Curating taxonomy? Anyone there?

Curators
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Ok, i tried a provocative click bait title, my apologies!

There are several people likely to read this who have made great efforts in curating the taxonomy. Some of you were doing that long before i personally started, and several of you with significantly more edits. I don’t mean to negate the efforts of such people, or anyone (regardless of scope or scale), but rather start a discussion about how few ‘curators’ seem active, and how to push things forward, as personally i’m feeling burdened by scope of what’s still to do.

As context, it’s good to recognise that number of edits (etc) are not directly meaningful, but rather contributions. Many MANY volunteers have made useful updates or comments on the iNaturalist taxonomy. I’m sure that (for diverse organisms) much of the taxonomy is vastly closer to modern knowledge than years ago. Everyone who moved things forward should be immensely proud.

Those of you who i’ve exchanged dialog with likely know my arthropod focus. In other threads, those of you who love plants or fungi can offer an often slightly different perspective, which is welcome. Anyway, i mention arthropods as a hyperdivese group. In nearly every lineage i look at when a flag/curation issue is raised by a user, then usually there’s many missing taxa, or names that need revising for updated schemes. (Note, here, i’m going to glance past the little central direction i’ve seen to ‘not needlessly add empty taxa’ etc. Here, I understand efforts for any curation/updates taxonomy can be best directed towards lineages of direct relevance to users and their observations, rather than the vast multitudes that require “microscopic dissection”, “genetic analyses” or whatever fine-scale thing is beyond any visual-based scheme).

My point though, is at least for arthropods, many recent user created flags are “please add this species”, fully inline with policy. Many of these can take seconds to resolve, but of course defensibility of any actions can depends on the state of knowledge in external sources, which vary hugely in reliability and quality, and often defensibility is dependant on which taxon being evaluated. Here’s two concerns:

[1]: The “name import” for users is horribly outdated, notably from Catalog of Life. I was once told that’s still importing from 2012 download, and if so that’s absurd. I keep seeing users import taxon names from that old CoL scheme which are since changed in literature, and importantly also have changed on CoL or other external databases. Lepidoptera is one notable group where many names on the 2012 version of CoL were already stupidly outdated (due to that itself making an uncritical mass import of historic combinations, some going back to the 1800s, others never published). Many of the lepidopteran names on CoL have since been updated at that end into more defensible modern combinations. Yet iNat with its outdated importer still allows users to import those long outdated combinations. Please stop this.

[2] There are large numbers of silent “curators” with access to the functions to access and alter the schemes, but few or no actions. Several discussions have been started on topic but zero action. I’m sure many of them could be re-engaged and be valuable, but i’ve never seen anything active on that front from staff. I’d love to see a clean out of the in-actives, others requested to re-join on their request etc, as other proposals. Any engagement in the in-actives can likely encourage a few to start participating and remove those who cannot but in my view shouldn’t have access to certain features. I wish that the recent fallout from the big AI discussions had taught the staff to listen to the community. Well, there’s a community of curators also - and it seems a vast body of that community isn’t actively being engaged in need for curation. So, please.

Ok, two points is maybe already too much for a thread, but let’s see! Edit: Above my thought process is unified by the multitude of “please add this taxon” flag, which make up the bulk each week or incoming new issues. I’m hopeful that steps to address either or both of the two points above could really help on that front - either users able to add some more current names themselves, and/or engagement with some more users just willing to do rather quick simple tasks - if you want to call yourself a ‘curator’ then how about you at least add a few taxon names!

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https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/add-curator-data-to-profile-page-and-remove-all-but-top-10-20-50-curators-from-community-page/38900
Under review from January 2023

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/remove-all-curators-and-start-from-scratch/140
Under review. From February 2019!

I much appreciate curators who add plants for me (using POW). Wiki editors. The other half of curators working against bad behaviour.

