That’s not the issue being discussed here though. The original poster isn’t bumping any IDs to a higher level, they’re adding IDs in support of moving the community ID in the right direction away from an initial misidentification, but those IDs are being misunderstood as bumping up (perhaps this reply itself is a perfect example of the issue).
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I’m not a fan of raw “thank you” replies, honest or not: it causes one notification too many. :-) Although it is pleasant sometimes, “oops wrong click, thanks for noticing”, “now I understand how to identify these, thx” + their ID changed as a result.
/offtopic
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If I understand correctly, the situation here didn’t involve bringing the community ID up a level. Instead, it was something like this: @grampianshiker added a family-level ID to an observation that was stuck at Dicots because of an initial (likely incorrect) species-level ID and a couple of subsequent disagreeing IDs for a taxon in a different order. The family-level ID moved the Community ID for the observation from Dicots to that family, but one of the identifiers took issue with it under the mistaken belief that the family ID somehow indicated disagreement with their species-level ID.
In this case, the Community ID was brought down a few levels closer to the identifier’s suggestion (so, nothing that the identifier should be upset about), and there’s not really any obligation for an explanation. That’s said, I’ve experienced similar confusion from other identifiers and I now usually add the following text in these circumstances.
I’m not disagreeing with more precise IDs, but this is as much as my current knowledge supports.
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I apologise, since I started the project. I would flag offensive comments. ‘I don’t understand’ does not mean they can be abusive.
A few convoluted discussions mean I have a copypasta in my text expander list
Not disagreeing with you
Snide I definitely would flag!
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https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pre-maverick
has 739K obs.
We no longer move resolved obs to the archive.
@jeanphilippeb prefers to use his API call quota for his many Phylogenetic projects and our Placeholders 25K
My grateful thanks to everyone who works with me to clear Pre-Mavericks. Today I will clear the last page of ‘trapped at Dicots’ for the Western Cape. Then I will tackle another slice of the 1,600 waiting there.
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I have a similar problem. I usually try to make any observations at least dicotyledon level. Strangely enough, at least three people blocked me because I tagged their observations too much. They also find supporting identifications as useless identifications.
There were those who insulted me, belittled me, and implied that I was “doing annoying and useless stuff”, but there were also those who went to the extent of blocking me.
I guess some people believe that tagging their observations gives us some kind of benefit. There is no other explanation! I also thing “blocking” mechanism is abused by some users for that reason.
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Because, sometimes, identifiers leave iNat, and delete their profile - some supporting IDs are useful to prevent the IDs collapsing back to … Start again!
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It’s not correct to say I’m glad such unpleasant things are happening to other people, but it is somewhat of a relief to know it’s not just me. :-)
(And that honestly sounds like worse than I’ve had to deal with to date - maybe I haven’t been doing enough identifying!)
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Shall I restart the recurring question of why IDs disappear when people leave? ;-)
It seems fair enough that observations disappear if the person specifically chooses for them to, but I’m not convinced at all that having IDs disappear should even be an option - certainly not the default. But I know it’s all been discussed before.
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Starting the project in no way makes you responsible for people’s responses to helpful (even if they don’t recognise it) IDs. Maybe more education around how the system works would be helpful? But I can’t think of any good way to implement it, since the problem isn’t that the information isn’t there, but that they don’t read it.
Personally I think it’s a great initiative and really appreciate you having started it.
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Almost 2 years (February) since we started the project. Back then I got angry / hurt / offended PMs.
Why? Are you calling me a Maverick (replace my name with yours)?
I would have chosen a less confrontational, picking a fight word, myself. I disagree, I am contrary (and uncompromising ;~)
The observers have caught up, but identifiers are still on their learning curves 
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if the new ID at higher level is not classified as “disagreeing”, it does not negatively affect the observation’s finer identifications in any way.
this is precisely the common misunderstanding many people have :)
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The thing is, ‘maverick’ is intended as a less confrontational, picking a fight word. It is chosen precisely because it can be positive, and does not imply ‘wrong’. It gets a negative response simply because on iNat it means you’re disagreed with and it goes red. The same would happen whatever word you chose.
Perhaps people would be less offended if it went teal? There - I think I’ve solved it
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TMI ? That, I did not expect. Perhaps the word is less charged if you live near Texas? And are a cattle farmer 
Why are people called maverick?
The word “maverick” comes from Samuel Maverick, a Texas cattle rancher in the 1800s who refused to brand his cattle. This was unorthodox at the time and led to people calling unbranded cattle “mavericks” – and calling people who don’t follow the rules “mavericks,” too.
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PS I would like to channel your youthful enthusiasm?
Might you consider annotating a taxon of your choice to make a phenology graph more useful? When does it bud, flower, fruit? Leaf out or turn colour for drought or autumn? Caterpillar vs adult?
We have effective keyboard shortcuts. That is meticulous plodding work, but the result is highly visible and useful!
On your chosen phenology graph
click the gear icon
then your preferred Add Annotations for …
Then click the Annotations tab
(with keyboard shortcuts icon bottom left)
For the times when iNat and iNatters (infuriate) irritate you, but you still, want to add value for us.
See tiwane’s elegant tutorial
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/using-identify-to-annotate-observations/1417
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I should make an FAQ page for help.inaturalist.org that people can at least link to when responding to these situations. Then there’s an explanation on an official iNat page and it might take the burden off of anyone as an individual being the one making a case.
@grampianshiker can you message me a few of these observations as examples so I can address the specific situation(s) and misunderstandings?
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I think you should absolutely flag, or at least try to educate the person
edit: just noticed Tony already took care of things
Imo people need to stop letting how others respond dictate what they do and not do. Some people are best ignored and move on.
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It depends.
I wouldn’t add genus or family level ID to birds. When the genus changes for a taxa, the taxa is automatically replaced but the genus level ID is not.
I haven’t seen such a genus split for grasses nor mosses so I don’t hesitate to add higher level IDs.
RG or not, I leave a note “Just agreeing on genus level” without elaborating is it my experience or some detail of the observation that is missing.
Good luck with the fires and thank for your IDs!
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That’s actually an interesting point against making genus-level IDs, and one that I haven’t particularly thought about.
I’ve recently come across a few pre-mavericks that are pre-mavericks because the initial ID was Boronia and the species was one that later split into a separate genus, so I guess that’s what you’re warning about.
At the same time, when Leptospermum was recently split, all genus-level IDs were raised to a new complex(?)-level ID, which avoided the problem.
Has the problem been noted and things are now handled differently, or is it just about who does a taxon split and how?
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