It was implemented for the website, just not for the apps.
Use the URL parameters taxon_geoprivacy and geoprivacy, e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_geoprivacy=open&geoprivacy=open returns only observations with open coordinates.
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I may be missing something on Explore maps, but I’d like to re-emphasize the request to have the ability to toggle obscured observations off on maps on the website, rather than requiring us to add parameters to the URL. The latter is much more tedious for those of us who are clumsy typists! This issue came to me when I was trying to examine all observations in Williamson County, TX (screen capture attached). Several of the most active iNat users in WilCo obscure their observations, so the map of other observations is almost completely blotted out.
EDIT: I’ve subsequently learned from one of the active WilCo iNaturalists that the majority of the obscured observations in WIlliamson County come from very active game camera monitoring efforts scattered around the county. Both due to landowner preferences and from Texas Parks & Wildlife Department requirements (from whom most of the game cameras are borrowed), the locations of such observation are obligated to be obscured. This is all fine. These projects are adding invaluable data, but the result for general iNaturalist users trying to Explore Williamson County observations results in the map of observations above. This seems like a prime example of why we need a more convenient way to toggle off obscured observations.
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I just tried to “Explore” observations in several of the counties in the Greater Austin Region (e.g. Bastrop Co.) and a random selection of a few urban counties around the country (Orange Co., CA; Franklin Co., OH). Without exception, the map of observations is almost entirely blotted out by rectangles of obscured observations. Thus in almost any well-populated area with numbers of active iNaturalists, the eventual accumulation of rectangles of obscured observations will invariably blot out other non-obscured observations. This really needs to be addressed.
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Agreed! Would love the toggle feature, but the url option is a great hack for now.
-ER
I can’t figure out how to eliminate the obscured observations on “Explore” maps. Where do I add the URL geoprivacy info? I tried different ways to add it to filters but nothing works.
@bogwalker There currently isn’t a way to do that in the apps, but you can do it on the iNat website by editing the URL to add taxon_geoprivacy=open and geoprivacy=open.
Like this: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_geoprivacy=open&geoprivacy=open
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Would be nice to have it in iNat next as an explore filter.
I sometimes prepare myself looking what species occure in my hiking area. In those small areas hidden observations don’t make sense.
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Just want to add my support for this proposed feature. I was just thinking it’d be great to have a ‘hide obscured’ option in the filters on the ‘Explore’ page, and I see others had the same thought. It looks like this has been discussed and maybe in the works for a long time. Is there any info on if/when this feature might be implemented (in the UI, not just adding the filter string into the URL)?