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I generally don’t feel qualified to do much with taxonomy, especially after witnessing some of the nastier taxonomic battles in flag comments (although it suddenly occurred to me, I wonder what genus has resulted in the highest number of account suspensions due to heated taxonomic argument?).

I’ll add new plant species upon request, if they’re supported by POWO, but beyond that I stay away from it. I mostly focus on copyright issues / spam / trolling etc.

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There are a bunch of actions that require curator status, but don’t actually make any number go up.
Initially, I’ve applied to be a curator to add conservation statuses, which is one such thing. I’ve added quite a few of those, but it doesn’t count as “taxa curated”, so it isn’t visible, apart from the odd flag I resolved while doing so. More recently I started “properly” editing taxa and making taxon changes, but strictly limited to taxa I feel reasonably confident with. (Additionally, for some weird reason my “taxa curated” stat has gone down from 9 to 3, so these numbers don’t seem wholly reliable)

Personally, I don’t see any reason for this, as long as they aren’t actively abusing their “curatorship” in any way. A few of them might come back some day, even if they are inactive now, and they may have valuable expertise. Stripping them of their curator status only to reapply it then seems like a waste of time/resources. In addition, curatorial actions are a volunteering activity. There is no quota you have to meet, and IMO you should be able to take breaks for as long as you want. What are the downsides of letting inactive users keep their curator status?

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On the other threads - some have been given Curator privileges - which they didn’t ask for, and so haven’t used.

Two done in January 2021, and this is the open third item on bouteloua’s list. Would equalise active new and defaulted old Curators.

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I feel I’ve done my small part in the past curating arthropods, even the horrible moths amid the CoL 2012 chaos. You, the topic starter, have personally seen me enter some threads hoping to help. Maybe you’re not addressing me though as I am apparently one of the relatively few who do add species. I at least agree with you that that’s the simplest thing possible in taxonomy curation, that it’s not likely to generate controversy except in one of a handful of vertebrate groups, and that not enough curators are doing it. I don’t buy this notion that taxonomy curation is scary and so is adding species — swaps, splits, and lumps are scary! Adding a species, regardless of the group, generally is not. Let’s not muddy the issue by getting started on how unreliable some of the taxonomic “sources” like POWO are, please; if it’s just adding a species that doesn’t conflict in any way with the existing site taxonomy, that’s not terribly intimidating in my opinion. I recognise that some new curators have no exposure to taxonomic biology and find even that step to be daunting; let’s set a good example.
Then again, I haven’t been doing any curation lately. For me, there’s no end to it, little reward (or less selfishly, seemingly little point), and anyway I’ve been mostly offline for the last few weeks and hope to continue to be. Maybe that’s my real future, a study of hypocrisy. To which I say, oh well, I probably already added some absurd number of taxa to the site.

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Frankly I quit doing taxonomy curation for Lepidoptera because no one in the Lepidoptera community can agree on Lepidoptera taxonomy. If I add a new species due to a flag request, someone will complain that it is “too soon” or that it isn’t included in one of the several competing and conflicting species lists/catalogs. It used to be that ornithology had the most chaotic taxonomy, but they managed to get their act together with the unified AviList. I hope one day the Lepidopterists will also figure out how to reach some kind of consensus (either here or globally). Fungi taxonomy is also total chaos, but at least there are a lot of fungi curators here maintaining it. In fact, iNaturalist is a de facto reference for fungi taxonomy at this point since no other databases are consistently updated.

If you can tell me an arthropod group that has local consensus on taxonomy (i.e. everyone agrees on using a particular database or catalog), I will be happy to help with curating it. Otherwise, I’m sticking to spiders.

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I’m in a similar situation. It is one thing to make a quick check of POWO – “Yup, it’s there” – and go with it; it is another thing to take the time to trace down a description and evaluate it; and another again to make a case for “let’s deviate from POWO on this.”

