Choosing not to identify subspecies

[sgene]

@tiwane

Personally I don’t ID to subspecies unless a) there is clear phylogenetic evidence that the organism is a subspecies and b) if IDing it to the subspecies level will obscure its location because it’s an endangered taxon (eg Thamnophis sirtalis tetrataenia ).

I want to use the ID tool to filter out observations where the observer consciously made an ID to a below-species level. However, I don’t want to filter out below-species observations where the observer only ID’d to that level because there was a photo in a guidebook that was labelled that way. If anyone can tell me a way to distinguish between those, let me know.

[charlie]

yeah, i don’t mean to be super hardline about it either, and there are cases where it makes sense, as brought up here, rare subspecies of conservation concern, island endemics, etc etc. I jsut get annoyed when people come in to ‘correct’ some of my IDs with subspecies that tell me nothing more,but if i agree to them, take most of the points off of the range map when it goes to subspecies. If one pine subspecies is only in the Sierras and the other only in the Wind River Range or something, i can filter that out mentally just fine without having to classify them out.

[kiwifergus]

@charlie

the best response would probably be just to reject community ID for that one observation

I agree… I also think it is not good how ssp are handled differently to other taxa levels. We strike this often with people from northern hemisphere putting sp IDs on our passerine birds, most of which were introduced by acclimitisation societies in the 1800s, and there is certainty on many of the ssp IDs we apply to them. I did wonder if the Needs ID page only gives the option of agreeing to sp level with the agree button on the thumbnail page?

[charlie]

i think the weird subspecies behavior was to cut down on people accidentally identifying to subspecies or throwing up subspecies names based on location without any other research or backing. Though i may be wrong. there used to be a huge problem with newbies identifying everything to ‘nominate’ subspecies because the common names were the same, but i haven’t seen that happen lately, so in that regard it seems to be working.

[mira_l_b]

As I just almost IDed my own observation to subspecies accidentally (as I’m sure I’ve unintentionally done before) I thought, “wouldn’t it be great if a pop-up app reminder checked in with me to make sure I knew I was about to enter a ssp.?” I was using the app and the print is tiny and I’m all out of other excuses for my mistakes!

@tiwane, would this idea be a separate feature request? I can put the comment somewhere else but not sure where that particular suggestion (a reminder pop-up) would go. Onboarding new users? Notifications?