Hypothetical situation: I know I hiked along a straight trail and that I saw a bird somewhere along a 200m stretch. I set the accuracy circle to 100m radius but, on the sides, that 100m takes the circle over a cliff on one side, and onto a road on the other. I know that I saw it somewhere on the tra…

There are many situations where you can look at the pin location and accuracy circle on observations by others, and deduce where it was more likely to be seen based on what you know of the species. I think it would introduce a significant level of complexity to the system without much in the way of …

I’m not sure that there is any meaningful benefit for accuracies that tight, especially with highly mobile species like birds. Even with sessile species (like plants) I don’t think it’s necessary unless you want other people to be able to go to the exact spot it was found in. While this site does …

Fair enough, you guys make good points. I was thinking of functionality mostly for maintaining accuracy while ensuring obs don’t leave the confines of places and miss out on projects.

[image] thebeachcomber: ensuring obs don’t leave the confines of places and miss out on projects That would be significant benefit… good point :)

I think the project point is a good one as far as iNat goes. For use of data outside iNat, there would still need to be a single point estimate of accuracy (how GIS and other analyses work). I supposed you could just calculate the maximal distance from the edge of whatever shape was drawn to its cen…

Mine are mostly plants along the trail. Using a circle as a pin means most of that location area is wrong. I use the satellite view of the map to work out where That plant was. No GPS. It would be more accurate if my pin was a ‘rectangle along the trail’. Perhaps the polygon pin as an opt in option…

[image] thebeachcomber: functionality mostly for maintaining accuracy while ensuring obs don’t leave the confines of places and miss out on projects. Yeah, in my day job I am all over the accurate spatial representation of field data and its associated uncertainty. In the iNaturalist context…

Polygons are taxing on our system, and after talking with our developers we won’t be moving forward with this functionality.

Accuracy polygon

Feature Requests

Topic		Replies	Views
Accuracy by place Feature Requests	6	1473	February 27, 2020
Is there a way to indicate start/end of trail on map instead of circle? General	11	1031	April 10, 2020
Location accuracy for 'places' General	9	311	August 5, 2024
Help w bulk edit of accuracy General projects	5	272	April 28, 2025
Accuracy circle outside Place area, observation still in Project Bug Reports	3	418	September 15, 2019

Accuracy polygon

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