You are absolutely right about the stated purpose of iNat. But if it is a sole purpose and the scientific data is a byproduct, there are always other “buts”… First one: if the communication with nature is the sole purpose, why iNat proudly shows every scientific paper that was based on iNat data? Second one: why it is connected to GBIF? Third one: do you think that qualified identifiers (researchers among them) spend enormous amount of time at identifying entirely for the purpose for nature communication? It is for the sake of data correctness and education. If the users are not particularly interested in any ofthese, the IDers get frustrated and some leave - who gains then? You can read more about what response from the users or which behaviour frustrates experts, in the response of Myelaphus in this thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/roles-of-taxonomic-experts-on-inat/13363/3
And here is a new thread on the problems of iNat ‘byproduct’: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/data-quality-of-observations-from-india-data-quality-rg-gbif-india/13388
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