It appears that this is because, while the global conservation status makes the species obscured, the national status in Mexico has it with geoprivacy open (see “Status” tab here). Setting aside whether this species really needs to be obscured, the way this is implemented seems odd to me. I would expect that whenever one of the statuses is set as obscured, that should override the other.
Currently, I understand that the system behaves as follows:
Global status open, local status obscured → Obscured (ok)
Global status obscured, local status open → Open (I find this questionable)
Do others agree that obscuration, where it has been set at a global level, should be prioritised, or is everyone happy with how this is working?
It’s not really clear to me how the logic works for multiple overlapping (and conflicting) obscuration status settings. For example, there are 14 (!) statuses set for Bombus pensylvanicus. Thirteen are Open, but the most recently added one is global and is set to Obscured. As far as I can tell, all 44,000 observations are now obscured.
This appears to be the inverse of what you’re seeing, so I wonder what’s different in these scenarios? Maybe if iNat finds multiple possible taxon geoprivacy options it chooses the most recent? Maybe the bumblebee locations are getting obscured because the software isn’t capable of assessing 14 different geoprivacy settings?
To my knowledge, a global obscuration status always overrides a regional status. Generally, inconsistencies like this indicate an underlying issue with how statuses are being applied rather than an intentional feature. The interactions between places and statuses have a lot of quirks (I’m still clueless as to how Wisconsin statuses cause unmarked northern Illinois observations to return in searches for threatened taxa, for example).
I tried re-saving the global status without any edits, which occasionally fixes problems like this but may take time to become effective. I would recommend creating a curation flag to work out if this is functioning as intended.
Edit: I didn’t realize nested statuses overriding their nesting statuses had been implemented. I don’t see this behavior in plant statuses, but perhaps I just haven’t encountered it yet.
Yes, there are, for example species whose native range is endemic to a small area, with an IUCN global endangerment status that implies that it should be obscured, but which are also introduced and/or cultivated outside of their native range where obscuration is unnecessary.