There is one flag in particular which says that a certain taxon is an unpublished name. I have been working on that one for a while now, but as you can imagine, it’s rather like looking for Russell’s Teapot – proving that a species is unpublished is much more difficult than proving that one is published. Eleven observations may not be that many, but still, there would be the matter of what to do with them if the taxon was deleted – they would have to go somewhere, even if only back to genus. The flag makes no suggestion in this matter.

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It shouldn’t be – authorship is part of the name, so it should be relatively easy to look up where it was published (if it was). For plants in particular, the author of the combination is also listed, so if the authorship refers to a different combination then you know the combination is unpublished (POWO is rather notorious for both accepting incorrect combinations and then fixing them as unpublished combinations).

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I have requested the addition of numerous mollusk species, and (with one exception) have always gotten a prompt response from a curator.

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I’m one of these! I plan to start helping with curator things, especially in insects, once I finish my PhD.

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Not on iNaturalist it isn’t. If the species is on POWO, the authorship can be found there. If there is a taxon page, the authorship can be found out by going to Wikipedia or whathever the source is. But if neither is the case, it is a question of whether I can find any reference to the name that has the authorship. You might be surprised how hard that can be even for taxa known in horticulture – “how to care for your plant” or “where to buy this plant” pages often do not include the authorship either. That was what I was referring to with Russell’s Teapot: if I don’t find an author’s name, is it because there isn’t one or because I haven’t looked in the right place yet?

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There always is an author’s name! The problem comes when a name has been published twice by two different authors for two different taxa. Only one can be valid (unless they’re in different kingdoms) but relying on that assumes you have a correct species dictionary and which name is “correct” can change with time.

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I think the point is that authorship isnt stored on iNaturalist as part of the name, so one often comes across taxa on the site whose authorship/validity is difficult to discern. I’ve definitely encountered this in situations where someone entered an unpublished recombination on the site—you’re only likely to solve a puzzle like that if you know something about the historical treatment of the genus (so hard for any given curator to address based on a flag).

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Coming back to this, first thanks for @DianaStuder for those initial links.

I appreciate that neither of two points i went into are new, it was rather my intention to say the same (yet again) as those other valuable discussions seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

@papernautilus
You said “I have requested the addition of numerous mollusk species,” / “always gotten a prompt response” That’s great. At backend of website i see about 100 unresolved flags for molluscs, and a large fraction are about the external databases being inconsistent. I’m glad you have positive experience, but to my view that’s due to action of a handful of active curators, what i’m concerned about is where the burden is - hopefully with molluscs the few active curators are coping well and should be congratulated!

Else, going earlier above @eyekosaeder and others highlight a point i skated across, their comment about “a bunch of actions that require curator status, but don’t actually make any number go up”. We can check the limited presented stats about ‘curation action’ but i saw past discussion about what the presented numbers mean. Beyond “resolved flags” i’m not clear myself! But the point there in reply on “conservation statuses” or other actions that don’t seem to count to “curation” are valid. For sure there’s many with curation ability that gradually add value but not on the limited ‘score card’ of curator actions. There does seem to be a core of curators who edit and update on their focal lineage whenever time and interest allows, and many do so quietly without acknowledgement for the value they bring. I wish the staff could recognise that value, and my apologies about failing to do so myself. Equally, there’s a host of valuable curator actions beyond those focused on taxonomic issues, but equally supportive, community engagement and such. Those give great value, especially those of conflict resolution. Great work those who do, i feel it’s tougher dealing with people than taxonomy!

