Class exercise apparently generating repeated errors

I’ve had a situation where a number of US-based observers, all new to iNaturalist, upload similar or identical photos of a mistletoe and identify it as an Australian mistletoe that it doesn’t resemble. This happens near the beginning of the academic year and seems to occur every year. I read this as a class exercise where the “answer” is being passed down from a previous cohort (who didn’t read the comments on their observations). It seems that the educator doesn’t assess the observations either.

This isn’t a problem really—I can clean up the small number of observations, though I don’t feel much inclined to tell them the likely correct ID—but I’m interested to hear from others whether they come across parallel situations and how they respond.

This is a regular source of much frustration for identifiers on iNat, you’ll find some threads with plenty of discussion on the topic here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/search?q=student+class

Best thing to do would be to message the project owner (likely the teacher) and tell them about the issues this is causing.

Ah, thanks. I’ve done that now.