as a person who (in part) makes maps for a living i find the circles to be really frustrating because they are intentionally wrong spatial data. It even gets exported to GBIF that way. Obscuring location is absolutely important and valid, and the ‘fake location’ system made sense when iNat was small and there weren’t that many of them. But right now it’s untenable, confusing, and maybe most importantly, it’s creating wrong data that isn’t clearly wrong to people who aren’t iNat experts. We had a similar issue where I work when things like this accidentally lead to actual applied conservation and development policy being made based on a misinterpretation of map symbology. It does matter, and it does make sense to change it.
charlie
22
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