I don’t think there’s any setting but observations within a ‘place’ is ridiculously strict, I would have expected it to allow observations which coordinates are within the ‘place’ to show up under the place. But if the accuracy strays 1 metre over the edge it’s no longer included. Quite frustrating for observations along the edge of a place, having to move it for reduce the accuracy because it slightly skims over the border of said place.
just to clarify, this is not necessarily always true, see explanation at https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000169942-why-is-my-observation-not-showing-up-in-a-place-or-collection-project-i-know-i-observed-it-there-
so it will depend on the shape of your place, and how it intersects with the bounding box
that aside, whilst it can be frustrating, the behaviour makes sense. The purpose of the accuracy value is to generate a circle that indicates all of the possible areas you may have observed that organism in. If your circle exits your place boundaries, you are therefore effectively indicating that you may have observed it outside the place, and thus it makes sense to not include it in a place search that should ideally indicate something was definitely seen in there
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It’s frustrating when you know you were inside the place because you stayed on the trail but the trail is so close to the edge of the place, that you can’t put any amount of accuracy circle to allow for not knowing exactly where you were on the trail. In that case, I just leave the accuracy blank rather than putting an incorrectly small number.
Edit to add:
Does the boundary box always run along lat/long lines? Seems like with the place in this screenshot that I shouldn’t have a problem with the trail running along the edge of the place (along the bayou) since it is not as far south as the most southern part of the place, but I do.
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Are you sure the problem is with the accuracy and not the center point? That is, you must have both the center point within the place boundary and the accuracy within the bounding box, and it looks like the place boundary would be more likely to cause issues along the bayou pictured.
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It should.
Yes, when I removed the accuracy, it went into the project. Looking at the observations again, I’m fiddling with the accuracy and making it as big as I can without running outside of the invisible bounding box (by seeing whether or not the project is still in the list on the obs. I can make it larger as it’s further northwest on the trail. I’m not certain if they were inside this accuracy circles I’m putting but if I make it bigger it goes outside the bounding box. Better to have the circle a bit small or leave accuracy as blank? Example: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/148669020 I guess instead of making the center point on the trail I could put it north of the trail so I could make the circle wider without the bottom of the circle going too far south.
Is there a way to display the place boundary and/or bounding box on the location map when entering an observation upload on the web?
there isn’t
I would put no accuracy rather than incorrect accuracy. Data users can decide how to treat missing values, but will not know that data is intentionally incorrect.
I think it’s fair to move the center point of an observation so that the accuracy circle falls inside the place as long as you are still sure that the observation falls inside the circle.
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