I wonder if there are any rules on iNat concerning geografical names.
There exist official names, historic names, names in various languages
for one special point of the surface of our little planet..
As everybody knows, there are not so few areas disputed betwee the less than twohundert states or similar entities.
As I have experienced, you can name the place of any observation as you like it.
I am in favour that this and it should be kept also in the future.
there was an extensive discussion of this issue at this (now closed thread): https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/gulf-of-mexico-renamed-to-gulf-of-america-on-google-maps-baselayer/61520
I won’t reopen that thread, but it should answer all of your questions
It sounds like petzenbeer is talking about the observation_place_guess field (or perhaps named places that show up under “Encompassing Places” for observations), while https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/gulf-of-mexico-renamed-to-gulf-of-america-on-google-maps-baselayer/61520 was about the Google Maps Layer in maps.
just to clarify, if that is the case, then yes
this is correct, and anyone can use whatever geographic names they want in the locality notes field of their own observations. These are not policed or moderated (unless you were to use racist etc text there). This has always been the case, and nothing has changed there