if an observation is at Research Grade at species level, and if I add a subspecies ID
It stays RG at species. On the second ssp ID it becomes RG at ssp level.
That’s how things used to work and were intended to - I think something changed at some point meant to address another issue that introduced the weird behavior we’ve fixed with this change. But Im glad the 2 IDs to roll from so to ssp behavior I described above has been restored
Ooooooooh. Thank you!
Edit: Then what does this mean?
From what I am seeing it seems to mean two things, neither of which seem to be desirable:
First: if the observation ID is for a subspecies (this happens when the first ID is at subspecies instead of species), the observation will not become RG until a second subspecies ID is added (or someone disagrees with the subspecies).
Second: using the DQA “ID cannot be improved” for any situation where the community ID and observation ID are not the same (e.g., 2 genus level IDs plus a single subgenus ID) will make the observation casual.
I’m afraid this change worsed the iNaturalist functionality fo both scientists and public, and would appeal to cancel it. Maybe it is good for vertebrates but surely bad for insects. The previous system was very wise and well fitted both.
At least In insects, subspecies are 1) recognised by a small fraction of both and 2) often are far from unequivocally established. At least so is in insects (butterflies, to some extent dragonflies). So this is a matter interesting to a subfraction of users, who all aware this unstability, yet subspecific division is useful, at least for them (and science), and subspecific ids add important information, even if is a personal opinion. (Many known experts use different subspecie systems, and seeing opinions by some of this as iNaturalist users may be important. For the overwhelming majority of users - and uses! - the species level is important, so the status of observations would better not be affected by ‘subspecific gourmants’. (for instance, I found it possible to id my butterfly observations from Siberia and Indochina up to subspecies, as I have some expertise in those, especially in Siberia. But too few users use subspecies and most are cautious with those and will put species ids. But concerning this:
I made two experiments. If I (user A) put a ssp id, user B puts sp id and user C adds ssp id (confirms mine) - then the observation gets RG, as said. BUT: if A puts ssp. id, B pust sp. id and C puts sp id, then the observation remains “needs ID”. You see - there are three coinciding sp ids but yet no RG! This does not look like what @loarie wrote, when A puts sp id, B puts sp id and C puts ssp id and RG remanis. Is the order of ids matters? I’m afraid at least this should be changed - 2 sp and 1 ssp ids should result in RG.
What e.g. should I do in this situation? To forget subspecies? Most users wisely abstain from getting a third id or more to already RG observations, so I cannot add a ssp id later on without missing RG status, since there will be only one id beyond mine. (I would also loose my name as that who correctly identified the species in GBIF, where the first one counts)
Anyway, this change will strongly hinder, or nearly block the use of subspecies category in insects, observations of which rarely get more than two ids (by the author and someone else) , and where few people have a notion of subspecies, for it is better to have a RG obseration at a species level than to have an ssp. observation which would hardly pass to GBIF.
This topic will be closed in 9 hours, while this is an important disussion!
I suspect the reason for setting the topic to close is to concentrate discussion in one place (though a note to this effect would have been nice), as there are several bug report threads where this change is being discussed, e.g. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/research-grade-with-only-one-id-at-that-rank/3270/
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