crowdsourcing (Volunteer Instructions). In: Symbiota Support Hub (2021). Symbiota Documentation. https://biokic.github.io/symbiota-docs/editor/crowdsource/individual/. Created on 07 Oct 2021, last edited on 12 Dec 2023.