I think what you mean is that practically expert opinions carry more weight if other people behave rationally. But others don’t always do behave rationally, as described in this thread.
Because bugguide has a different mandate and a different model.
The issue has been discussed at length on this forum. It’s not going to change.
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Human psychology is gonna human psychology. 
Personally, as an amateur, I’m excited to learn, but I must admit, my emotions are tied up in the process. I’m proud to get it right, but I’m embarrassed to get it wrong.
After the initial embarrassment, my higher-level processing can then engage with that emotion and reprocess it into the excitement of learning something new, but it helps a lot when the correction comes with a description of distinguishing details, and even more if it’s written in a friendly (or neutral) tone (rather than a snarky one).
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Just some thoughts…
Maybe they don’t feel safe to share about themselves. As you’re sharing here, it can be hard to navigate the interaction aspect of iNat. If they already don’t feel safe to share, then this happened…
ouch! One would hope it would be handled gracefully by the other user, but, if in your own view, you were correcting them - rather than simply differently identifying the same observation as them, perhaps they felt that too. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the situation, and if so, I apologize. But, if the interaction was more a correction of another identifier, than simply a unique/differing identification of the same observation, perhaps the person is right to feel targeted? If in fact they feel this way - this is all speculation.
There are so many possible explanations we can imagine, maybe you can try to do a re-set with this person? I know that’s not always possible, though. I think we can all relate to the difficulties of working with differing personalities, especially without the usual cues one gets in person. I hope you find a positive solution.
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@evabetterthanever Welcome to the forum
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This. If I see certain names, I consider an Observation to have been identified to the best level it is going to be, even if not species, and I would never consider tagging anyone else in an attempt to get it further.*
*That said, sometimes the Full Stop names tag people of whom I have never heard, who have little or no info in their profiles beyond their names, and I realize these are extreme specialists, studying really specific genera. I get giddy with anticipation, even though I never understand a thing. It is the idea that the experts have experts. Wild!
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I know it has been discussed; I didn’t start discussing it again, I just mentioned the state of affairs being unfortunate, then others brought up the topic. But anything can change.
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The state of affairs is that there is a fantastic, free-to-all web platform on which anybody, regardless of expertise, can post observations and learn to identify them by participating. It is clear about its missions. It does not pretend to be anything that it’s not. It is clear about why it manages the inevitable trade-offs among its missions as it does.
That some see the end result as unfortunate is just one of those things that inevitably happens when any group of people larger than 1 works together on pretty much anything at all.
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observations where I had made incorrect IDs, with this user agreeing with the correct identifications even though the observations were already research grade.
their original ID will sit unchanged even when numerous others agree with me and none agree with them.
Aren’t these the same thing?
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Underneath that pretty mantle of civilisation, we are all chimps.
So we have to be prepared that some of us will react in a territorial rather than a sympathetic way. This hasn’t got anything to do with knowledge, I am afraid.
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Hi David!
I apologize if my identifying behavior gave you the impression that I wanted to embarrass or attack you, which was and is never my intention.
I only identify observations and there are errors (misidentifications or too fine identifications) that I may sometimes miss in the notifications. And I often find it better to delete rather than withdraw, which makes the entry confusing with many crossed-out posts.
However, it is still a bit difficult for me to understand how someone can perceive it as aggressive when another user identifies observations and disagrees or sticks to an over-identified observation. But again, I’m very sorry if you find my IDs or non-IDs offensive or aggressive.
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Please don’t delete. Most users only delete when an ID is only seconds-old. Once it’s reasonable that others have seen your ID it becomes very, very rude to delete.
I think your decision to delete rather than withdraw is the crux of the problem here. Also, it can make it very confusing to follow the chain of IDs!
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I agree with your first paragraph, and think the same can be said of bugguide. Your second paragraph mischaracterizes what I said; I said it was unfortunate that iNat doesn’t give more weight to expert opinions, I didn’t suggest iNat as a whole is “unfortunate.”
In any event, your comments are off-topic from this thread.
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I am still a bit confused by this thread. The OP complains that this other user does not change their IDs when they are shown as wrong by others … but then they complain that this other users also added confirmations to observations where the OP was wrong - but this could only happen if the OP themselves also does not withdraw wrong IDs, because how else would there be any disagreement left? Or am I missing something?
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For anyone else who makes mistakes and forgets to check them when corrected, these two URLs are useful (replace with your username):
Uncorrected Misidentifications:
Withdrawn Misidentifications:
I’m not sure what correcting the ones in the first URL is called, but I call it doing a “maverick sweep” and it’s worth reviewing it every month or two.
The second URL is a humbling reminder that everyone makes mistakes. Try it with your favorite identifiers’ usernames too!
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Neither the mission nor model of bugguide are the same as iNat’s.
That is what you wrote and it is what I responded to.
Sure, to the extent that I responded to an off-topic comment.
In this situation it is clear this isn’t the case, but sometimes I will ID a lot of observations and miss some of the notifications. If a different ID is suggested sometimes I just don’t see it.
(very minor clarifications, but maverick doesn’t necessarily equal misID—on observations where 3+ people add an incorrect ID, a subsequent correct ID will still be labeled maverick until additional IDers stumble across, or are directed to, the observation; and the 2nd link doesn’t just show manually updated maverick IDs, but also any/all IDs that were updated by taxon changes, which can account for the vast majority [up to 100s of pages worth] of listed IDs for long-present prolific IDers in taxonomically more active groups)
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Same here. I did not see the problem yet.
And the situation is a bit more complicated (computer and storage load, performance) than David describes, see other posts on the forum.
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Maverick is iNat jargon for 3 people agree, and you are the maverick.
You may well be a Proud Maverick, the one who is right.
You may be wrong.
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