Summarising the points again (thanks everyone for a lot of different viewpoints)
・The idea of accuracy radius is that, the observation was certainly made somewhere WITHIN the circle.
・Accuracy radius is an international standard for scientific records, because GPS coordinates only represent a dot and it can be frequently inaccurate if you think logically.
a dot have no area, so it can be only accurate when the coordinate is perfectly on top of the organism, which rarely happens.
Even if you think your coordinates are most precise, are you sure that it sits on top of the leaf you photographed? If not, adding an accuracy of a couple meters will theoretically make the locality more accurate, and more importantly, people will know that it’s very precise, with that tiny radius.
・GBIF and many other databases have columns for accuracy radius although it’s not required.
・for many scientific purposes, adding accuracy radius makes your data more reliable / useful, but not always significantly more.
・BUT, there are also many scientific research projects that don’t require accuracy radius values too.
・Adding accuracy radius cause nothing negative, except for your extra effort and time.
・Adding accuracy radius seems to be harder / more complicated on app. Let’s use the web…
Data without accuracy radius are not anything useless are still fine for a lot of purposes, but in some situations it could be considered less reliable and filtered out.
So, if you’re really keen about maximizing usability of your data, adding it might be a good idea.
It’s kind of similar to things like getting better photos or including rulers in your observations etc - can be important sometimes but not a deal-breaker if you don’t.
(p.s. t