allow coarse location for devices

[zven]

How about we allow for a coarse location setting for devices? I could imagine that some users would like to use the openSenseMap for their devices but would be hesitant because you have to publicly add its precise location.

Assuming that you set up your device at your own home, you would effectively publish your home location broadly available on the internet.

Taking a random device located at a single family house in a village and a few minutes on Google Street view, it was easilly possible to identify the home owner.

Some ideas:

• Define the center point of a region by allowing to set the decimal places to only 5, for example, to define a rough rectangle.
• Split the globe in regions sized X by X meters and let users select only one of those square regions.
• Save the that information in the device so those consuming the data could handle it appropriately.

[scheidtdav]

Very interesting idea!

I think users could continue to enter the precise location and it is a matter of how we proceed with it.
When I am looking at my own devices, seeing the precise location would be fine (same for API requests).

However when looking at the publicly available data, we could apply what AirBnB is doing as an example. We use the precise location to define a "random" circle in the area and show that instead.

I think the term "geomasking" is correct here.
The only thing I am wondering about is, if this would make the data unusable for scientific purposes? (@robarto any ideas?)

This will also not affect the archive. What location would end up in there?
How would we handle existing data?