Not too long ago, staff opened up name editing, in which any curator can make minor edits to species name (ex. fixing gender in species names; other spelling errors). However, this feature is locked in hybrid taxon, which I believe defeats the purpose of this feature because what would have been an easy curatorial fix and response to a flag has remained a hassle, because I either have to swap the taxon (just to add an “i”) or contact the creator of the taxon.
I was able to edit a hybrid rank taxon name by adding a letter to the end of it (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1050792/), but not this one or others where there is more than one word after the genus.
The distinction between a similar name and a radical name change seems pretty silly to me. What if someone changes a few characters at a time, until they’ve ultimately made the name completely different?
Probably unrelated (and perhaps working as intended), but I was surprised the other day that we needed a taxon swap to change “finlaysoniana” to “finlaysonii”: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/806937
Figured I’d mention it in case there’s some thought about tinkering with what’s allowed and what’s not allowed.
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i ran into that same error message a little bit ago (when trying to update an x to an × in a hybrid formula), and when i asked about it here, loarie confirmed that
The logic only currently handles named hybrid taxa or nothotaxa (e.g. Saxicola x maurus) not species-level hybrid formulas (e.g. Saxicola rubetra x maurus). Please continue making taxon swaps for the latter
updating a specific epithet, or x to ×, in a hybrid formula isn’t the only minor edit at the species/subspecies/hybrid/etc. level that can’t be made at this time and still requires a taxon swap: another example is updating the specific epithets of infraspecific taxa after their parent species’s specific epithet is edited. in response to a later comment by sjl197 asking about that, loarie agreed that it’d be an improvement, so that (and maybe by extension editing hybrid formulas, under the general umbrella of making the minor change logic more sophisticated) could potentially already be under consideration behind the scenes (though it could also be worth a feature request, in case it isn’t)
(as for the ability curators used to have to make any and all edits to the names of taxa they’d personally created, i think that was scrapped with the minor name change update)
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An additional issue includes this taxon: Helichrysum forskaohlii · iNaturalist
The varieties are misspelled, but because the misspelling is within the species name, it won’t let us edit it. This feels very counterinitiative of the idea of making minor edits to names, because since it’s a plant, we would need to find 5 people to vote to swap it.
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