Potential Location Glitch

General
1

Observations taken in South Africa are shown on the map in South East Asia, despite the place name indicates the likely correct location in Africa.

I reported such a case in
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/misplaced-observations-user-does-not-react/46183
where the link to the observations has been removed by a moderator: “not post links to observations of other users calling them out for use of iNat”. Btw, after I sent a private message to that user, the user corrected most of the misplaced observations.

Now another such case has happened - the place name is african, but the map shows Bangkok. I do not link the observation.

In the latter case, “iNaturalist Android App” was used; for the former case, the method is not indicated on the observation pages.

A similar cases was reported already, and closed without an actual solution:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/map-and-location-name-not-corresponding/7941

Unfortunately, I cannot give any hints on how to reproduce the issue.
I’d like to ask other iNatters to take a look at such glitches, and try to find out how that can happen.

2

An honest mistake (poor internet ?)
Copypasta the location and a tiny typo slips in?

Or a deliberate joke location ?

I see the ones placed in Africa - but clearly not.

You can private message me and I can see if I can help the observer?
Unless they use the app? then I am also lost!

3

I cannot see a mistake on the side of the user. Other observation of this user show the same placename, and the location details are " Lat: -31.146547 | Lon: 29.929335 | Accuracy: 6.19km".
But for the misplaced observation, the details are " Lat: 13.74464 | Lon: 100.530031 | Accuracy: 221m".
Perhaps you remember my identification of rabbits in trees in the African Plants Identification project - hence I prefer to think of an odd software glitch where some data got mixed up.

1 Like
4

That is fine. I am amazed that iNat is keeping the system running (ssh!) under such high pressure of so many frantic identifiers. Midnight tomorrow my laptop and I turn into pumpkins :rofl:

5

I doubt that this is a bug. Location text is able to be set separately from the location itself. A user can add GPS and then a text location, or this can happen when editing. The coordinates may be changed, but the original text location retained. These scenarios aren’t bugs though, and the Bug Report template isn’t filled out here, so I’m going to move to “General”.

6

Just another such case: observation is shown in Borneo (Indonesia), but all other observations of the user are from Peru - observations from the same day.
Except one observation located in Portugal, but with other observations from the same day in Peru…

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