Understanding how location information is displayed (and obscured) by iNaturalist

 iNaturalist has 3 ways to display coordinates:

  1. A pin on the map. This happens in the following circumstances:

    a. the observation coordinates are public (not obscured), so everyone can see the accurate coordinates. This is not applicable to WOW because everything is obscured. However, if you add an observation to WOW using the iNaturalist app (not recommended), and you do not manually obscure the location data, the actual location will be displayed (unless it is a listed threatened species).

    b. the observation coordinates are obscured and you can see the accurate coordinates because:

    1. it's your observation

    2. another iNaturalist user has shared the coordinates with you (there's a built-in feature for doing this)

    3. you're a manager/curator of iNaturalist project that has this observation in it AND the user has opted to share the coordinates with project managers/curators

  2. a pin with a circle around it. This is the same as above in that you're seeing accurate coordinates but the circle indicates the accuracy of the GPS reading. No circle means no accuracy was recorded (not all phone GPSs will give an accuracy reading)

  3. a pin with a rectangle around it. This is what an obscured observation looks like to someone who cannot see the accurate coordinates. The rectangle represents the obscuring box (it's 0.2 x 0.2 degrees) and the pin is a randomly chosen point in the box, just so you still have a lat/long pair to work with.

Don't rely on what the map looks like to determine if the observation coordinates are obscured though, because it depends on who you are as to if you can see through the obscuring. The best way to see what's going on is to use the little Details link below the map on the iNaturalist website as it explains everything: 

iNat location info for FAQs.png

If you want to see what the regular public see when they look at your observation, borrow someone else's phone/laptop, or just logout of iNaturalist and then look at your observations. Doing this will prove to yourself that the obscuring really works.