Hello all. I’ve been identifying dragonfly and damselfly observations in Latin America for some time now, and I submitted observations of about 50 Odonata species that weren’t on iNaturalist yet as a gesture to the program. But I have one persistent problem with iNaturalist. It is said to be a citiz…

:flushed: Yeah but it can be embarrassing putting your real name or like :point_right: :point_left: you know people wanting to keep it private to friends and close people

[image] kitty12: A lot of vulnerable people would never use iNaturalist if they knew their abuser or harasser would be able to find out where they like to spend time in nature. Absolutely this!! I feel safe enough at the moment that I use my real name in my profile, but there have been times…

I don’t have anyone after me, but I tend to obscure locations close to where I live or visit often. Random travel sightings are not obscured, but I never post them before I’m back home. The pseudonym isn’t much protection - by now that should be trivial to crack if someone so desired.

It hardly helps imo, having enough obscured observations creates a rectangle around your home, so you can be easily tracked, just check time a user regulary go out and have a walk in that rectangle, they’ll be found. All it creates is a mesh of observations in wrong spots for other friendly users to…

What? Why? Is the user actually in the center of the rectangle or circle ?

No, I didn’t mean in the centre itself, just inside borders.

20km x20km is a lot of walking to find someone.

Yes, huge if you are in the city. But not if it is a remote location where there are only so many roads in and out, and/or if the terrain is complex.

I actually like that the Display Name field is lowkey enough so that I kind of forgot about it. After all this time and thanks to this thread, I have just entered my Display Name. Thanks for the clue folks! (edit: Since I’m uncloaking myself, if anyone is from eyewire.org hi yes I’m that person, on…

your link to your iNat profile is broken - I get a mole

Pseudonyms vs real names

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Pseudonyms vs real names

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