I make a fair amount of observations at and around my home, I would prefer if my exact address wasn’t known to everyone. Should I mark my observations as obscured or open with 2km accuracy and my residence inside the 2km bubble?

I use obscured for this because I still want to be able to mark where things are on the property.

Pinned location works too https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/elephant-s-eye-on-false-bay So far, none of the ‘random’ pins has landed here.

I personally use a 2 km bubble which includes my house as that makes the locality for the observation much more accurate and potentially useful for research compared to the 24 or so km uncertainty for obscured points

Agree with using the 2 km circle. Obscured locations are contrary to many of the purposes of iNaturalist and should only be used when really necessary imo.

I use a pinned location with an accuracy circle of ca 500 m not centered on my residence – basically the city district. I chose this over the obscuration setting for a couple of reasons: It keeps all observations from my residence on the same point on the map; I might observe the same individual or…

I changed all my observations made in my or my parents’ place to “obscured” after watching a documentary about cyber-bullying. For iNat purposes, I have regretted that choice ever since, since I now cannot easily filter for observations in that place and the map is absolutely scattered with my obscu…

I self-obscure by using a 250m radius, which encloses my entire neighborhood. It’s not centered on my house, but the center of the 'hood. The circle is small enough, I guess, that someone could track me down if they wanted to go door to door and ask, but doesn’t put an immediate X over my house. I …

This is essentially what I do and my reasoning as well, though I set my pinned location and accuracy circle to 499m just in case someone is using a 500m accuracy filter for their data. As a researcher, I’d much rather have 500m accuracy for a point than an obscured point. But YMMV with housing dens…

I post a lot of moths at my house. I formerly obscured the location, but in the past few years I’ve switched to using a 1499m pinned location. (Similar to above, I want to keep it under 1.5km.) The main reason I switched is because I want the exact date to be visible. Flight date ranges are very imp…

Obscured vs open with 2km accuracy?

General

tiwane May 2, 2025, 9:17pm 3

I use obscured for observations around my home.

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Obscured vs open with 2km accuracy?

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