[image] iNaturalist helped find new population of very rare sedge He photo-documented a population of a Carex unknown to him, adding it as an iNaturalist observation identified only to genus. On May 12, 2021, EAU was scanning iNaturalist observations of Carex not identified only to species, and e…

[image] rogue_biologist: I’ve started obscuring all of my observations If one cares about conservation, I think it should be the first move, only then after making sure there is no risk, should precise locations made public. It’s only after finding rare species that were collected by someone…

I would err on the side of not obscuring anything, except taxa that are specifically threatened by poaching or being damaged by visitors. Having observations obscured makes my work as a botanist much harder, and detracts from the platform in that it makes visiting rare and interesting plants much m…

Some argue about the loss of data with obscured observations, but I guess many people don’t zoom all the way in before entering a location on the map so precision may vary a lot! and I know some users center the location on a false location and enlarge the radius so that the real location is includ…

[image] s-e: The option for any user to have the location “obscured” by default instead of “public” should be available in the personal settings, Here I agree. I had a cyberstalker a while back, and while the situation wasn’t serious enough for me to stop making observations on iNat altogethe…

@bouteloa had a feature request for that against ‘stalkers’

I wish there was a middle ground solution, that would allow me to have locations published with a delay, e.g. only after they are at least a month or a year old. This would (a) allow identifiers to ID the to species level and avoid having an observation be listed initially with a public location, an…

[image] s-e: The option for any user to have the location “obscured” by default instead of “public” should be available in the personal settings, maybe I haven’t found this option, yet? I’ve looked and I don’t think there is one. Which was actually pretty upsetting to me. Or to bulk-obscure–…

You can obscure multiple observations at a time on the web uploader - just select them all and then change the geoprivacy. There is no setting to automatically obscure all of a previous user’s observations in one go or all future ones, that I know of however. If you have a home location that you ob…

There is a feature request for draft mode. You could then delay your upload till it suits you. Identifiers need the location (more or less) for an ID.

[image] natev: As for using a large observation radius to hide a location, most users who do that simply are unaware of the obscuring option—in other words, these are usually new, inexperienced users who contribute a negligible amount of the data. In my experience, many of these users are postin…

Should more observations be obscured automatically?

General

Topic		Replies	Views
Is it ever ok to upload Endangered Species? General question	44	4191	March 29, 2024
Danger of locations on iNaturalist General	22	5655	November 25, 2019
Lightly obscure all records on iNaturalist Feature Requests geoprivacy	48	6141	October 25, 2019
Public or obscured location? General	25	889	January 23, 2025
Downsides to iNat observation locations (with emphasis towards herps) General	49	3140	June 26, 2022

Should more observations be obscured automatically?

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