Anti-poaching (brainstorming about making sensible information public)

[nicolas-raoul]

Giving away the position of a rare tree might lead to people finding it on Commons (or an app reusing Commons data) and going there to vandalize it.

Should we try to do something to prevent that? Programmatically?
If yes, what can we do?

Links to relevant discussions in the larger Wikimedia community are welcome!

[jayvdb]

If the user adds categories identifying the species, the app can use the Commons category tree to check if it is an endangered species, or use Wikidata .

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rhinoceros / https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ceratotherium_simum ->

1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:IUCN_Near_Threatened_species
2. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q159918 IUCN conservation status (P141) = near threatened (Q719675)

[nicolas-raoul]

Such pictures probably are less than 0.01% of all uploaded pictures, so if we implement some location-hiding it should definitely be per-picture rather than a general setting.