I am struggling with this. I have location while using app enabled, and yet some of my observations had (have) location missing, and some have inaccurate locations. This was pointed out by someone so I spent half an hour earlier, meticulously zooming right in, selecting the location in the crosshairs, adding a location name (Cherrywood Pond or Cherrywood Park), saving the changes.
Now I am informed by same person location still shows missing (this is true), and the ones I updated have all reverted back to the original inaccurate locations ? So what is going on ? Is this because I am trying to add new location ? If this is the case, how are you supposed to accurately record location (which is surely key metadata for research purposes ??).
What I hoped would be an enjoyable adjunct to my life is already turning out to be very stressful
One thing that can help (for future observations) is to open a mapping app and check that your device has found a good location fix before making observations. If you are inside a building or a canyon, or for other reasons, it can take a little while for a phone to get a good location fix.
It seems you’ve already figured out how to do most of the steps here, so I would just reiterate that you should make sure you tap ‘Save Location’ on the map AND then tap ‘Save Changes’ on the observation.
To avoid wasting more time, you might want to test it out first by not worrying about finding the exact location at first. Just try to change the location to anything for now.
You may then need to make sure your app is synced with the website? I admittedly have no idea how to do this on the newer iNaturalist app, maybe another user can chime in and help with that?
Also- just my personal opinion- I find that the older app (iNat Classic) generally works better and is easier to use. You may want to consider trying it and seeing which app works best for you.
There is a big learning curve with iNaturalist! Even very experienced users are still learning hidden features and more efficient workflows. The interface can be frustrating, but it’s improving. You will get the hang of it, and it will become the enjoyable adjunct that you were hoping for!
I’ve noticed sometimes after I’ve edited a record to move my location circle some distance from where I originally plotted it, the original location still shows up when I look at the map showing all records of that species in the area. It’s a temporary thing and the new location has registered correctly for that record.
Strange, I updated them again now, and this time, it showed the old location (or missing location) for a short while, but when I refreshed again, it is now showing the updated locations, so does look like some level of caching is going on.
Thank you to all who responded, this can now be closed.
