This thread might be of interest @hamsambly
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lock-taxon-photos-for-the-most-observed-taxa/50288/18
My experience so far has been that the problem isn´t so much with people who abuse it in a big way as people who just add photos which are suboptimal or misleading. They don’t warrant flagging. But they can limit the taxon galleries from achieving their potential.
I could spend ages selecting the most suitable shots for a taxon with a view to helping others discern it from similar taxa, selecting diagnostic features, etc
…but then somebody else could come across and switch it up 10 seconds later with some photos that just look pretty (or more exotic), but would have less value imo in the broader scheme of things. This limits my desire to engage in fixing taxon galleries.
Regardless of this more complex dynamic, the existing system certainly leaves itself open to abuse a bit more than necessary. And whilst I agree limiting to curators is unnecessary… I think it would make sense to limit it to users with a certain number of IDs/obs/history with the site. Or even better, to implement a voting system for taxon images, so it´s harder to switch out images at higher levels or on more commonly observed taxa so we avoid “edit wars” (as mentioned in the feature request which lead to taxon history in the first place).