In my own work, Icterids make a call that sounds very similar to juvenile Black Rails. They are very hard to distinguish by ear alone, but I can more easily tell them apart with a spectrogram. Of course, I use the same spectrogram scale, and it would not work if I were using a scale I was unfamiliar with. That’s why I voted for the “automatically add a spectrogram view to observations with sounds” feature request. This would display all spectrograms on a standardized scale, and once identifiers got used to that scale, it could help them identify certain calls. Having a spectrogram auto-added has the added benefit of making it so people are far less likely to upload spectrogram images that mess with the CV (the idea is to have spectrograms for human IDers, not for the CV).
While possible, I still think observers should take on the bulk of responsibility for editing/vetting their audio. Audio is already IDed at a low rate, and identifiers are far more likely to skip a poorly edited clip than they are to download and enhance them. I generally think it is better to always edit your audio, but I’m ok with unedited audio as long as the observer confirms 1) that the call of interest can be clearly heard in the clip and 2) there are no loud and unexpected noises that can hurt an identifier’s ears if they aren’t expecting it.
I generally think observers should edit (crop) and vet their photos too (and people are far better about this than with audio). However, iNat has tools (ability to zoom or adjust brightness in identify mode) that help; no such tools for identifying audio exist.
My concern is less with people that only occasionally post an audio observation, but I would like to see more responsibility taken over observations by heavy audio observers.