just click on their username, and you’ll see the same information on their profile
Yes, I’d appreciate that. Though, why is it important for the link to not be accessible from the identify/observation page?
Yes, but that’s an extra click, and extra waiting time, and I’m so used to just having to look slightly further that I think it’s worth it keeping the number.
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A lot of disturbance of natural habitats is done by careless casual observers excited about a new thing, and it accumulates. A lot of crime is done spontaneously by casual associates. This will certainly cut down on the number of low-hanging fruit for both those groups.
I definitely value this approach, and I’ve seen disturbance first-hand. The fear of course is that even one person chasing an observation is going to double the damage to a habitat if it is off-trail. But that’s a moral and practical issue related to good field practices more than an iNaturalist or location interpolation issue. But in my eyes it feels like it reaches a point where it just becomes off-putting to a new generation of naturalists when it hits a “only random observing fun allowed” agenda. I know that’s dramatizing things a bit, since this affects only a certain amount of taxa. But that probably speaks a lot to how I see the benefits and teaching experience of this hobby. Part of it is not just what you find yourself, but what other people find in places you’ve already looked in.
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It’s good that they’re being proactive. I certainly welcome the update, even if it’s a bit frustrating (yes, I’m curious where someone saw that unusual plant), but I’d hope that people here would want to put the interests of nature and the environment above their own personal preference for ease or comfort, especially when it affects the latter to such a small degree.
I don’t think it’s wrong to continue pushing for the greater good here. But at the same time, I see a need for a balance. A balance that doesn’t risk locking away enjoyment of the hobby, an enjoyment that has the power to inspire, motivate and guide a new generation of naturalists towards valuable data contributions. Admittedly my opinion errs on the looser end of the spectrum, because I’m a visual and hands on person who isn’t satisfied with just being told something exists courtesy of its name alone. There’s a certain joy in being able to search for unusual species, and some of my most significant sightings, and those of others, came up as a result of me tracking down something rare. If iNaturalist had implemented these changes even a year prior, several species I’ve found that are new to science, or that I rediscovered from extinction, I’d have never found. Sure, one could argue it’s just coincidence, but it happens enough that I defend it has value. And sometimes it’s the rarest sightings that inspire people to start their career or hobby into studying the natural world.
In my eyes, creating an environment that largely discourages “chasing” observations is not a healthy one for the naturalist community. I think I’ve already made my point above that there is still a necessity for certain cases to obscure data, so I’m absolutely not advocating for freedom everywhere. I think we all agree generally about “putting the interests of nature and environment above themselves”, but at the same time that should not be the end all defense that turns down everything that isn’t in favour of these topics.
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I’m curious as to where the information on taxon geoprivacy is stored and who has permission to change it. There doesn’t appear to be a field in the taxa table.
This observation made me curious, the OP left geoprivacy open, the ID is still at genus level, there is no apparent conservation status for the genus yet the observation’s location is obscured. This is apparently because of the recent changes since the observation and submission dates show month and year only.
True, but when I’m trying to get through 1400 pages of Bombus impatiens observations, I’d prefer ways to save time. And if the internet is just a bit slow, then it’s really aggravating.
I would also add that, I thought the point of this change was to add steps to make it harder for poachers to find things, not add steps to make it harder for ID’ers. Especially those who sometimes leave explanatory notes.
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but why do you need to check how many observations have been made by every single user that has posted one of these observations?
this occurs because one of the suggested IDs is for a threatened, globally obscured taxon: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/iconic-taxa-cut-off-on-project-stats-page/9632. this is not new functionality. if you’re interested in more about this, it might be best to start a separate thread or search for existing threads on the topic.
i’m not sure it’s a good idea to delve into great detail about every one of these changes in this kind of forum. it’s already been established that the change is intentional, and that staff is open to adding back the number of observations without the link. so hopefully that’s enough.
obscuring the date/time adds an additional layer to protect obscured locations, and it lays the groundwork for additional layers of location protection in the future.
this forum is probably not the best place to talk about perceived benefits or lack thereof because it’s natural for curious people to want to steer that kind of conversation further and further down the path of providing great detail about the problems that are being addressed, and that’s probably not a great place to end up.
staff will already have a good idea of the pros of the changes, but they may not fully understand all the cons of the changes because it’s impossible for them to understand how everyone uses the system. so if you really want to change minds, it’ll probably be more effective to steer away from perceived benefits of changes, and talk more about the cons by detailing exactly how these changes hurt your particular workflow or processes.
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Any observation where an ID of an obscured species has been entered which is the case here remains obscured even after other ID have been entered.
Otherwise someone could get the location by simply intentionally adding a false id of an unobscured species to open the data up.
Go read my post, I explain it there. To reiterate: if someone mis-ID’ed or left a question (possibly time sensitive) or for some reason I think a comment is warranted, then knowing whether they have 1000’s of observations and may not notice a comment, but they do use the site (so tag them) or whether this is their only observation from 4-8 weeks ago (in which case no need to tag and maybe no comment is required), is useful to know.
