Thanks @jonhakim for your suggestions and thoughtfulness on this topic, and sharing perspectives from outside the iNat community. We know there are strong feelings in all directions on how locations should be handled.
I’d like to chime in with some clarifications as a staff member.
- We aren’t at this time considering adding any additional scales of obscuration. We are aware that for some circumstances the obscuration cells are too large, and for others they are too small. For the time being, 0.2 x 0.2 degrees is what we have to work with. We aren’t ready to introduce new levels until we can better clarify the current system.
- We are actively working on how to better protect obscured data that really needs to be obscured, without breaking the normal functions of the site.
- We are also thinking about other ways to improve the dialogue around how to decide which species should be obscured where. This has been greatly informed by the exhausting process we’ve gone through in Canada, which is not scalable.
- We can’t include species in place lists and still protect obscuration. We’ve made exceptions for Standard Places. Most projects use community created places, which is why obscured data don’t end up on their lists.
- It’s important to flag taxa if they may need to be obscured. Please do this for any taxa you are concerned about.
- Traditional projects and user-to-user trust are the primary mechanisms for getting access to hidden coordinates. That is our most scalable “data access request”. The only other way in which we currently share hidden location data is in the context of the iNaturalist Network. We are working on another process, but it is currently in review with the legal team.