From what I can tell (experimenting with my own name and pseudonym), GBIF has the real name if it exists in the iNat profile. But if there is no real name in the profile, then the pseudonym is the only name available and that is what it has. If a user added or removed a real name at some point, GBIF might have a mixture of both.
I have cited iNat pseudonyms in publication (as observers, not identifiers) when no other name was available.
For some people who like the gamification, it matters how many firsts they get.
Well i think i already said it above, itās not my goal to āfix the identifierā in the special case of these 6 observations. I think i generally work well together with the moderators here, even if i often ask for batches of taxa to be added. I have no negative feelings towards that specific moderator either, i think he helped me to get these taxa into iNat, which is great. Nontheless i also feel somewhat wrongedā¦ as i have already expressed above.
Well the aim of this discussion from my side was to influence the futureā¦ and it seems i already managed that. It seems before this discussion, there was barely any awareness of gbif mentioning the first identifier. And now at least the readers of this thread have heard about that.
there was a whole thread about this previously (intended mainly for others reading this present topic; I assume you remember that one since you posted there). staff made many of the same points about minimising āempty branchā curation and database load last time; I agreed, and Iām not sure I understand this notion of āwrapping up treatment of taxonomy for [a] genusā. taxonomy continues to change, and curating empty branches is a bit of a pain. Iām not hugely against adding unobserved species ā I did open-endedly ask the original question in that thread after all ā but it seems at odds with the reality of ongoing revisions to hope that addition of mass quantities of taxa (or even by the small handful) without observations will actually āfinishā anything. hundreds if not thousands of species remain probably never to be observed on iNaturalist, even macroscopic eukaryotes, and the value of adding them for an ephemeral sense of completeness is equivocal.
anyway, to the current threadās point (beside the fact that I also take issue with the poorly chosen title; Darwin made sure to lift Wallace up beside him, and also there have been entire books written on the fact that Wallaceās evolutionary theory actually wasnāt materially all the same as Darwinās own, such that the version of natural selection we take for granted would probably not have been explained in the same way originally had Darwin never existed), in my own curating activities I have sometimes gone ahead and added the first ID of a taxon I added on someone elseās behalf, partly out of having learned something about its identification in the course of looking it up, and partly because it seems to have a marginally more effective ānotification efficacyā than just commenting to say that I added the taxon. (that is, I feel that itās more likely that the intended party will follow up and ID if Iāve added a demonstrating ID, whereas if I just say itās been added then it sometimes doesnāt get used. not sure thatās the most common for everyone else though.)
I couldnāt care less about identifier stats on the GBIF end especially, and probably a great number of my own observations are not listed as first identified by me myself. I sincerely doubt that almost anyone else knew about it either. and given that there arenāt really any approximations of gamified charts on the GBIF end as well, I doubt there is any push to get that extremely obscure drop of fame via the portal.
in all likelihood I may even forget about this factoid by the time I next add a new taxon and decide whether or not to ID as it. there are too many other things to worry about, in the realm of biodiversity data quality as well as outside it.
when I am the one who asked for a missing sp to be added for African Unknowns - I usually ID as the sp, with a comment for the observer. Once the observer adds their own ID, I withdraw my placeholder ID. One vote from the observer - while we wait for a second competent identifier to take it to RG (not me!) From a taxon specialist that first ID would be valid, and I see no reason why it should be withdrawn.
As someone that occasionally finds an identifiable species thatās not in the iNat taxonomy, itās always been a case where Iāve put in some effort to track down an old paper for a taxa that I have little to no personal experience identifying, and manage to stumble my way through the key (or more like, get lucky and match the photo to an unusually helpful figure that doesnāt just show tiny variations in some internal or microscopic structure). So I ask for the species to be added, then make my ID with a qualifier that I have no expertise with this taxa, and anyone wishing to confirm it should check the paper and see if I actually correctly used the key. If any credit is due, itās to the author of the paper that helpfully included hand drawn figures of the distinctive patterns on the enlarged tibia of males of an infrequently photographed species.