Hello, I am from the US spending extensive time in Taiwan. I keep getting the prompt to update my affiliation, but it’s not clear what, if any, impact that will have on my group membership on inaturalist. I would prefer to not lose my groups and connections to friends in the US.
welcome to the forum
it would have no impact at all
see https://help.inaturalist.org/en/support/solutions/articles/151000171181-what-s-the-inaturalist-network-which-site-should-i-affiliate-with- for the only difference it will make
1 Like
Why is it best to NOT switch if you’re just travelling?
Because it would put an unnecessary load on the servers?
Or if you switched to the temporary location, it would create a confusing situation where your “home affiliation org” no longer had access to your obscured locations, and your “visiting affiliation org” would lose access to your observations after a short time? (after you went home)
It seems to me that if there is a prolific visiting observer (which is often the case), then the “tourist country” would want full access to their observations, in order to make wildlife management decisions.
1 Like
Yes, I wouldn’t worry about the connections to other people. The only thing I would really consider is whether you are ok with the entity that has runs the country affiliation/portal (don’t know what this is for Taiwan, but I’m sure it can be looked up) having access to your private/obscured coordinates. If not, don’t join; if it’s not a problem, join away!
That’s part of it for sure.
So just to be clear, anything obscured/private because of taxon geoprivacy isn’t affected by site affiliation. The partner org(s) will get those true locations from iNat twice a year. However, if you’ve manually obscured or made private an observation in a place and are affiliated with the network site for that place, the partner org(s) will also get the true locations for those observations.
1 Like
Ok, great. Would switching affiliations help with inat performance while I am here? I have noticed that it is significantly slower than when I am in the US. I am here for at least a few months so that would probably make it worth switching.
1 Like
No, switching affiliations won’t make the site or app faster for you.
1 Like
I have remained part of the .org even though I reside in .ca. I started in March of 2015 and iNaturalist Canada was officially launched on June 12, 2015. I have thought about changing my affiliation but I keep thinking about the last statement on the affiliation section of the Edit Your Account page that says "Note: Please do not experimentally change your affiliation if you have more than 1000 observations." I have over 17,000 obs. -this may be a side bar because it really is not a question of group membership (not sure what that is).
1 Like
It’s fine to change. The bad thing would be to change experimentally one day then a few days later change back - that would create a lot of extra work in the background.
Also, you can affiliate with iNatCA and still use the inaturalist.org if you like. The main reason to affiliate with iNatCA would be to let CWF access the Canadian observations you’ve manually obscured or made private.
2 Likes