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There are 2 separate questions being merged here. Firstly what species should be auto-obscured, a topic which will never stop being debated either the macro or micro level. Secondly, what happens when an observation is obscured. This functionality addresses the second.
It attempts to do what @loarie put best, to ensure that when something is obscured, it should be obscured. There should be no methods, either easy and obvious or difficult and devious to work out the location unless the observer directly and knowingly grants permission to a specific user. This change is one of several that need to be made to lock this down.
Unless the community wants the ultimate draconian solution which the site was actually considering implementing at one time (if you add any obscured record on a day all your records from that day are obscured) or successfully convinces the site to remove obscuring completely from the site, I’m not sure questioning steps to ensure it works is the best approach.
The arguments that the data is lost to science are a little hollow. The locations are not lost, they are hidden to the general public, that is not the same thing. The actual location data is retained and can be made available to any user the observer directly chooses to allow to have it.
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yeah this has been proposed but for what it’s worth it would almost completely break inaturalist for me, and a lot of other people. I think the changes that were made make sense, but obscuring everything like that would mean i couldn’t use iNat how I do now at all. So I don’t support that.
There are a few other changes to the site that along with this one would close most of the remaining loopholes but i am not gonna post them here because i don’t want to post the loopholes. Staff are aware of them.
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Could someone explain why number of user’s observations is not shown too? You still can click on profile and then on observations, so it’s not very protective, just slowing.
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another question, is it possible to restore the functionality of paging through all observations in order just for my own observations? After i make a bunch of observations i page through them one by one to add relevant fields, check IDs, etc etc. This workflow doesn’t work with the new way obscuring works, and i am wondering if there is a way to restore it without losing the added obscuring security.
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I think it’s also worth emphasizing that people looking to find location info on obscured species are often not typical users either. They are persistent, have done this type of thing before, and know ways to interpolate info (that are still available even given this change). NB: My only personal experience in this arena is with herp people here, but I assume those targeting other groups are similar.
I personally think that while this change will make interpolation harder/slower and is probably fairly effective for isolated observations, the deterrent effects likely aren’t worth the trade-off of reduced usability.
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if neither the previous nor current method deter professionals, but the current method deters casual abuse, is that not worth a slight inconvenience for data users? as this thread has shown, legitimate data users have several ways to work around the problem. casual abusers won’t be aware of those options in most cases.
serious legitimate and illegitimate users are both mildly annoyed. casual abusers are blocked, as a few extra clicks and critical thinking are now needed.
So, in my view, this is a net positive.
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this is only including poachers though. Stalkers and harassers that want to find someone will probably not be well versed in how iNat works, and are one of the biggest threats that cause people to obscure observations. Though these cases are less likely to involve inferring based on other observations that day, i suppose.
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I agree with this (though stalkers can certainly be persistent as well). I think it would be good to have the new obscuring conditions in place for any observations that are manually obscured by a user (as opposed to those automatically obscured) regardless.
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this has already been discussed:
…
are you talking about the forward and backward buttons on the observation detail page? if so, it works for me. compare my observation:
vs someone else’s observation:
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I think this diagram is very helpful in outlining the key areas to think about, and the geoprivacy write up is very good. What I’m hearing from reading the comments here is that a fair amount of the objections stem from not just the mechanics of the change to obscuring or the choice of the taxa (all those subject to taxon geoprivacy) but the intersection of the two (so it’s hard for commenters to totally divorce them).
The choice to obscure data has an inherent trade-off between enhanced security and privacy for the observer and organisms they post and decreased site and data usability and accessibility. The goal seems to be to find the sweet spot that best balances these two concerns.
The main issue that I’m seeing is that many commenters think the enhanced security gains aren’t that high (because there are still some ways to interpolate data in some situations) and that the application of the new obscuring rules via taxon geoprivacy leads to too much of a decrease in usability and accessibility because of the taxonomic breadth of the implementation. Essentially, many are arguing the potential gains aren’t worth the cost when applied broadly.
For what it’s worth I think the new obscuration mechanics are definitely warranted in some cases including:
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User-defined obscured observations and
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High-risk taxa
I think there are many taxa, however, for which there isn’t much danger, that the new obscuring mechanisms won’t have a strong positive effect, and do reduce data usability (@silversea_starsong has given some good examples). As such, I think one way to balance that trade-off could be to apply the new obscuring mechanics to some, but not all, taxa via a separate high-risk category for taxon geoprivacy. For instance, my main group is reptiles, and I personally would be fine with the new mechanics applying to that group, which is at high risk for poaching as others have noted.
If targeting the new mechanics to a subset of taxa isn’t an option (too complex, too complicated, etc.), I very much understand, but it might be useful to know if different “flavors” of obscuring would receive a hard “no” which might help focus the conversation.
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