Just on this issue about whether the import feature is useful (or not), i’ve stated my position that i don’t find it useful - and go further to clarify that i even regularly find the current setup to be counter productive in that it allows import from outdated source(s).
That said, I see the potential delays of “adding missing taxa” as a very important concern. Part of this (i fear) comes from what i see as a general lack of value given to the taxonomic framework (which i see by user comments elsewhere on this forum etc), but perhaps part stems from lack of drives towards the community for engagement, either in feedback, but especially in failure to recruit active curators. The number of unresolved curatoral flags is impressive. I find it shocking how many relate to really quite simple and seemingly uncontroversial requests. Many who commented above (and elsewhere on the forum) have often made great progress to resolve such flags, but many unresolved flags remain. I’d go further to say there are many unresolved for more than several months, which I find rather terrible. There’s been some discussion of ways to resolve such backlog and move things forward, such as curator mentorship, but none of these ideas seems to have gone anywhere. Can we perhaps have a cull of the “Curators” who have never done any curation? How about switch some of those who are active users (as identifiers etc) but not interesting in direct curation to be “taxon advisors” and such, alongside encourage and support those who state some intent and interest for direct curation? If there’s more active -and hopefully informed - curators, then there could be much quicker resolution of flags, especially the simplistic ones to “add missing taxa” and such. As i see it, the discussion and formalisation of the preferred taxonomic combination (i.e. that said to be “valid” or current) can come after the end user has got an available taxonomic name to link their new observation onto.
[note, slight edits above later, mostly to fix some poor english, sorry!]
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