Are private observations unsuitable for location based projects?

General
1

I was looking at unsuitable observations in a location-based traditional project and saw one of my own.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/147855184

This species is on the project list
https://www.inaturalist.org/lists/629861-FNAI-tracked-speciess-Check-List?q=ceratocanthus

And I think that it meets all of the other criteria.
https://www.inaturalist.org/project/fnai-tracked-species/terms

But it shows up in unsuitable observations
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?not_matching_project_rules_for=fnai-tracked-species&project_id=fnai-tracked-species&subview=map&taxon_id=174403

I recently found that searching for observations and limiting to Florida excluded private observations; is that what’s going on here or am I missing something about why this is considered unsuitable for the project?

2

As far as I understand, private observations don’t ever show up in location-based searches/projects. Otherwise, somebody very motivated could check what searches it shows up in to figure out the location on their own, making the location (which the observer considers sensitive information) not actually private after all. The site treats them as though they have no location data at all.

If you want to keep the specific location and date for an observation reasonably hidden but keep the general information accessible by searches and projects, you should obscure it instead.

2 Likes
3

Do you know how I was able to add it to the project? If I try to add other observations of mine that don’t meet the project criteria, they don’t go in and I get an error message type of thing. And this was an unexpected part of a test of marking that observation as private; I’d never actually do that as then the record is relatively useless.

4

Was the observation private when it was added to the project, or did you mark it private later? I wonder if changing an observation’s privacy from Public or Obscured to Private doesn’t remove it from the project, even if it’s no longer suitable.

5

Thanks. I tested that and it was private before adding. So the system let me add it as a suitable observation but then flags it as unsuitable.

6

So can anyone tell me if this is a bug or expected behavior as far as being able to add an observation to a project but the observation being considered unsuitable, apparently because of it being private? Seems odd that it’s both suitable and unsuitable.