Show my past observation pins when marking new observations on map

Just as the title indicates.

If you’re making an observation after coming out of the field and don’t have GPS info embedded in the exif data you need to manually place the observation. This is fine, but this can often be months to years after the fact and not all photos taken get edited and posted at the same time.

It would be extremely helpful to have your past observations shown when you’re placing new observations (maybe only after you’ve zoomed in to smaller than a 100km radius?).

At present I use a work-around by having two windows open, one for uploads and the second to see my observations in the relevant area, but that’s clunky.

I agree that would be amazing, especially for us who don’t have gps enabled camera equipment.

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I would find this useful and also I’d love it if there were something like this on the apps - including (especially) things that aren’t uploaded yet. But I think I have another post about that somewhere so will leave it at that.

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This functionality exists to a degree in the web uploader. If you upload multiple observations at a time, all locations are displayed as you continue to add them. Of course it still may be helpful to show your previously existing locations so you have less work locating the first one of the current batch.

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I also think this would be super useful. Something which may need to be testet are scenarios where already many of the users observations are on the map, so that they would hide too much of the map. Maybe an option “Show my observations on the map” that can be checked and unchecked would be good then.

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That only works when uploading many observations at once.

This is more for when you’re uploading observations solitary or of you’re working on a batch long after the actual observation time and trying to accurately place them in an area where you have other observations made in the past.

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I occasionally have an observation or two that don’t get GPS exif put by my device. Usually because I have turned on the camera and taken the photo before it can lock a position. On such occasions it is a blessing to have “nearby observations” that I can zoom into in order to place them, but that is currently only the case for the current batch of observations being uploaded, not in referring back to previous batches such as you suggest here. On that basis, and especially given the extra work it must entail for anyone who doesn’t have a GPS capable device, I strongly support this!

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personally, i’m against this. i think it could be confusing to have a lot of pins of past observations on the map, even if they can be toggled on and off. i think it could also lead to feature creep (ex. can i filter for past observations of just birds?).

i thought the ability to pin locations was the existing way to reference locations that you want to remember? why is this not sufficient?

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When you’re making observations your pins are not visible on the map. Those are only visible when you’re looking at your data, but not when adding to it.

Often observations taken at different times are in similar areas, or observations taken at the same time are not uploaded at the same time (for any number of reasons). In those cases, especially the latter, it’s often difficult to find the correct location again (many users uploading images taken with a camera rather than a phone don’t have GPS metadata embedded in the image), especially given the sketchy quality of the Google Maps imagery that’s used for the map interface.

Being able to see pins of your past observations when uploading new observations would allow you to place your observations more accurately and speed up the process enormously.

A simple toggle option on the map would be useful to turn the feature on or off for those who don’t want to use it or think that it would make things too cluttered.

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I think what @pisum was referring to by “pin locations” is the “pinned location” feature. You can save (aka “pin”) oft-used locations in the uploader. See 1:43 here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/video+tutorials#add_web Have tried them out?

The pinned location seems best for a location you use often, which then is a location you already know quite well, so pinning it is unnecessary. As well it’s not about the area, it’s about the specific locations of other observations.

This is more for when you have a bunch of one-time observations that you don’t have the time to edit and upload all at once, so you have to go back to the location several times over time and figure out where you were and in what sequence.

An example of this is trying to post accurate observation locations for a trip I took to Serengeti in 2018. The exact locations are really difficult to determine using the map, so it’s necessary to have the old observations up so I can see where the next ones go. Same thing with a trip I took to the Andaman Islands a few years back.

This is an issue commonly faced by anyone who has taken any vacation trip and edits and uploads the images later.

The inelegant work-around is to have another browser open with the map of past observations and switch back and forth between them to get observations placed correctly, but having the ability to toggle you past observations on and off in the upload map would be a much more elegant method.

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We’ve made an issue for this functionality here: https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/2892

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Good to hear. Thanks for letting me know.

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