Why is this observation "casual"

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/37773976
Seems to have all the necessary components including location (in the old fashioned sense of a locality).

I don’t think iNaturalist can see the location as valid:

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There’s a location name, but no lat or long recorded

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The center of Glenbrook NSW 2773, Australia is about at location: -33.7631006°, 150.6249545° Such location or another nearby is missing at map, hence your observation got casual status. You may add and change locations any time.

If for some reason you don’t want the location to be known to others, you can always obscure the location. Probably not the case here, but who knows.

cheers
H

When they entered the name of the location, they likely didn’t press enter to have it search for that location and place a pin on the map. That edit box acts as both a means to search for location and place the pin, as well as to enter a label to describe the place. I live in Gisborne, so I can put in Gisborne and press enter, and the pin gets put at the default place that google maps returns for Gisborne (and it sets a descriptor based on that too), but then I can also type in “Coolest place on Earth”, not press enter, and when I save the observation it will have that text as the place describer, even though the pin is on Gisborne. Same goes, that if you don’t place the pin by clicking the map or pressing enter to search and place the pin, then there will be no coords for lat/lon, but the entered descriptor still makes it “look” like a valid place!

For RG purposes, it is a pin location, ie lat/lon, that will qualify it as having a location.

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Recently a bunch of my old observations went from research grade to casual for this very reason.
However, I’m pretty sure I entered a correct location in the past. Those pictures were taken with a DSLR that has no GPS.
For some reason, although the naming of the place is still correct, the map changed to a location somewhere in Germany.
I wonder if at some moment in the (recent?) past an update has broken the link between named location and map location?

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welcome to the forum, @annetanne!

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