Location title issue

[nick2524]

Around the coordinates 43.527298, -72.122716 the title of the location defaults to “18 Islandview Drive Kleinbaai, 7220 Gansbaai, South Africa, Grantham, 03753, United States” In the area around it simply says “Grantham, NH, USA”. It is not a major issue but it is annoying because that area is not South Africa.

I am on Version 1.18.5 for Android

[pisum]

if you try to reload the same observation (as a new observation), can you reliably reproduce the problem? i’m trying to reproduce your problem, just by creating a blank observation and then adding a location near your coordinates, and i can’t reproduce the problem.

it’s also worth noting that you should be able to change the text of the default location description to whatever you like.

[nick2524]

Yes I can. If one looks at the map, It is right on the Island View road and within that little circle.
I just uploaded a short video of me replicating the error.
I do know that I can change the location notes manually.
https://youtu.be/1ATrFoQsjUs

[jwidness]

I’m pretty sure this is a Google error, not an iNat error.

@kueda

The description you see under the map on the observation detail pages can get set by a variety of means, i.e. it is not meant to be consistent or under the system’s control. In fact, the observer can edit it to be whatever they want. We generally refer to this text as the “Locality Notes” or the place_guess (that’s it’s name in the database). Here are the ways it gets set automatically based on the software we have written:

1. On the website, using the Uploader, searching for a place by name or clicking the map will populate the Locality Notes using Google Places Autocomplete API (search) or the Google Geocoding API (click) (the user can also change them manually at this point)
2. If you submit an observation and the Locality Notes are blank, we will attempt to fill them out using the coordinates, precision, and iNat places that contain those coordinates.
3. The Android app works similarly to the website and uses basically the same Google-based methods of turning coordinates and searches into place names

That’s a very long way of saying that if you don’t like the Locality Notes you’re seeing, it’s probably because Google or Apple didn’t do a great job of turning coordinates into a place name. We have tried to work around those errors by ignoring address-level information from Google and Apple.

[pisum]

@jwidness

I’m pretty sure this is a Google error, not an iNat error.

yes, though it’s strange i can get the problem in the Android app but don’t seem to get the same problem via the web. (how does it decide to use point B instead of point A?):

this might tell you how to report incorrect locations to Google: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/3094088?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en&oco=1.