Can I bulk-import translations of common names of taxa?

@carrieseltzer asked me to comment, so at the risk of getting burned by the flame and squashing updates about this thread ad infinitum, my opinion is that bulk importing common names from Wikidata is a bad idea because of the sourcing issues Cassi described at https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/reliable-sources-for-common-names-on-inaturalist/5579. In general, I support proscriptive sources of common names when available, e.g. a published book with an ISBN or the names published by the American Ornithological Society, for the same reasons we support external authorities for taxonomy: it moves discussion a contentious issue to institutions more suited to decision-making than iNat. If such authorities do not exist, I support a descriptive approach, i.e. adding names that are actually used by people. Obviously you can’t batch-import names like that, but you can use that heuristic to decide what names you add to iNat by considering, “Do I actually use this name? Have I heard other people use this name?”

Wikidata is not a proscriptive or descriptive source of common names, because there is no editorial oversight that would provide proscriptive authority, nor is there any indication of how frequently a name is used that might provide descriptive authority. If you’re going to use an external source, I would try to restrict yourself to Wikipedia’s own definition of a reliable source… which does not include Wikipedia itself, or Wikidata.

So, to the original question, “Can I bulk-import translations of common names of taxa?”, you can but I’d prefer if you do not. We at iNat will occasionally do this on request, but we require a source, which we generally inspect to see if it’s some kind of authority like a government agency or published work, and frankly I don’t really like doing that either. I would not accept names exported from Wikidata. I’d much prefer that people add names one by one, and think about whether those names are actually used by other people each time.

7 Likes