So, as a new user - I find it confusing that my city isn’t included as a Place (Cedar Park, TX). When I try to look it up iNaturalist wants to send me to a park in Pennsylvania. The apparently auto-generated place names around Cedar Park, TX are weird and generally incorrect. For example “Brushy Creek” crosses a small segment Brushy Creek, the Place goes far to the North and South, while ignoring most of Brushy Creek itself. Also, I’m sure there are other “Brushy Creek” placenames across the USA, so a more descriptive “Brushy Creek, Williamson County, TX” makes a lot more sense to me.
The overlapping Place designated “Brushy Creek Regional Trail” is better, but much of the parkland associated with the trail isn’t included in the Place - and it even misses the trail itself in multiple spots.
Apparently as a new user I’m not even allowed to read the article on new Places until I have 50 verified observations. Trying to follow the link from the Tutorial mentioned below just dumps me out to the main page with a warning across the top of the screen.
I can see restricting adding places - but preventing me from even reading about the process seems excessive.
As someone without a GIS background, the “Import from OpenStreetMap” tutorials go over my head.
I see these as a noticeable barrier to entry for new users.
Congratulations on your first obs!
If you click Details below the map - your obs is in
Standard place - Williamson County - from Google.
And also
Community curated (from iNat in other words, to bridge the ‘Google Gap’) - Greater Austin TX US.
We have 2 sets of problems with place names on iNat. Either Google is wrong or not fit to MY purpose. Or iNat places are for MY Purpose (then not always useful to the next iNatter).
For MY purpose, if I want Cape Town, I have to use Cape Peninsula 2.
50 obs seems a reasonable start, to learn how iNat works?
the documentation on how to create a place can be accessed even without an account. You can find it in the more menu on the help page. Or by clicking here =)
By the way. That’s one weird city boundary. Almost looks like a gerrymandered voting district xD
Right now there is one small hole missing near E New Hope Dr don’t know why iNaturalist doesn’t change it with my new kml file. maybe it’s just delayed.
Seeing the observations also takes some time to update.
Yes, there are lots of things which made the boundaries weird - primarily other cities annexing before Cedar Park could (Austin grabbed Lakeline Mall, which has a USPS address in Cedar Park) - and the scattered pseudo-governmental “Municipal Utility Districts” (MUDs) which developers set up, load up with debt and leave the new homeowners to deal with the consequences. Typically a city wants the MUD to clear their debt and be ready to integrate with regular city services (otherwise the annexing city owes the debt!)