For some reason, I had remembered iNat automatically obscured the location and date of critically endangered organisms. Was that wrong? Do I mis-remember the policy? I recently observed a critically endangered organism, but when I looked at the record a couple of days later, it was set to Open, no…

Yes, that reflects what you have chosen for the observation. Not the geoprivacy the system has applied to the observation.

Ps… even though I’ve Obscured it now , I’m sorry I labeled it in this discussion and I edited my post to not name the species. I wonder if you would please consider removing the name from the quoted part of your post?

This is how auto-obscured observations appear. [Screenshot_20260130-181452] (PS exact location of this obs isn’t actually that sensitive, but you’d want to hide the map/GPS in truly sensitive situations if you want to share a screenshot of what you’re seeing)

[image] teellbee: In this case, it showed as a solid dot and the status said it was Open. I assume anyone could have seen it? No? for your observation in question, your initial ID was only to genus, so it would have shown as open. It wasn’t until a second person came along and added an ID to …

That’s what I did, I checked the details ~after~ it got the ID and it was listed as Open. So I set it to Obscured. But, it matters a little less now. I deleted the record; it seems for the best really.

[image] teellbee: But, it matters a little less now. It matters quite a bit more actually if after reviewing everything we’ve shared you are sure it was truly indicated with open geoprivacy but should have been obscured. You should attempt to replicate the issue and report that to the iNat st…

Agree completely with bouteloua. I’m a little skeptical that it ever truly had an open location at species level, there are thousands of observations of the taxa you mentioned on iNat, and they all display as obscured to me. Some parts of the site display your own obscured observations like all othe…

Well, I deleted this one also. (It was several years old and not alive), but GeoPrivacy was shown as Open, and not Obscured. [IMG_1184]

This is the attitude I have learned to anticipate.

As far as I can tell the system is working as designed. Here’s my edit screen for my observation of a San Francisco Garter Snake , which is obscured by the system: [image] It reflects the fact that I have not chosen to manually obscure it. The system is obscuring it because the taxon geoprivacy f…

Auto Obscuring Critically Endangered organisms?

General

teellbee January 31, 2026, 12:11am 12

Oh, so am I correct in thinking that nothing was done for this species in 4 years since you originally flagged it?

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Auto Obscuring Critically Endangered organisms?

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