Just curious what other curators think of the acceptability of removing single point places (these are places defined as a single gps point reference).
There are a lot of them in the database, they serve no purpose, they can’t collect records unless they are an exact gps match, they cant do a checklist, they add overhead and confusion for users who may select them for queries, entry etc.
I hate them, but my solution so far has been to find a boundary for the place and merge that with the point. That’s sometimes a lot of effort (or impossible) though…
i want to do this also but if i recall correctly i was asked not to. My preference would be for the iNat devs to just delete them all at once.
If checklists had been added to that single point place, would they be lost?
You can’t add a checklist to a single point place, it is not supported.
I’m personally all for it, although I received some pushback a few years ago when I suggested we remove all of them…https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/1689
Reading through that thread, the pushback didn’t sound very strong to me. I say get rid of all the ones that don’t have any existing dependencies (projects, checklists, etc.), and don’t allow creation of any new ones.
I fixed the point place checklists that @kueda listed on github in May 2018. Unless more were added since then (maybe that can be checked?), there shouldn’t be any point places with checklists.
Am I misunderstanding? This one seems to have a checklist that can be added to. https://www.inaturalist.org/places/pacific-northwest
Not too much of a checklist on this one ( all things considered 
) :
https://www.inaturalist.org/places/earth
What will be left after the next great mass extinction?
I wanted to let users flag 'em, so curators/admins could decide whether to delete them or not.
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/inaturalist/dB0vpBQ2NPI/eajJWeWSCAAJ
A few months ago all single point places not attached to projects (35,421) were removed, there should be about 414 left. It should be impossible to create single point places as well. I don’t have particularly strong feelings about the 414 left over, but if they can be merge with existing places that would be great. Happy to look at any specific examples.
My preference is to see all of them gone since most are admin_level=3 places that aren’t editable by anyone except staff.
Alternatively, you could come up with a solution for the admin_level=3 problem…