Even though I obscure my locations, I want the observation to be located exactly where I found the organism, to see how much they are attached to micro habitats if I spot them again, or if I would need that information for later use (or someone else).
To me the “fudge” method is a hack, unscientific, and only acceptable because of the lack of a smaller grid to obscure observations (say 1 kilometer, or one minute (1/60) of a degree for example.
That said, I understand that some users don’t even use the map, they just type the location name, often a city nearby, and voila. They don’t even care about coordinates, don’t set the size of the circle, so in this light the “fudge” method can be more “precise”…
This is weird to me. To me the uncertainty circles mean in most cases that the observer knows the observation was made in the general area of the circle without knowing the exact spot, meaning in most cases it would be a coincidence if the centre of the circle would indeed mark the exact spot. I am often using uncertainty circles.. for example I went photographing a few days ago in a meadow. I took one photo with my phone to have a location, as my old DSLR doesn’t not have GPS. I then moved around in that said meadow, guessing from my photo history and the map where exactly the photos were taken, but I would be surprised if any circle centres would be exactly correct. And when I move around in rainforests, deserts, the Andes or oceans it gets much worse (yes, I tried using my phone more often in those situations when even possible, but many results were clearly wrong.. e.g. I had to correct locations for photos taken on my phone, as they were set some 100s meters away from a precise spot I recodnized on the map),.. the centre spot is a guess, the accuracy circle is as large as is needs to be to be sure the correct location is involved. You reading the centre of the circle as “correct” is pretty optimistic.. and would make those accuracy circles obsolete.
I myself do fudge observations around my home, usually all to a nearby larger street cross (which actually will be pretty telling, that this is not the correct spot) and use a accuracy circle that will contain my home. As I move rather regularly, I have been able to correct many of those observations later to the very precise spot, but I also do not think that this data would not be useable if I didn’t. In Bogota, for example, one of my last home towns, my true location was 40m away from that centre spot and it really does not make any difference in general habitat. But to me it does make a difference in personal safety.
I never got into the obscured feature for several reasons. First I do not like that two parties have to get active to get a more precise information. Also I read at some point when I started here that it is easy to undermine if you want to. I don’t understand anything about it, so I better just not touched it and took it into my own hands to obscure my location (which is a false safety as well, I do realize, but it feels safe enough to me to sleep well )
It sounds to me like you’re arguing that obscuring observations is largely pointless if you’re trying to hide the locations from the knowledgeable searcher (which I would agree with). Those who know what they’re doing are probably going to find what they’re looking for. Chances are, they already know and don’t need help from the average iNat user.
Personally, I rarely record the precise locations of my observations. For important observations, I can usually pinpoint the locations if needed. I generally don’t report my observations on iNat - they go directly into the database I manage, and the coordinates I enter are the same for all observations that are part of a survey. I enter an uncertainty value that covers the area I surveyed - sometimes it can be several kilometers. I don’t report each individual organism - I just report totals for each species (and for those that are numerous, ballpark estimates). For very long hikes, I try to break the survey into segments.
Since I can’t be bothered to provide precise coordinates for each individual organism, I don’t think it makes much sense to pressure casual iNat users to do so. My guess is the bookkeeping burden will discourage a lot of casual observers. I’d rather have slightly imprecise data than no observations at all. And whether I want it or not, a lot of the iNat observation data has very approximate location data.
Exactly. Lots of people enter observations with locations that I know are incorrect (ie. actual location falls outside the accuracy circle). None of these folks are likely to be reading this thread, but harping on extreme precision is likely to be counter-productive.
I’d rather folks enter an obviously incorrect location (the trailhead, or a nearby intersection) with an appropriate uncertainty value, than a sloppily chosen location that looks like it could be correct (and has a very small uncertainty value). That’s misleading.
I was recently contacted by someone concerned about reporting a somewhat rare species on iNat. I pointed out to them that 5 other people had already reported the species in the same general area, so it wasn’t really a secret that the species could be found there. I explained that if they obscured the observation, it would not appear in our Atlas (because I exclude all obscured observations). I then suggested the alternative of reporting the observation at a nearby location, with an accuracy value that encompasses the real location.
If I were using iNat to report my normal observations, it would be a bad assumption. I would look at the map, pick the approximate center point of the route I followed during a particular survey, note the uncertainty value that could encompass my entire route, and that’s what would appear in iNat. I would apply those coordinates/uncertainty value to all observations I made during my outing. Typically, the uncertainty would be several kilometers (I try to keep it under 10km). Chances are, zero observations would have actually occurred at the center of the uncertainty circle.
This is the approach I recommend to folks who want to “fudge” locations. ie. choose a nearby location that is “obviously wrong”, but expand the accuracy circle to contain the true location.
Once, when I tried to let a fellow researcher know the true location of an observation which became obscured once I gave the observation the correct ID ( due to taxon geoprivacy), he told me that he could see the true location by viewing it on his smartphone. ie. obscuration didn’t work on one of the phone apps - maybe that has been fixed, maybe not.
