How to create a new place on iNat?

[blue_celery]

How to create a new place on iNat?
I am in the need to create a new “region” which is not corresponding to an already existing region.
This will be extremely useful for a project I have created in order to exclude observations which are not pertinent for its area of interest.

I am sorry if this question could have been already made many times but I would need an easy-to-use tutorial.

Thanks for everything you could tell me.

[kestrel]

Here’s the iNaturalist guide to making places: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started#create_place.

Before doing that though, I’d bring the general area up on the map in the “Explore” page and click the “Places of Interest” button so you can see places the community has created. If you zoom in/out or move the map around a bit, you’ll keep getting different lists. You can hover your mouse over the name of the place to see the boundary pop up on the map.

Finding community curated places is definitely a bit harder than finding the “standard” places on iNaturalist, but it’s always good to check, just in case someone has already made the place you’re interested in. If not, go ahead and make a new place!

[mreith]

i do not find the place “Greater Antilles” and it seems i am unable to create it myself.

[kestrel]

You can always use the workaround of adding all the places together, if you’re interested in seeing all the observations aggregated: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=7526,6931,6944,6848,8748,7488

[mreith]

the place is needed for IDs and there is no workarround for the identifcation feature.

[kestrel]

Yes, you can use that url I just posted, then under filters hit “identify” - so you can ID from all those places at once.

[mreith]

ok i make a example
ok seems this is a feature request … will post it separately

go to this observation https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/25078785
click the compare button in the leading identification, and change the place to “Greater Antilles” there.
you will see it doesn"t work as the place “Greater Antilles” doesn"t exist.

“Lesser Antilles” and “West Indies” are needed too. All these places have wikipedia articles and seem to be significant, as these are the main regions of the Caribbean biodiversity hotspot.

The nonexistence of these places in iNaturalist is detrimental to identification of species in the Caribbean biodiversity hotspot. Would be great if an admin or iNaturalist staff could add these places. - i got an error message that says “to large” to be created.

[upupa-epops]

My understanding is that this a a consequence of the “non-curators can’t make a place larger than the area of Texas” rule. Some others, including some that would help with the Caribbean, were suggested here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/implement-standard-marine-places-for-the-worlds-oceans/1458
The main issue I see with using a list of smaller places to cover a larger area is that some regions are skipped, for example this project covering the Caribbean skips a couple small islands and large areas of ocean: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/caribbean-islands-biodiversity It does cover 99% of the land though, which I’m guessing would also contain 99% of the observations in the region.