if you’re going to potentially display obscured observations with non-obscured observations, you’re always going to have some sort of noise in the visualization to deal with, unless you display a density grid with a 0.2 deg long x 0.2 deg lat resolution that incorporates both obscured and non-obscured observations. the problem with that kind of approach is that the resolution of such a grid is so low that it’ll be much less useful for displaying non-obscured observations.
well then, some folks might say… why not just show obscured and non-obscured observations as separate layers? it could be a 0.2 x 0.2 deg grid for obscured observations, plus the existing grid or pins for non-obscured observations, right? as much as you think the obscured observations clutter up the map view now, they’re going to cause that much more clutter/noise if you stack 2 layers on top of each other. any time you have an obscured observation, you’re going to have a giant 0.2 x 0.2 deg box in the background that represents an obscured observation. how will the opacity scaling work for the 0.2 x 0.2 deg boxes? will the scaling for the obscured observations be independent of the scaling of the non-obscured observations? will the opacity scaling for the giant box go from 50%-100% or some other range? will the color of the giant box be different form the non-obscured observation markers? you could easily end up in a situation where you have giant boxes between the basemap and non-obscured observation markers that totally block out the basemap and/or blend in with the non-obscured observation markers. (in other words, this kind of implementation could potentially be way noisier than the existing existing maps.)
or suppose you’re looking at a specific taxon, and those observations are all obscured. now imagine such a map with 0.2 x 0.2 deg boxes. does that really improve upon the current situation? folks still want to be able to click on the giant box to bring up a particular observation. but what if that box is composed of many obscured observations? right now, you could display many clickable obscured points within a 0.2 x 0.2 deg box, even if they are not displayed at their true locations. but if you have just a single 0.2 x 0.2 deg box, when you click on that box, what do you expect to happen? do you just throw up the single most recent obscured observation in that 0.2 x 0.2 deg box? do you only allow the box to be clicked when there actually is an obscured observation with obscured coordinates at that particular spot (in which it could be confusing why the rest of the box can’t be clicked)? do you display a list of observations (in which case that’s going to involve a significant change to how things are displayed, akin to the discussion here, which is on the backburner: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/indicate-overlapping-observations-for-map-pins/18406).
yeah, obviously. but i’m trying to help you all understand why this probably isn’t a viable request – at least not in this current incarnation. i don’t disagree with general ideas like “improved data visibility”, etc., just like i don’t disagree with the idea of world peace, ending world hunger, etc. but the devil is in the details, and you haven’t provided any details here that seem to lead to an improved situation across the board. as i said, your proposals may come with some benefits, but they also come with many cons, which as far as i can tell still end up net negative.
just as a reminder, i did indicate that – besides education – there are a couple of things that i could support:
you can see an example of 0%-100% opacity scaling here: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_UTFgrid_based_density_map_for_Leaflet.html. 0% is probably too low for the minimum opacity, but it’ll give you an idea of how a different range will help to deemphasize extraneous stuff.
you can see an example of this here: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_map.html?view=elevation&taxon_id=42414&place_id=1. by default, this page gives you a grid style map up to zoom level 10 and then pins at more granular levels, similar to what iNat’s maps do, but you can also use the layer selector to choose grid, pins, or heatmap, regardless of zoom level.
… and with that, i think that’s all i have to say here. either you’ll see what i’m talking about at this point, or you won’t, and it’s unlikely anything else i say will change that.