With that said, onto the prior reply by @graysquirrel of "I generally don’t feel qualified to do much with taxonomy, " as an interesting point, which i’ve heard from several. There seems a desire by the limited central direction to “focus updates towards external authorities” and “avoid taxonomic debates”, both my paraphrasing, as my interpretation. This is where i really struggle with the current iNat setup and both the two focal points of my initial comment come into play. Currently, any user could import a taxon name from external providers, where those names they could pull in (or rather combinations) can be outdated. How much effort is given by those users to investigate if what they import are the most appropriate - i.e. current or ‘valid’ in zoological nomenclature? I’m sure it varies. Here two factors. Firstly i’d guess in some cases the user suspects or knows what they’re importing is outdated (or otherwise undesirable), but it’s the best they can do. At least that’s what i’ve seen from user flags after the event querying to curators if the name they imported is appropriate, typically it often seems the curator answer is no. Secondly, when subgenera are involved, the imported name defaults to the genus, meaning that curators still then intervene to assign an imported name to a subgenus or whatever finer subgroup. I really don’t feel it’s wrong that users are able to import any taxon name on external providers (and link observations), even if the imported name is outdated etc, they have an action made and can link observations. Is any of that different from a new curator creating a new taxon name that they’re uncertain about? I don’t think so - several processes exist where other curators can then step in to review and update, and places to discuss actions. In fact, i’d say inclusion of an alternative combination can often have value - the system is setup so synonyms then are a natural part of the structure, so what if someone imports a name which isn’t ‘current’ (i.e. valid per zoology nomenclature), there’s a billion such cases where it’s happened and will happen again.

That leads onto @sbrobeson comment of "I don’t buy this notion that taxonomy curation is scary and so is adding species — swaps, splits, and lumps are scary! " Well, absolutely, i wasn’t aiming to address you nor anyone directly, my intention was purely general context. In terms of who has made past actions, then you or anyone who made contributions has value. I’ve made a few ‘mistaken’ swaps’ etc. Most were easily resolved after discussion. There are some especially subjective aspects of taxonomy, the worst being “is it a genus or a subgenus” or “is it as species or a subspecies?”. Those often depend on the data and who you ask! That said, in terms of “— swaps, splits, and lumps” i support you about value of caution with such, and moreso as the number of observations grows. However, i’d value your support about what are usually simplistic addition of taxon names - usually simplistic. If a species name/combination is used externally and a user thinks it’s lacking, then addition usually has value. Whether the external databases differ their usage about what name is ‘current’ is another step beyond that, whether it is “properly published” in conformation of nomenclature is another question, where it then causes a mis-duplicate internally is another issue - but adding the requested name is potentially a simplistic move.

The latter points are potentially useful - personally i often try to add details of the author/year when i add a taxon name, but i’m sure many cases when i didn’t do that. It’s an absolute failure of those who designed the taxonomy setup here that they never valued the attribution of name, and from that there’s plenty of homonyms where it takes some annotation and comments to specify which of alternatives an entry refers to, and often there’s nothing. On reply @kmagnacca who says"authorship is part of the name, so it should be relatively easy to look up where it was published". Indeed, iNat scheme doesn’t support any of that defensibility and later by @malcolmstorey “There always is an author’s name!” then i disagree. A bunch of names entered here or other online systems, then i can recall countless cases where “it’s a name that will be published” that usually never happens or sometimes “it’s published but the appropriateness of the publication for specific criteria is unsure” etc. Here publications in thesis projects or small “privately published journals” are a regular complication. Really, often many things “published” but still under copyright are often a challenge, which is usually anything in last 100 years or so!

Anyway, please let’s bring it back
1]: The “name import” for users is horribly outdated
[2] There are large numbers of silent “curators” / but few or no actions.

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I’ve run into a few similar challenges, although in almost all cases I’ve found that searching on Tropicos, BHL and Google Scholar will turn up some reference to a plant species if it was validly published.

But there are a few authors I come across who published copious novelties in journals with a tiny circulation that have never been digitized. If these weren’t reviewed, indexed or addressed by later researchers, a species may seem to be unpublished when it’s merely unappreciated.

Sometimes, working on these conundrums, it’s a relief to come across the abbreviation “sp. nov. ined.” and know that the taxon can be formally debunked (unless it was published for real at a later date, of course).

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Well theres the World Arachnid Catalogue and also WoRMS for all the crustaceans