No locality data provided

[cokendolpher]

Some users supply no locality data. Locality is important for identifications. I suggest users supply some form of location to aid taxonomist and others recognise the taxa in the future. It would be helpful if naturalist enter at least a country, or even better a state or province. With invertebrates especially, too much effort and training is required to recognize many drably colored brown or black taxa. I fully understand the need to protect locality data for rare or endangered species, and habitats, but that does not mean you cannot give a more general listing. Am I overlooking a valid reason not to supply at least some locality data?

[astra_the_dragon]

Welcome to the Forum @cokendolpher!

I also have to ask for location sometimes when I am identifying. I find that usually these posts are from new users who don’t understand the difference between Private and Obscured. Maybe better onboarding would help.
The next largest category is likely from mistakes – geotagging didn’t load properly or they just forgot to add location data.

It is annoying but not a huge deal, especially if you have pre-written text you can copy/paste in to ask for a general location.

Also, are you looking at Casual observations? Because observations with private location aren’t going to show up in the default Needs ID queue. Maybe you can share what your Identify settings are?

[gcsnelling]

I must admit that I just tend to skip past any observation which does not have at least basic locality data, I know this is not the best way to handle this situation except in special cases it is the route I take.

[sedgequeen]

I’ve taken to posting this paragraph when I think location is important:

‘When you choose the geoprivacy setting “private,” we identifiers don’t even know what continent the observation is from. That can make identification difficult. If you want to keep the location hidden, please either change the geoprivacy setting to “obscured,” which will smear the possible location out over a few square miles, or add a comment telling us the continent and region where this organism was observed.’

Sometimes I’ll write a comment (not an identification) saying something like “if this frog was in eastern North America it’s a Green Frog.” And sometimes, like @gcsnelling , I just go right on past because my patience with invisible sites is low.