Is that the case for iNat data? Like our other network members, iNat sends an export of true locations to NBN (just UK observations for them, of course). This includes true locations for observations oscured by taxon geoprivacy, and true locations of observations where the observer manually obscured the location and they have affiliated their account with iNatUK. So yes, some will not be included in the export, but the majority should be.
if the level security is 99%, it’s only because few people know how to get to any of the underlying locations, and none of them so far have had the desire to do anything bad with that knowledge. if that knowledge spread beyond that small circle of people, then the level of security could drop rapidly unless changes were made to the system.
I personally prefer fudge. I know that Inat oficially prefers obscure, for a reason they have it. Buuut.
Why do I prefer fudge?
Obscure only allows access to people who belong to some sort of scientific group. Idk who those people are to be honest or how they even get that permision and to hackers who know how to jump the permisions. But to common people with common projects. It makes the data harder to collect.
In colombia where i live. In “my location” map. I have from 0 to 5000msnm, from sea to mountains. Tbh is annoying to get a bird or a plant that only belongs to the coldest of the colest higher mountain biomes in the search list I do for my tropical dry forest. If the person simply fudged it, i could still get useful data for me and my own project without having to deal with all this information about the mountains.
“Biopirates” is a REAL thing. Did you know about it? So apparently with some animals or plants. Things can get either dangerous illlegal or illegal tricky and is kinda sad to know how in southamerica europeans and american get away with it a lot. And is sad to see some animals and plants getting traficked or worst… patented. So to protect the plants from biopirates. Is better to fudge and only the reporter not the system knows the place the animal or plant is. And not the biopirates. If a real scientist wants to access the plant, they need to contact the user directly and officially. Is safety against biopirates. If all they want is the data. The fudge wont damage their investigation.
Fudge is for the commoners. Yes, obscure can get the data the scientist. And I am happy for that. But fudge allows the data for the non scientist
Fudge with criteria. Close but not that close. Similar in biome and altitude. You are trying to avoid the biopirates and the animal trafickers.
Ps: i only advice this for HIGH RISK plants and animals. Dont go fudging everything around you.
I also would like to hear more from other researchers. I am not surprised that I am in the minority for users (who post in the forum), but no one else has answered the question from this perspective.
From a land manager perspective, if you fudge it and choose a different spot within the general neighborhood it will no longer appear within our park boundaries so it will go completely unnoticed vs. sharing access to your obscured obs via account to account or project trust. Nonideal.
Not to derail the conversation or anything. But this is the first I’ve heard of this and I feel like this should be a bigger deal. If there is a way to get any obscured observation’s true location then staff need to be made aware. And if they are aware and it’s still not fixed, that’s an even bigger issue.
I almost never actually obscure using iNat’s built-in Obscure function because the Obscure function automatically also obscures the exact date and time. It’s never been the case for me that I want to hide the date and time, just the exact location. So fudging it makes more sense to me as an observer, because I find the removal of date and time to be unnecessary.
That makes sense. I don’t think the obscure function is perfect, either.
In my opinion, it would be better if it was a circle instead of a square. What happens with squares is, if there is a population in one of the corners and people make several observations just outside of that corner, you’ll get four of those squares around the population and can easily pinpoint where the exact location is. I feel this would be more difficult with circles.
More importantly, I think there shouldn’t be a random pin in the obscured square. When exporting observations, the coordinates for that random pin are exported. It would be better if it was just blank. Now I have to manually check every exported observation to see if the coordinates are correct, or in some random place.
I think the date and time being obscured is meant to prevent someone from just looking at your other observations from that date and time to see exactly where you were. Sort of defeats the purpose of hiding the location if you uploaded 5 other things from the same date and time with the location unobscured. By obscuring the date, it’s harder for someone to “track down” where you were for that observation based on your other observations.
I do this too and of course, the pins are not exactly at the right spot. Like, the accuracy may be off by up to several dozens of metres. But I don’t consider that a wrong location, because in that case, anyone trying to revisit the location can easily find the organism back by walking around a bit and using their own skills, and the organism can actually be found at that spot. Animals don’t sit still and may naturally move around, and even plants can reproduce and turn up in the ‘false’ spot. But this gets more and more unlikely when the false pin is, say, half a kilometre from the correct location.
If all this ‘fudging’ is really only about several dozens of metres, I completely take back everything I said. I thought what was being implied is that the false pin would be placed up to several kilometres around the true location (which is what the obscure function is for, where it’s clear to everyone that it’s pointless to try and pinpoint the exact location).
Which I guess is something “fudgers” need to consider. If you’re fudging 3 rare observations and post them alongside 30 others with a more precise location, you lose the added protection of a bad actor having the date obscured, making it easier for them to reconstruct where you were.
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