What becomes of observations lacking location?

[petezani]

In the process of cleaning up some of the casual observations of lizards I stumbled across a cluster of observations in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. Turns out these were nearly all casual observations. Turns out there are around 7000 casual observations in at this one site with over 2000 species present in a very small area that is entirely ocean. What gives? Well, this spot is 0, 0. Or 0°N, 0°S, 0°E, 0°W. Apparently when a location is omitted observations default to 0,0, which is in the middle of the ocean way far away from most of these observations. What becomes of observations lacking location? They get placed at 0,0. Just thought I’d point this out.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?lat=0.08829585079294056&lng=-0.020016246842322616&locale=en-US&photos&place_id=any&radius=304.99757943282884&subview=map&verifiable=any

[whitneybrook]

Helping with these is mentioned in useful tasks for nonexperts: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/useful-inaturalist-tasks-for-non-experts-wiki/35034

A standard comment and link to help clean these up is on iNat frequently used responses: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/responses#addid

While 7,000 seems like a lot, given the number of observations on iNat, it could be a lot higher. Perhaps that is a sign that folks are helping with this and users do add locations after someone points out the issue.

Edit: I’m sure more volunteers helping on this would be beneficial.

[cthawley]

Previous posts that address this:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/observations-with-locations-at-0-0/3475
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/etiquette-for-observations-with-locations-at-0-0/6776

[Thunderhead]

I know this location shows on the map when I post a screenshot from a video. I use iOS iPhone, my only internet connection.
It’s listed as no location on the observation page. Easy to relocate when I remember to do so.

[philodendronjoe]

to be more precise, these observation do have a location and it’s the default 0,0. When you’re uploading an observation and you open the map to set the location, the pointer is set by default on 0,0 waiting to be moved. Getting this operation wrong can result in confirming 0,0 as the actual location. But if an observation gets uploaded without actually setting any location it will not show by default as 0,0, just as no location and be automatically casual. These observation with location set a 0,0 only go casual if they’re (rightfully) marked as location incorrect