besides the potential for abuse, vetoing someone else’s ID just feels disrespectful to me. it’s one thing make a disagreeing ID – we can disagree respectfully – but it just feels wrong to take away someone else’s vote because it’s inconvenient. that’s basically disenfranchisement.
there have been lots of threads recently that are effectively trying to shift the balance of power to “experts”, and i think that’s ultimately just the wrong path. if the number of observations in iNaturalist continues to grow the way it has, it’s going to overwhelm even the best efforts of the best experts at some point. so while i love that experts are actively participating in iNaturalist, and i wouldn’t want to discourage experts from participating, i just think experts have to think about the best way to participate in the face of the explosive growth in observations.
@pfau_tarleton said it a little more elegantly in another thread: