Duplicate places for Colorado State Parks

I recently noticed that multiple Colorado State Parks have duplicate Places, with one point place (no boundary, no species) and one boundary place with a number of species linked. I assume this is due to the Standard Places vs. Community Places issue.

Could someone please delete this list of duplicate places? Please be careful to only delete the point places and NOT the boundary places. I included parent places on the list to further differentiate the two.

What’s the difference between a “Land Feature” place versus an “Open Space” place? Which is most appropriate for a state park?

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i think there’s a temporary prohibition on place changes right now (due to the CIty Nature Challenge), but if no curators have stepped up to help you delete the point places, i think you should be able to get rid of the point places by merging them with the polygon places, keeping the names and boundaries of the polygon places. i checked a couple of the polygon places, and it looks like you’re the owner. so that makes it easier to get things done on your own, i think, although you could wait for curator assistance, if you’re nervous about making changes yourself.

here’s some discussion on the topic of merging point and polygon places, including some thoughts on where the point places may have come from: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/editing-a-place-boundary/3547. this probably doesn’t affect point places, but this may also be worth knowing before you merge: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/merging-places-breaks-collection-projects/8097.

someone else will have to speak to the appropriateness of Land Feature vs Open Space. i don’t think it really matters either way.

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Thank you for the suggestions! I read the two threads that you posted (still unclear about where the point places came from and what their purpose might be - you raise a good question!)

I did attempt to merge one pair of polygon & point places. Boyd Lake State Park used to have 2 places: a point place that I couldn’t edit with 0 species & parent place Loveland, and a polygon place that I could edit with 51 species & parent place Colorado State Parks. I merged these two, which created a polygon place that I can’t edit with 20 species and parent place Loveland. https://www.inaturalist.org/places/boyd-lake-state-park-co-us

I would be happy to take care of this request myself, but based on this experience, it looks like I’ll have to wait for curator assistance. Its not an urgent request by any means, so there’s no problem with waiting.

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sorry that merge didn’t work as expected for Boyd Lake State Park. i thought that if you kept the name and boundaries of the polygon place when you merged then everything from the polygon place would be kept, but it sounds like that is not true. so waiting for a curator to help would be the best / only option then in your situation.

just for reference, i pulled the numeric place ids for most of the places from your list (see below), since the numeric ids might be easier to differentiate than the place names. it also reveals the relative sequence in which the different places were created. (Note that Navajo State Park is odd because there is no duplicate on that exact name, though there is a Navajo Lake State Park place in Colorado. It’s odd because a web search seems to show that the only park named Navajo Lake is across the border in New Mexico.)

  1. Castlewood Canyon State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91880
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91959
  2. Chatfield State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91954
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91955
  3. Crawford State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91960
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91967
  4. Eldorado Canyon State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91968
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91969
  5. Eleven Mile State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91971
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91974
  6. Golden Gate Canyon State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/82556
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91976
  7. Lake Pueblo State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/79340
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92007
  8. Lathrop State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91996
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91997
  9. Mancos State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91991
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91998
  10. Mueller State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91994
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/91999
  11. Navajo State Park, CO, US
    ?? There’s a Navajo State Park (point) and a Navajo Lake State Park (poly) ??
  12. North Sterling State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92004
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92059
  13. Paonia State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92005
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92006
  14. Ridgway State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/65681
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92014
  15. Rifle Falls State Park, Silt, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/58982
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92015
  16. Rifle Gap State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92016
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92017
  17. Roxborough State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92018
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92020
  18. Stagecoach State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92025
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92026
  19. State Forest State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92023
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92024
  20. Steamboat Lake State Park, US, CO
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92668
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/90191
  21. Sylvan Lake State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/82588
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92034
  22. Trinidad Lake State Park, Sopris Plaza, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/58984
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92035
  23. Vega State Park, CO, US
    point: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92036
    poly: https://www.inaturalist.org/places/92038
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I’m not totally clear what the curator request is for – are the other places not editable to non-curators or you want someone to merge these in a way that doesn’t change the parent or drop species? I’m happy to merge these if you don’t have the permissions, and I can change the parent back to Colorado State Parks, but I don’t think I can fix the species list problem.

(I will say that there are also mystery reasons why non-standard places become non-editable even to curators, so there’s a chance I might break it so only staff can fix it.)

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yes. non-curators (as far as i’m aware) aren’t able to edit / delete places that they didn’t create. the way i read the original post, the request was simply to delete a group of point places (that already had appropriate polygon places set up).

however, because the attempted merge workaround didn’t work as i was thinking it would, there may be some sort of additional cleanup needed to restore the ability of coparksandwildlife to edit Boyd Lake State Park, etc…

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Ok. I deleted everything in the google doc list. I can’t restore editing permissions for Boyd Lake State Park, so I guess my suggestion would be for me to delete it and coparksandwildlife to re-upload the polygon.

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Thank you @jwidness for deleting the point places - that was exactly what I was requesting!

Yes, could you please delete the existing Boyd Lake State Park place? I will re-upload the polygon. I would prefer to have editing permission.

And thank you @pisum for interpreting (correctly) my request. You both have been very helpful.

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done – let me know if you need anything else

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based on my interpretation of the source code

  def editable_by?(user)
    return false if user.blank?
    return true if user.is_admin?
    return true if user.is_curator? && admin_level.nil?
    return true if self.user_id == user.id
    return false if !admin_level.nil? && !user.is_admin?
    false
  end

… i think the deal in that example was that that place had an admin_level=3, which requires admin privileges (beyond curator) to edit, if not the creator. i couldn’t find anything in the code that gave me an idea of why that place had admin_level=3. maybe there used to be code that assigned admin_level for towns / municipalities? (and maybe there ought to be a clean up of admin_level on old towns and municipalities, especially ones without polygon geography?)

sorry i couldn’t help more. i’m glad @jwidness got it handled for you. not sure if you noticed my note about Navajo Lake, but i’ll point it out once more, just in case.

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Oh that’s interesting. I’m going to file a bug report and link back to your investigations here.



Navajo Lake straddles the border of New Mexico and Colorado. The point place was at the same spot as the polygon, so I think it’s safe to assume those were a pair despite the name mismatch.



Yes, and thanks for providing the place_id numbers, super helpful!

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Correct - the lake itself straddles the border. The Colorado park is actually called Navajo State Park (I just fixed it), and at the southern end of the lake in New Mexico there is a park called Navajo Lake State Park.

Could you please also delete Lory State Park? It isn’t a point, its a polygon, parent is Colorado State Parks, but for some reason I can’t edit it.

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Lory State Park is gone now

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Thank you!

One more: San Luis State Park has been changed to a State Wildlife Area. Could you please either change the name to “San Luis State Wildlife Area”, or delete it altogether? Its a point place with parent Alamosa County.

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Done.

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