I moved your post to this existing topic about inactive taxa getting selected for IDs. In your case, I’m not totally sure how the user would have been able to select the inactive L. venusta. Identifiers are not supposed to be able to select inactive taxa, but there are still some loopholes that haven’t been closed. It might be worth asking them how they selected it.
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I sometimes do that via ‘search for external name providers’ (e.g. because the list of Cotoneasters on inaturalist is not complete).
Search external name providers should not bring in inactive taxa. Can you give an example where you think that happened?
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In this case, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/16867026, I think the original ID by the observer was Leucauge venusta [53467] and it was subsequently withdrawn by him. Maybe he was able to go back and “Agree” with his original ID? That doesn’t seem like it should be possible but, I don’t know. I’ve messaged him about the issue.
Just thought I’d make staff aware of it.
@jwidness I have previously uploaded observations while out of cellular range and used placeholders, only to find, when the observations finally uploaded, that some had been automatically identified as specific taxa.
I wonder if this might be contributing.
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Yeah, the placeholder issue was discussed briefly above, and I don’t think it was ever fixed. But it doesn’t explain the example from norm_shea. The first ID the user put on the observation was not from a placeholder, it was from CV, and the taxon was active at the time. It became inactive via a later taxon swap.
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And here I was wondering if it was worthwhile to submit a feature request with this title…
the two I linked were from desktop, so seemingly a multi-platform issue
summary of current status:
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You can still get an inactive taxon ID by typing in the name of the taxon and choosing to use it as a placeholder – iNat will auto-match it to the inactive taxon, example above: Canis latrans × lupus. This is true on the web and in the apps, and doesn’t require a spotty connection.
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You can still choose to “agree” with an inactive taxon in a number of places
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in the Android app
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in the dashboard
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Third-party apps may be responsible for some inactive taxon IDs, example above: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/51944032
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It is still unclear how you can make an ID of an inactive taxon that has the same name as an active taxon when that ID doesn’t already exist on the observation, e.g. Pica pica. (That is, there is no way to get this ID via “agree” or placeholders, and it wasn’t made via an app.)
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https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/22037647 shows inactive taxon as the ID.
There are 3 ID’s out of 4 that are of an active taxon.
In addition the taxon displayed as inactive is active.
I somehow managed to do this during upload. I think I typed “charadrii” with the intent of suggesting Charadriiformes, but I don’t know how I managed to get Suborder Charadrii instead.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/110350861
If you chose to use it as a placeholder it would have gotten matched to the inactive taxon.
Interesting, I’m sure I didn’t do that on purpose but it could have been a misclick.
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A question: would taxon swapping inactive taxa into the correct taxon eliminate this problem with placeholders? Does that simply copy all the names across to the output taxon, or does it create some other more durable link between the old and the new taxon?
first time I’ve seen this happen with an ID that wasn’t the first ID (ie added during upload)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/154904532