It would be fine if citizen science weren’t the primary driver behind the core of the community, community science weren’t the primary driver of iNaturalist, if the data weren’t sent to GBIF, and if the use of the data in scientific studies weren’t so proudly celebrated. In my mind, if they don’t care about data quality, they don’t care about one of the core values that has driven iNaturalist to become what it is. It’s in the first sentence of the about page: “iNaturalist helps you identify the plants and animals around you while generating data for science and conservation.”
It wouldn’t bug me so much if the language in the community guidelines were stronger on this issue. But as is, it’s stated that we merely “prefer” that people mark their observations correctly. The language around this should be as strong as the “Intentionally adding false IDs or DQA votes” because it is a DQA parameter. You wouldn’t know it from reading the guidelines.
I knew the new app was bad, but I didn’t realize it was this bad! For people using this app, we don’t even have the ability to educate newbies on how to create good observations without forcing them to go to their settings and turn on advanced mode.