It is not necessary to delete an observation because of a single wrong ID. If your ID is correct, you only need 2 other people who agree with you in order to correct the community taxon (i.e., just one more than would otherwise be needed for RG) – usually it is enough to tag a couple of specialists to help. If you delete the observation, the overenthusiastic new user will not have an opportunity to learn from their mistakes, nor will other users who might see the observation later. The fact that sometimes it takes some time to reach a consensus is part of the process of doing science and doesn’t reflect badly on you or your observation.
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@cthawley, thank you so much for taking the time to talk this through. I think wrt to what I called a bullying case the CID was correct. What happened was that the poster had mis-IDd a Wild Turkey, and I believe from the chatter they had been stubborn about changing their ID. It had come up on my feed, and I had ID’d it as a Wild Turkey. I then found on a birding Facebook page that people had been recruited to pile onto the user with the correct ID. I tried to find it, but that’s not an uncommon species. So I would say draw your own conclusions, but it felt mobbish and bullying to me. Or at the very least unnecessary.
@spiphany thank you! I left the two incorrectly IDd observations for months and then cleared them out. I should have tagged and may have tried to, but my understanding from this forum is that experts have quite a bit on their hands already. I truly appreciate your point that the inexperienced user has lost a chance to learn. That is something I hadn’t considered. I’ll take this to heart in the future! I also didn’t know your could opt out of CID. So thank you very much for that.
Having said that, I work hard to document my observations clearly, I work hard to be a good community member and ID where I can, and I am grateful to report that I have a very high proportion of research grade observations. I usually don’t post unless I feel the critical features are there for ID . . . for birds! I know I don’t make that bar in taxa I’m not as familiar with. Many users here who I respect and whose work I enjoy draw a different line.
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