Enable identifiers to add flags to problem taxa to encourage observers to be wary of potential issues

Feature Requests
20

no, the purpose of my examples is to help clarify whether you want to flag species because:

  1. a given species is visually similar to other species in the area
  2. a given species is visually similar to other species in other areas
  3. although photos could allow for visual differentiation of species, observers don’t often capture the features necessary for differentiation
  4. the inclusion of a given species in the training set (due to commonness or distinctive features) makes it likely to be incorrectly suggested for species not included in the training set

the way i read your posts, you would probably be willing to flag for any of the reasons above and potentially other reasons. if that’s the case, then i think there could be some reason to flag most species, and the lack of flags on any given species would mostly just reflect no one bothering or getting around to flagging the species. in my opinion, flags are useful / meaningful only if the set that could be potentially flagged is a small subset / minority of the whole set – because in these cases, the flags would point to exceptions. if just about anything could be flagged (everything is exceptional?), then flags are not a great tool.

fundamentally, i think what you’re proposing here effectively leads down a path that ends up (largely, if not entirely) at something like what has been previously discussed in many other threads:

along these lines, tiwane proposed in another thread a way to achieve something like what’s proposed in those threads, using existing functionality in the system. it seems like a reasonable approach to me, but i don’t think this workflow has ever caught on.

there’s also another thread that is similar to your thread here, perhaps covering a subset of what could be potentially covered in your thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/warning-banner-on-ids-for-taxa-that-cant-be-ided-using-photos/11119.

5 Likes