I agree with Thomas that this entire thread is veering far away from the purpose of this forum, which is to give the iNaturalist community a place to discuss iNaturalist and nature.
I’m going to take a little time to try and clarify things, in the meantime Slow Mode is on.
So we’re clear, I have my own personal political opinions and activism, but that includes pragmatism. You can’t pick fights with every person and every place, not if you want to make the world a better place.
First of all, we don’t allow ad hominem attacks, and calling someone a moron/imbecile/etc. is ad hominem. Either engage with the real issue or don’t. Normally I’d hide such a post, but without it the following conversation becomes impossible to follow, so I am editing it (again) to remove that.
the other hidden posts are yet again ad hominem attacks (even if true, for the sake of forum civility, consistency is needed).
as has been discussed previously, iNaturalist is dependent on outside sources to store and display maps. while some place names are stored internally, most of the mapping is handled by Google. Google is a globe-spanning megacorporation, and iNaturalist does not have the power to unilaterally change its policies. Nor is it likely that iNaturalist has the budget to move to an alternative map source. Keeping up with the constant changes in names, disputed borders, political whims, and etc of over 200 countries is far beyond the scope of the iNat team.
maps exist as an abstraction of reality, and their borders are and have always been dictated by politics and human whims. this is an inherent flaw in all maps. no matter what choice you make, someone will be angry about it.
I was born in Jerusalem and live in Tel Aviv-Yafo. some maps call my home Israel, others call it Palestine, most including iNaturalist try to split the difference, and every single one of those maps is a pale mimic of an extremely complex and fraught reality on the ground.
personally, my priority is to preserve nature, and to strengthen the global scientific community. that means that sometimes my colleagues in Palestine or Ireland etc will have what to my eyes is the “wrong” map. and instead of getting angry about it I find the language to cooperate in spite of those differences. because nature does not care about your maps or my maps.
re: moderation and flagging transparency, those concerns belong in Forum Feedback . this is not to hide them – it is to prevent threads from descending into total chaos.
(as for consequences for rules violations, I have some errands to do, so another mod should probably determine what is appropriate)
okay. I’m going out. but I’ll be checking on my phone.
Isn’t this out of iNaturalist’s control anyways? iNaturalist just uses Google Maps, which I suppose they are in control of which map they use, but I doubt changing maps would be high priority and it may break things.
Politics are impossible to avoid in this discussion, so I will ask. I swear the executive order was aimed at just the federal government to change the name internally, not companies, or even states needing to adopt it. I’m not sure why Google maps is adopting the change. Though what do I know?
Hi - I merged the two topics since as they pertain to iNaturalist they are essentially the same conversation.
I don’t think there is anything more that is both productive and iNat-focused to discuss and since the same issues apply, I’m going to keep this one closed for for now too.
Staff have been pinged and can share if there is anything new.