Apolgies but I can’t find where the recent discussions about the tick box to hide and show the location of a species is. Can’t remember if it was in an observation or the forum.
A new comment appeared in my tracker and I went back to the obs:
According to my edits, I put the location back to visible twice this year and now I see it’s hidden again. What’s the current view on what’s happening, please?
Perhaps change name of this discussion thread to ‘should the location be hidden or not’ or something like that to make it a bit easier to find as we are doign other things on location moving.
But yes this issue of whether or not a location should be hidden is important for many reasons and whether or not the system is working correctly is also an issue.
One reason it is a problem is that obfuscated observations i.e. where the box is ticked to hide the precise location is ticked can’t currently be sent to NBN because NBN don’t have a suitable way to also hide the location for these observations.
We found that in a couple of early years of ispot a lot of observations were obfuscated when they should not have been i.e. the box was ticked by default instead of being unticked by default.
This issue was corrected long ago but still there are probably more observations set to obfuscated than there should be so any examples such as you mention here would be useful to highlight so we can try to find out what is going on.
Of course there are reasons why people want to set their observtions to obfuscated e.g. if they are from their garden for privicy, if the species might be threatened if its location were revealed or other reasons.
When I have looked back at the observations I set to obfuscated I have unticked the box for some of the older ones as the reason for protecting them has now gone.
Some people have a lot, up to 1000 observations that are set to obfuscated, this would be a lot to deal with by hand so we may be able to semi automate this if people ask.
Thanks for your quick response, Mike and I’ve changed the heading.
I can leave this one hidden if it’s the type of example you want to keep. Let me know if it’s better to untick.
If it is an example then keep as it is as Chris always wants examples or he can’t trace what is going on. It can be changed back if/when we get to the source of the problem.
I’ve been experiencing an odd glitch which is not dissimilar. When I enter an observation, the map defaults to quite near my home, which is great. Except that when I click on the ‘pin’ to get the position more accurate the pin moves but the GR stays the same. Oddly, if I then click on the ‘hide exact location’ box, the GR corrects itself. It’s not a major problem but it is a bit strange.
This sounds as if the browser is tracking you, this is often the default case. You may or may not want to be tracked by various websites.
I switch this off so ispot asks me every time if I want to allow it to detect my position, I say no to this and put a pin on the map where I want.
Actually normally I have the location of the observation in the image so it automatically goes to correct place on map so the question does not arise.
I’m being stalked!? I cannot keep up with all the different things that go on with my pc and my phone. I wonder if it’s because I use Google Maps regularly. I’ll try and look into it.
thanks @miked
I’ve set Geolocator to ‘false’ in Firefox, so I’ll see if I’ve ‘disappeared’.
I have managed to get mine to put the pin on or near the local crown post office. It must be using my post code. It also asks me to allow location information before dropping the pin.
I do answer no if my observation is a long way from the observation so that it is quicker to zoom the map in from a UK plan view.
Mine is feeling resentful that I switched off geolocator . When I tried to enter an observation, it presented me with a map of the British Isles, even after I had put the place name in (Newchapel). I zoomed in until I found the exact spot but it wouldn’t let me put a pin in. Curiously, I had ticked the ‘don’t show exact location’ box, as I knew that it wasn’t accurate, and it has published with a square in pretty much the right general area. This is all very tiresome!! I’ll have to use Grid Reference Finder to enter the correct GR. Life is too short!!
Just for inf, I use this site as it give the Lat and Long if I select the bottom tick box in the righthand menu. I also use the 10m square and 100m square depending on how precise I want the result to be. There’s a choice of place finders in the ‘Go to’ search:
You move the marker in the left map and the one in the right map moves with it.
Thanks, Jane, I’ll have a look at that. ;But there does seem to be a gremlin in the system.
Thx for the extra link, Ken.
Hi Mike
Mags responded to the Location Problem forum post and it was very interesting. See:
I checked some of the Queen Scallops and some of the Badgers and yes, the locations are hidden.
.
Now I wonder the effect on the NBN transfer of obs as per the front page news item.
NBN can obfuscate based on taxonomy so can indeed automatically obscure things that way but not things that have been obfuscated for other reasons by ispotters.
Looking down the database badger records are often obscured but not always, the obfuscation in this case is done by users themselves who can tell if it is a skull in the middle of a field or a badger set.
