I have a slight dilemma. A couple of days ago I made a very nice observation of a rare butterfly and for once managed to take an excellent photo of it. I am of course really keen to post it to iSpot. However I thought I had better first mention it to the local recorder. They were very interested and asked me (politely) not to share it on social media because they didn’t want people piling up there and ruining the habitat. So that begs the question would you classify iSpot as “social media” ?
I think if a record is sensitive you could hide the location or make it hard to know exactly where the sighting was made or make it so that it’s not visible on the map I don’t know if I spot does that but I record has a option for blurring out sensitive records I don’t know if they do it on I spot aswell or how they do it but if they do that could be an option so that people don’t know where to find it on the map
You can use the 1Km square option.
But then wouldn’t more people visit that square hoping to see the Rare Butterfly, even if it doesn’t show the exact location it still shows people the area it was found so more people would visit hopeing to see it in the area
If you tick ‘hide precise location’, it gives you 100 sq kms to play with - and it doesn’t put your site in the centre.
I think it depends to some extent on how rare the spieces is, how limited the habitat, and how obvious it would be to potential ‘twitchers’ where the precise location is.
Thanks all for the responses. So I might post it with the hide location option, particularly as I don’t think the risk of hordes of butterfly twitchers descending on the site is actually very high in this case. In fact I reckon with just the minimal information I have given so far someone could work out both the butterfly and the approximate location.
Please be sparing with ‘hide precise location’
Why is that exactly, Derek? Not in the spirit of iSpot, or makes filing it difficult?
As I understand it, the ‘Hide Location’ is provided for this sort situation.
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Largely because it is nice to know where the observation is; not, for example, beside the lake but at the side of a road in urban terrain. Immediate habitat is sometimes an important factor in ID and, as quarries, industrial wasteland, hedgerow, canals and urban (examples) are all missing from Habitat choice, it seems reasonable to be accurate with Locations, if not sub-habitats and hab. descriptions. However, generally speaking, users are not very accurate with ‘accurate locations’.
I have a lot of fun (sometimes) checking Streetview, to see how well we do.
Here, I looked to see if I could find the tree - I’d like to confirm your ID and I think a glimpse of the tree would help.
https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/uk-and-ireland/view/observation/853593/ but you have located it where there are no useful views (urban wasteland). Of course I realise it may be on the other side of a fence
And here https://www.ispotnature.org/communities/uk-and-ireland/view/observation/791364/ you MIGHT be advised to hide location
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Quite recently I have been handed 300 Observation without a Habitat Entry with the task of adding one!
More: quite recently we three had to LOCATE over 500 Observations that were mis-located, we sometimes used the Users other observations to locate them but where ‘hidden’ it proved far more difficult.
There is more to being precise with Locations and there are plenty of reasons to hide them.
Wordier than I intended - good question, though is it a good answer?
Well for the Chinese Necklace Tree (which I am certain it is) it was over the wall, and also since the Streetview photo was taken in November and the road has been swept there aren’t any leaves to be seen making ID impossible. For the second obs (garden mushrooms) I haven’t a clue what you mean (like what is “SB”?).
Finding an individual tree on Streetview is a very funny task and I can see how someone might derive great amusement from trying it! I sympathise with the back-location exercise, but sometimes think that some obs should just be deleted (or simply left alone) if they don’t meet basic iSpot standards. The iSpot databases must have quite a lot of incomplete or incorrect obs and I wouldn’t personally spend time trying to complete or correct them. I would flag them in the database and leave it at that.
Yes an interesting and fair answer.
If the observation is of a Rare butterfly and the county recorder doesn’t want people knowing the location of the butterfly then it’s a good example of an observation where people can’t see where the rarity was observed. What if he hid the location but put a habitat tag
Or we could blur records like I record for sensitive species
That would probably make another obs for dejayM to fill in!
A different question occurs to me. I know exactly what it is so what is the point of me posting it on iSpot?
you said: quote=“healeygf, post:1, topic:1925”]
I am of course really keen to post it to iSpot
[/quote].
I thought to share with us?
I think Rumsfeld was thinking of ispot when he said:
There are things we know that we know.
There are things that we know we don’t know.
There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
After everyone’s responses to the post he said
Thanks all for the responses. So I might post it with the hide location option, particularly as I don’t think the risk of hordes of butterfly twitchers descending on the site is actually very high in this case
. In fact I reckon with just the minimal information I have given so far someone could work out both the butterfly and the approximate location.
you said: quote=“healeygf, post:1, topic:1925”]
I am of course really keen to post it to iSpot
[/quote].
I thought to share with us?
I think Rumsfeld was thinking of ispot when he said:
There are things we know that we know.
There are things that we know we don’t know.
There are things we don’t know we don’t know.
Are you sure that’s what he said? I can’t find it anywhere unless it’s on a different post
I do wonder that sometimes aswell identification is the main purpose of i spot
I think people think it might help others with identification if they encounter the same species
and I also think even though the observations arnt a biological record as such since they don’t actually go anywhere unless you post them to the county recorder and I record. they can still be valuable to i spot sometimes.
Exspeacially any uncommon or rare species. Or even ones previously unknown to science if someone is lucky enough.
Even Though it’s not a rare species On my newt observation that I stated had been verified but thought everyone would like to see
one of the people who regularly deal with the Amphibian conservation Trust record pool that are part of thd Amphibian conservation group saw my observation on i spot that I sent there after it eventually got verified at the Amphibian and conservation trust that same day
And they agreed on i spot so I think there could possibly be a few people from conservation organisations on i spot too so probably another reason why some observations can be seen as valuable to i spot sometimes aswell
I had a similar experience with a Dragonfly - I informed the site management, and was asked not to post it anywhere.
I pointed out that I could hide the precise location, but was told that others would simply look at where most of my related posts had come from.
Interesting. If you took a “risk management” approach then I suspect the risk of willfully trapping a rare dragonfly or butterfly is not as great as egg-stealing from a rare nesting bird or uprooting a rare orchid. The butterfly recorder I contacted was mainly concerned about damaging the habitat.
A long time ago an old teacher of mine was an amateur botanist and delightedly recounted how he had found a new Pasque Flower (or maybe an orchid, I can’t remember) in the Chilterns by gathering together all the bits of info, then visiting all the possible sites. When eventually he found an electric fence he knew he had succeeded! Nearby it was possible to find a Military Orchid site as there was a warden’s caravan parked there all season!
Yes JoC. Indeed I was so pleased with both the sighting and the photo that I wanted to tell the World!
Funny you should mention Donald Rumsfeld. I once worked for him. Sort of anyway. He was the boss of the boss of my boss. No-one knew that they didn’t know that.