Licensed parameter in get/observations does not seem to work

Bug Reports
1

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): website

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) :

According to the API documentation here get/observations has a boolean parameter called licensed.

However adding it you get an identical result set with either choice. Thus https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=6883&subview=grid&licensed=false and this https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=6883&subview=grid&licensed=true return an identical number of records.

Documentation outdated or broken API search ?

2

last time i checked, the API itself worked, but the screen did not. see https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/cannot-filter-for-observations-with-all-rights-reserved-photos/18160.

3

licensed was never implemented for Explore, only for the API –
compare https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/observations?place_id=6883&licensed=false vs https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/observations?place_id=6883&licensed=true

4

Is this indicated anywhere or just something we are supposed to know?

5

not every parameter in the observation search API endpoint is implemented in the observation search screen, and their default parameters are a little different, too (the screen filters for verifiable and non-spam by default, even if you don’t specify those parameters). i don’t think it could ever be assumed that every parameter available in the API was available on the screen.

if you really want to know if if a particular parameter is implemented, you could check the code in Github, or you could look at your browser’s network activity monitor to see if the screen is making a request in the background that includes the parameter, for example:

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