New place created without user id, can't be edited by creator

Hello,

As part of the upcoming Great Southern Bioblitz 2021, I created a “New Place”, as I needed it linked to a project I was creating. However, I created using the incorrect KML file so the “place boundaries” are incorrect. Can this place be deleted. It’s not used by any projects yet.

I created the “New Place” using my account (a_kurek).

https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/places/city-of-glen-eira

Thank you,

Tony

welcome to the forum.

this is an interesting problem.

normally on the place page, the creator of a place is noted in the bottom-left corner of the page, and the creator will be able to edit the place. in this case, i can see that the place was created relatively recently but there is no user ID associated with the place. so unfortunately, i think that means that you’ll need a curator like @jwidness to modify (or delete) the place for you. (if you go the modification route, do you already have a KML with the new boundaries that you can provide to a curator to modify the place?)

i don’t think anyone has ever really tried to track down why some places don’t have a creator ID associated with them. i’ve always assumed it’s a case where someone creates a place and then deletes their account. but if you created this place and your account is clearly still active, then something else must be going on. in this case, it looks like you’re using the Australian node of iNaturalist rather than the global version. so i wonder if places created outside of the global site will not get the proper user IDs associated with them?

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I’m happy to delete or change the boundary. It’s also probably worthwhile to try to track down why it has no user id associated with it.
I changed the bug title to reflect the user id issue.

Hello,
I have already recreated the Place using a new KML => https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/places/city-of-glen-eira-vi-au , and have associated it with my project. I was looking to try an amend it but couldn’t see how …hence the request to delete it.

Thanks you,

Tony

okay. so a curator needs to delete the first place at some point.

but i guess there’s a question of why the first place was created without a creator ID. did you do anything different when you created the two places?

Hello,
No used the same method.
There are only a few fields that you need to fill in, and they are all mandatory.

  • Name
  • Parent
  • KML File
  • Place Type

I did notice though that I chose ‘Victoria, AU’ as the parent becuase the Place is located within that state. However, after the place was created it appears as ‘City of Glen Eira, VI, AU’ …it truncates the C in VIC. This looks like a separate issue also as the abbreviation we expect (in Australia) for Victoria is VIC …not VI.

Thanks,
Tony

The places can be merged without issue but I’ll leave it for now if this is going to be investigated.

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Is there a need to merge them? The “incorrect one” is not assigned to any projects. Would be simpler to delete it??

Content can only be deleted by the original creator (and I think staff but that doesn’t usually happen). Although as far as places are concerned, merging is essentially the same as deleting. There is no public record of it happening and curators can pick which place retains the boundary, name, etc. There is probably a record that the staff could find if need be, but in all practicality merge means delete.