Choosing not to identify subspecies

Welcome to the new forums!

There was a recent topic about identifying based on location (including subspecies) here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/id-based-on-range-or-appearance/524

I personally do NOT believe subspecies should be identified based on range, but there is no official policy so there isn’t a rule against it. If you can see the diagnostic features… you can do so if you want to, as long as you are confident in the ID. I personally don’t see any value in guessing subspecies if you can’t tell, at best it creates pointless data and at worst it creates downright wrong data.

I personally won’t ‘agree’ with IDs to subspecies on my observations based only on range, except in a few rare cases. Granted I mostly deal with plants. However, the community ID should not shift to subspecies without a lot of IDs anyway.

Mostly it’s up to the observer. if you encounter a thread where people are not being civil, feel free to email help@inaturalist.org to let the admins know about it and they can weigh in. But disagreeing with an ID doesn’t in and of itself count as not civil.

Personally, i’d say if you have an issue with it on your own observation, just reject community ID for that one observation. It isn’t ideal, but isn’t going to cause a huge issue either.

(also, if this thread becomes similar to or relevant to that last one i can move your post into there).

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