I am the owner of the following project: Austin Memorial Park Cemetery-AMP https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/austin-memorial-park-cemetery-amp
Several new members who have had individual iNat accounts have joined it, but their observations are not appearing on the project page. Any advice is appreciated!
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If you are confident that the project is set up appropriately, the most common issue I encounter for location-specific projects is that GPS accuracy of the observation isn’t precise enough and extends beyond the borders of the place for which the project is configured. This issue is described here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#placeindex
If you don’t think this is the issue, can you share an observation that you think should be in the project but isn’t?
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I agree with @naturesarchive, and I believe that your issue is the one they’re describing. The way I usually deal with this is to define the “place” as somewhat bigger than the actual borders, that is, add a buffer to the outside edge of your cemetery. In your case this will not be a perfect solution, as Austin is very active in iNaturalist and there are already quite a few observations just outside your cemetery, so that if you enlarge your definition of place, you’ll include some of those observations too. You’ll need to decide what will best meet the objectives of your project.
I do notice that although the project says it is about the flora and fauna of the open space, only certain taxa are included (bees and butterflies, most land vertebrates but not amphibians, and all plants; not fungi). You might consider changing this to “all taxa” which will capture more observations. The project is attractively set up. I hope you do more of them!
Thank you and @janetwright . The new member to the project has the correct location on her observations-Hancock Dr-but they don’t appear. The location parameters are another on-going problem that I can’t solve. I have managed to designate Hancock Dr and Turnabout Ln as locations but W. Park and Northland Dr also appear for some field locations, and I can’t seem to add those streets. I solve the problem by moving the location on the observation map until it says Hancock Dr. and it works. Thanks for the taxa suggestion-I will change it.
I’m not sure what you mean about the locations on streets. There’s been discussion about the text “location” of observations, which seems kind of arbitrary – it may state a very specific location or just a county – I don’t worry about it, because the real location information is in the coordinates, which most smartphones supply pretty accurately. If you are moving the coordinates away from the original ones, you’re making your information less accurate. Better to revise the boundaries of the place used to define the project. By that I mean re-draw it in Google Maps or some other mapping resource, save as a kml, and use the new one to replace the “place” in your project’s map.
I know the area of this project quite well and have dealt with the issue of including observations in another analogous project (Salton Drive Biodiversity). Let’s see if restating it this way helps:
Your project has a polygon associated with it that you (or someone) drew and uploaded for the project. I notice that it only encompasses the undeveloped NE part of the cemetery. To be included in your (or any) project, both the location point of the observation and the entirety of the “accuracy” circle, if any surrounding the point must be entirely included in the boundary of the polygon.
So as it is currently configured with a polygon encompassing just the wilder NE corner of the larger cemetery, observations either outside of that polygon or observations with a circle of accuracy which at any point extend outside of that polygon are going to be missed.
The solution to the above issue is to upload a different, larger polygon to associate with the project. Also, you can add a note to the project description or coach individual contributors to double-check the accuracy circle of their observation to ensure that they are entirely encompassed in the project’s polygon.
Hope this helps. DM if you need help drawing a new/larger polygon for the project. As I mentioned, I know the area well.
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Exactly, @gcwarbler, and you said it more clearly than I did. The iNat people have pointed out to me that technically, in fact iNat uses a rectangle that fits around the defined boundary as the “include if entirely within this” limit, but in either case the fix is the same - make the project boundary bigger.
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