I’ve discussed my thoughts at a previous discussion, Common Name Being Deleted - Mardi Gras Sharpshooter, and will quote myself to reiterate the biggest problem I see: “For relatively obscure taxa that lack established or any common names, I think the potential for an iNat “spark” to spread throughout the internet and unduly influence tomorrow’s generation of primarily online-educated users who may not check reliable sources is all the greater.”
One way to reduce the proliferation of common names invented on iNat, or unduly popularized by iNat, would be to require (or strongly recommend) that editors add a source for a common name, to increase transparency. As far as I can tell, looking at the history of edits for a given common name only shows who added the name, not where they may have gotten it from (if anywhere). One specific example is the millipede species Gosodesmus claremontus, which iNaturalist currently calls the “Pink Feather Boa Millipede”. Now, some may like this common name and some may not (I personally find it rather silly), but from what I can tell, before being added to iNaturalist it had only ever been called this in print by one source, an invertebrate breeder/seller who called it such in a 2020 YouTube video and on their website. So is this a commonly used name or a trade name invented to increase marketability? Now of course, the common name is repeated in every site they may mirror, link to, or reference the iNat profile or an iNat observation of the species, including Wikipedia, one of the most visible outlets on the internet. Compared to insects, and perhaps even arachnids, millipedes in general suffer from a paucity of widely used common names, with only a few species regularly appearing in field guides and encyclopedias, even fewer given vernacular names in such, and many families or orders entirely lack what could be considered ‘commonly used common names’. I’m sure there are groups of organisms with even less consideration of vernacular names (bacteria, algae, deep sea invertebrates, etc.). Requiring that people adding a vernacular name also add a source for their name (even if it’s a commercial website) would be a first step into assessing the credibility, regional appropriateness, and relative frequency of a name.