Geoprivacy, Obscuring, and Auto Obscure Discussion

[carrieseltzer]

Revisions, clarifications, and additional guidance in the curator guide around conservation statuses and taxon geoprivacy are definitely needed.

@cmcheatle

My reading of the curator guide (if someone from the site wants to give an official rebuttal etc great) is this:

• the default state of a threatened species is obscured.
• if it can be demonstrated and documented that doing so provides benefits and/or no risks then this may be reset to open for a specific species
• the onus of proof is to demonstrate why a threatened species should be open, not the reverse.

Based especially on what we went through last year with Nature Serve Canada (for the few of you reading this who weren’t in the thick of that, it’s in this thread), I think we’ve evolved to a place that is more nuanced than currently articulated in the curator’s guide. I would paraphrase it as “as open as possible but as closed as necessary”.

@cmcheatle

When or how would you propose that this backlog be dealt with and the species lists get documented and reviews done as to which are appropriate for obscured and which for open?

In the best case scenario, there will be not only a list of threatened/endangered/protected species, but also a list of “species subject to persecution or harm” or sometimes “sensitive species” that reflects local/national consensus of the species most at risk from sharing locations of populations or individuals, not just their threat due to all causes. If such a list exists, that list should be used to guide decisions about taxon geoprivacy. The remaining threatened/endangered/protected species that are not on the “persecution or harm” list can still be included for a bulk upload of conservation statuses with the taxon geoprivacy set to open.

For places that do not have a list specifically for “species subject to persecution or harm”, then maybe the best approach is to obscure everything “near threatened” or worse (or perhaps a higher threshold?), expecting that over time the community will then help curate and open up the taxon geoprivacy for species where the cost of hiding observations will likely outweigh the benefit. I’m interested to hear what others think about how to best approach places where we have little if any conservation statuses.

@JeremyHussell

is it impossible to update the conservation statuses in bulk without changing the current geoprivacy settings?

It is possible to update the conservation status without changing taxon geoprivacy. However, it is more complicated to do it that way and I don’t think it is a great idea in our current system of bulk updates done by staff.

@cmcheatle

Do you have any suggestions for how users might validate that the list of names they provide matches exactly to an entry in the iNat taxonomy list ?

You could use the API to look for exact matches in your list. Or…

@jdmore

I have done this by just creating a temporary personal list using the batch upload option. The description field is populated with an arbitrary unique value prior to upload, for later comparison with the original batch. Non-matching (or ambiguously matching) names are immediately flagged on-screen in the resulting upload, with options for finding the equivalent iNat name. Then I can re-download the resulting “cross-walked” list and compare to the original in excel or equivalent data tool. The temporary personal list can be deleted if no longer needed.

That is a very clever approach, @jdmore. I almost think you should make a new thread specifically about your method.