Serious range maps for subspecies are certainly not created from iNat, we look them up in papers about taxa, that are based on specimens, it’s kinda obvious.
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i was once working on a vegetation mapping project, the kind papers are based on. We were told, hey this is so and so species of sagebrush. How do we know? because it is above 7000 feet. How do you know they grow above 7000 feet? From looking at the range maps. How are the range maps made? Via vegetation mapping projects and the papers that are published based on them. So yeah… i wouldn’t be so sure. But you know, I already know to disregard the subspecies data and i often just filter out subspecies when doing ID help, and don’t look at iNat subspecies distribution maps, so it doesn’t matter too much for me using the data. I just don’t like having wrong data on the maps.
Your experience is not a reason to disregard others’ and say it’s a bad thing to do, it’s not, there’re many obvious cases and well studied groups (in all meanings).
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that isn’t what i am trying to do here, i just want to say that, and then stop talking, because i’ve already had this exact same debate with different people and it never serves any purpose. I’ll just filter out the data, you do what you want with it. Sorry.
Make this option available to curators.They’ve invested too much work to be likely vandals.
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I think there’s plenty of Identifiers here in this very thread who are not vandals but also not curators.
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