Hello!
I open this thread since I did not find anything similar in the quick search.
I have a project that collects the observations of a rural town (Ramón Biaus), and there is a user who seems to have several observations in this town, the problem is that the observations are actually made a few kilometers from there on the banks of a river , which is outside the town limits and belongs to another city. How can I make these observations not appear in the project, should I choose to exclude this user from it? I would prefer not since some of his observations are correct.
The ideal would be to contact him to ask him to change the location but it seems that he has not entered the platform for a few months, or mark them in the DQA as an incorrect location but this user blocked me and I cannot interact with him or his publications in order to solve these cases.
It may help to post a link to the project you are asking about as the answer will depend on whether it is a collection or traditional project. There isn’t a need to identify the specific observer whose observations you are referencing. Thanks!
OK, it looks like this is a collection project on the place, so you can’t individually include/exclude observations in the project. One issue could be that the boundaries of the town may could be incorrect. Have you checked the place to ensure it’s correct? (https://www.inaturalist.org/places/ramon-biaus/edit). You could also consider making a traditional project instead.
As @fffffffff noted, if an observation’s true location lies anywhere within its accuracy circle, its location is considered accurate, and so it wouldn’t be appropriate to check it as having an incorrect location. One issue that sometimes occurs is users selecting the name of a town for an observation. It is then plotted at the center of a town with a radius around it which is set automatically. Users may not always checked to make sure that radius is large enough to encompass the true location. In general, unless there is really clear evidence that a location is incorrect/inaccurate, it’s probably best to not downvote.
Enlisting the help of another user since you have been blocked could be ok, but I think this would need to be done carefully. Blocking (assuming it’s used legitimately) is an important feature of iNat, so just telling another user to mark someone else observations as inaccurate doesn’t seem like a good course of action. The observer could feel like they are being ganged up on or harassed by someone trying to get around blocking.
What might be ok is to ask another experienced user from the area if they could review a set of observations (and not bias the reviewer towards the outcome you want). If the user you asked to review the observations does think that the locations are inaccurate, they should leave comments asking the observer to correct the location and explaining their reasoning for designating the locations as inaccurate.
My personal thought is that the most straightforward way to achieve your goal might be either:
to use a traditional project. The project currently has a fairly small number of observations and is manageable with traditional project filters.
If it’s only a few observations, just live with the slight imperfection. If you are using the data for something, manually delete the few observations before use.
Yes, this is the “problem” here. The boundaries of the town are correct, because I created the place based on local cartography and actually I can exclude this user from the project but some of the observations are interesting and that’s why I left them. Surely I can live with this small differences in observations but asking for other options was something. Maybe the traditional project is something I can try.
I think traditional projects work better for small areas. I have noticed in collection projects that if any part of my accuracy circle is outside of the place then it doesn’t get put in the project. There is one project I’m in where the main trail runs along a creek. The creek serves as the border of the park. I have had to remove my accuracy if I want to put my point actually on the trail.
You can exclude things that shouldn’t be in the project and add things that end up outside due to large accuracy circles or slightly off gps coordinates. I curate a traditional project for a small nature preserve. As the observations add up over time, I get more and more points that are outside the bounds of the preserve. I’ve found it’s easier to check whether they were supposed to be at the preserve or not than to get people to move their center point.
This is a great point as the town is a fairly small area with observations close to the borders. Some projects in small areas include a “buffer” around their true borders to include wanted observations, since all of the accuracy circle for an observation needs to lie inside the boundaries for it to be counted.
I would say the current place is a very good one, I usually take a couple of metres from the other side of the road to catch observations on the border, but even now it’s a very nice looking polygon, I don’t think it needs to become traditional project because one person did something wrong, if their observations won’t be marked as “location incorrect”, maybe putting them in filters (unless they observed in town too).
It’s probably incorrect to call it a town as it has less than 200 people and Wiki just calls it “localidad” and I can’t find anything else, but it’s closer to a village.
Actually the polygon has some additional meters to include things near the limits.
In Argentina we call this “pueblo” which translates as town, village could be translated as “aldea” which is not used here. But this are just differences in language.
For this to work one should manually add the observations you want or through filters right? And the user should have the option for other people to include ther observations on projects?
In the example I give for example with a traditional project if this user has blocked me I wouldn’t be able to add his observations I guess
Yes, you manually add the observations. You can use filters to find observations. I don’t know exactly how blocking works on iNat. Can you still see the observations? I don’t know if there is some restriction where the observation couldn’t be in your project. But if it is just that you can’t see the observation, someone else could add it to your project. Any member of the project can add any observation (not just theirs) to a traditional project.
I have found that most people allow their observations to be put in traditional projects. For the project I curate I had 149 people who allow, 2 people who allow once joined (I asked and they joined), and 1 who doesn’t allow (it was only 2 obs of commonly observed species so I just ignored).