Display major categories in taxon name choices to better disambiguate similar names

I totally agree with @kiwifergus about dealing with moderation issues that affect specific users. They should be addressed via direct communication, not aired in public like this. This thread now has a several off-topic posts that are distracting very unhelpfully from the matter in hand.

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I remember seeing somewhere, either the names page or in the help pages somewhere, that using generic names as vernaculars should be avoided. Of course, it’s easy to say, not so easy to avoid!

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Tony’s remark as a stand alone remark wouldn’t necessarily have been out of line, but there is a lot more going on that you are probably not aware of and this needs to be viewed in the context of many different comments as well as PMs that have already been sent and concerns voiced to us by other users. I recognize that we are all adapting to the new forum and that i myself have been off tone in the past too especially on the google group, but there is a lot more to this issue than that post including things that have happened that you are not aware of. This is not happening in a vacuum.

That being said the moderation here is still being calibrated and it will be a balance and adjustment for us all as we adjust to the new tone of the new forum, it’s fine to voice concerns, but let’s do it in a different thread.

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Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate all of your concerns and I will digest the feedback. As @charlie alluded to, there is more going on here. I quoted the post in question as it was not considered offensive but rather my commentary was on tone and necessity which are also equally important in our guidelines. The post was hidden after other users flagged the post. I chose to respond here and did not flag the post but as a a result of flagging the post was hidden. As Tony chose to respond to that here I followed suit and felt that much of what I had to say was of public use.re: use of the forum. Apologies if that was not the case.

If anyone needs to discuss this further please message @moderators in a private message and one of us will be happy to explain any questions or concerns you may have.

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As one of the handful of users on here who regularly identify actiniarians, I can confirm that the anemone/sea anemone mistake is common. I went through and corrected MANY observations that were stuck at “Life” because a user uploaded a Sea Anemone as an Anemone and never bothered to correct the mistake. This is something that could be greatly helped by including a large obvious icon for plant/animal beside the name.

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If the plant people click the spider Erica
perhaps iNat could have a popup

  • ‘We’ don’t see a spider in this picture
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Or keeping the “a member of [higher taxon]” text in.

I’m not sure what the delineating factor is for why that’s on some taxa and not others, though.

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That would be more useful (and less irritating)

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We have been following an observation that was originally ID’d by the observer as Oyster (animal). Next ID’d by another as Oysterling (fungus). Next ID’d by two people as Genus Cladopus (Plant). And now two more IDers have suggest Fungi, one of them Subgenus Claudopus. We searched the forum for similar names and found this Feature Request.

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